this may or may not be common knowledge at this point, but i'd still like to draw more attention to it because of how cool it is—there's a lovely little detail added to the dungeon music in breath of the wild that you might have missed


this is the music that plays when you lurk inside the body of the divine beast Vah Ruta, who, in the game's plot, is essentially a war machine designed to protect hyrule from evil, along with three other divine beasts located in each of the game's four major regions—but the beasts wind up becoming corrupted and possessed by ganon, eventually causing the great calamity, so, of course, it's up to link to basically secure and liberate them from ganon's influence

the beasts have to be liberated from the inside out, so they essentially function as the game's dungeons

the music that plays in vah ruta's dungeon is beautiful on its own, but listen closely at the very beginning—repeatedly, you'll hear three short tones, followed by three longer tones, followed by three shorter tones

that's an "S.O.S." in morse code

no, seriously, listen for yourself

that's right—because the dungeons are more or less sentient warships, they actually integrated a distress call into the dungeon music, which is pretty chilling, given the right context, as it subconsciously adds another layer of urgency to the already grim situation

some people have claimed to hear other morse code messages as well, like "SAD" (... .- -..), but i don't know if i hear that myself—others have speculated that there could also be messages in wabun code, which is the japanese variant of morse, but i haven't looked into that as much

good games are good and all, but it's little things like this which separate the games i love from the games i cherish

And even if game implements little things and core mechanic properly, it only qualify it as a good game, not great game. For a great game you not only need to implement forementioned things, you need also music and gameplay reflect the story of the game as much as possible.

In Dragons Dogma, your height and weight affect stamina, carry weight, move speed and how easily youre pushed around by enemies and environment. It also alters your hitbox and reach with melee weapons.

You can play catch with animals and objects with your NPC pawns.

You can use heavier weapons and spells to mine instead of using a pickaxe.

You can prevent fall damage by catching pawns or getting caught by pawns.

You can grab onto harpies as a light character and use them to reach locations youre normally not able to. Heavy characters can wear them out and force them to ground.

Pawns can hold onto knocked down enemies for easy hits.

You can throw water and oil flasks at enemies for gameplay effects

Heavy characters can knock down ogres by grabbing onto them at specific times.

The soundtrack in Metal Gear Rising. The bosses have songs that change depending on how the fight is going, with lyrics kicking in towards the end. My favorite is during the Armstong fight, where the lyrics will fade out if your sword is knocked out of your hand and will come back when you pick it back up.

All the different weapon sounds that play when you pick up ammo in bungie's Halo games, as well as when you equip them.

Metro 2033/LL had you wearing a gas mask whenever you went to the radioactive surface - otherwise you'd die of suffocation ("bad air" or something, just go with it)

Apart from hearing your breathing that really added tension to the gameplay (and changed dynamically e.g. it would be more calm as you were walking around, more laboured as you were sprinting, more rushed, sporadic, and harsh during shootouts and animal attacks), you'd have to find these sparse air filters for the gas mask that only lasted a few minutes a piece, and slowly over time your mask would condensate up as your filters got dirty.

If you were unfortunate to run out, your guy would do a quick *Huuuuuuuuueeeeeehp* to take a last deep breath, take your now-useless mask off, and gave you about 30 seconds to frantically scrabble around to find a fresh air filter off a corpse or in some storage cabinet if you were lucky. (First 40 secs of this vid) If air filters weren't enough to worry about, your mask could get damaged if you were attacked, first the glass would crack, your mask would hiss at every breath and deplete your filters faster, and if damaged enough if would just break and you've have to find a new one off a dead guy, or kill your assailant and take his (whose would also be at risk of damage or broken if you'd aimed for the head - you could even kill people through the suffocation mechanic by just breaking their masks).

In Last Light they developed it further for immersive purposes - if you'd walked into a mucky deep puddle, radioactive swamp bog, had been using the mask for a while for it to condensate, or just been killing a lot of things and got a bit splashed, you could wipe it off with your hands by pressing a button (9 minute mark) (it would do it automatically, but after a much longer time period, which in a battle or hazardous area could be enough to kill you). You could also just wipe it whenever you wanted, say if you're a bit OCD on how condensated your mask gets, or you just like seeing more clearly through a restricted view of a gasmask.

It really added to the game, including it's "Hardcore Ranger" difficulty mode which took away the UI as well as making the damage realistically high both ways - one time I'd skipped searching through a surface level for filters, and at the final part of the mission when you get chased and attacked by Norsalises (giant rat-dog things) with Pavel (your comradely comrade!), my filters ran out mid-chase, so once we got to the metro door to have a last stand with the rat dogs until they opened the door, I nearly suffocated myself (your vision starts pulsing with blurriness, a dark vignette surrounds your vision which slowly closes in, your hearing starts to dull, and your breathing once you lose your breath is panicked and frantic until you eventually collapse and pass out/die).

Fighting off an endless wave of Norsalises, counting the rounds you have left loaded on your makeshift auto-revolving-shotgun, whilst simultaneously running out of air JUST as the cutscene for the people inside to open the door and pull you into the oxygen-safe metro and finish the level made it memorable and gave it a bit of an adrenaline rush.