6 Recent Games That Put Crazy Effort Into Tiny Details

6

You Could Never Even Come Close To Playing Every Combo In Smash Bros. Ultimate

The Super Smash Bros. series started out as a simple party game about Nintendo's most beloved mascots beating the crap out of each other, but that description falls short by now. Ultimate, the latest installment, is more like a massive gaming encyclopedia that also happens to be a fighting game (which is how all encyclopedias would work in an ideal world).

The game has so much content that 1-Ups would need to exist in real life to get through every possible match combination. The base game includes 74 playable characters, 87 items, 103 stages, 114 assist characters, and 1,200 spirits, which are basically gaming-related Google Image Search results you can fight with.

Nintendo via IGNFrom icons to guys 15 people have heard of.

Every single stage is full of lovingly rendered little details that are easy to miss. For instance, if you pause and zoom out on Mr. Game & Watch's stage, you can see you're fighting inside an actual Game & Watch console from the '80s.

Nintendo via GameXplainKeep zooming to see the back seat of your dad's car during a boring family vacation.

The Game Theorists did the math, and taking into account all the variants and such, there are over 1 sedecillion possible matches in this game. That's a number with so many zeros that if we tried to type it out here, it'd probably break the website, if not the Universe. Of course, we're just going to keep playing as Yoshi and poop opponents off ledges, but it's cool to know we have options.

5

Space Junkies Allows You To Do VR Without Puking

Sure, there are other VR titles that technically count as FPS games, but most of them are either A) short tech demos or B) existing games where they just tacked on the VR stuff because "Eh, might as well." So right off the bat, Space Junkies is noteworthy because it was specifically made for VR, making it less prone to the clunkiness that plagues "VR as an afterthought" shooters.

4

Stealth Actually Makes Sense In Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

An impressive amount of thought went into making Sekiro's stealth mechanics believable, and if we're lucky, other developers will be ripping off these ideas for years to come.

3

The Division 2 Teaches You The Joy Of Giving

Tom Clancy's The Division 2 sounds like a '90s computer game about a popular novelist teaching you math, but it's actually a looter shooter. That's a game where you shoot a lot of people, collect loot, upgrade your gear, and then rinse, shoot, and repeat. The problem with this format is that usually once you get a good set of gear, there's no reason to hunt down more loot. The rest just ends up as junk for dismantling or selling. The Division 2 makes an effort to fix this by giving you a more meaningful way to dispose of your unwanted garbage: charity.

See, the game takes place in a world ravaged by a smallpox pandemic (vaccinate your damn kids). As you progress in the story, you unlock settlements populated by scrappy groups of civilians who will give you important missions ... like when they ask you to get them a new BBQ grill. To be fair, if we were facing possible death in a pestilence-ridden world, we'd want to be full of ribs too.

Ubisoft via PolygonAnd if you get that, then you gotta get them the 4K TV so they can watch the game. Come on.

2

Far Cry: New Dawn Remembered That Colors Are A Thing That Exist

You can usually tell a game is set in a post-apocalyptic world before any half-destroyed buildings even show up by just looking at the color palette. Most games in this genre tend to render the future as drab, with colors that range from gray to brown to grayish-brown. Far Cry: New Dawn stands out just by acknowledging that nuclear explosions can't wipe out chunks of the visual spectrum.

UbisoftTurns out all other post-apocalyptic games are seen from the perspective of that lady with the ski goggles.

Even compared to non-futuristic games, New Dawn is still distinctive, thanks to its bright tones. The most obvious source is the purple flowers that litter this entire wasteland, but you also have the fluorescent graffiti left by enterprising vandals and the snazzy clothes worn by your fashion-conscious enemies. Heck, this could pass for a Nintendo game if it wasn't for the occasional splashes of blood here and there (which also liven up the environment in their own way). Incidentally, if Ubisoft and Nintendo are looking to do a follow-up crossover to Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, we think Far Cry Meets Splatoon would be a logical step.

1

Jump Force Lets Famous Characters Be Themselves

Video games based on anime often have a hard time finding a balance between staying true to the (often bonkers) source material and functionality. The crossover fighting game Jump Force took a different approach -- almost slavish devotion to the comics and cartoons, down to the smallest character details, even if it affects balance and gameplay mechanics -- and somehow it works.

Bandai Namco EntertainmentWhat we don't get is why Garfield was excluded. Greatest manga ever.

While there is an attempt to level the playing field (otherwise Dragon Ball characters would pulverize everyone while screaming for 35 episodes), Jump Force makes an effort to stay true to its various sources, even if it significantly alters or limits the mechanics. Take Sanji from One Piece, a girl-crazy pirate with a strict code against hitting women. Most fighting games would ignore that (or, you know, not include him), but Jump Force remains faithful to the character by turning all of his offensive moves into wimpy defensive pushbacks if you try to make him fight a female opponent.