10 Coolest Video Game Features (That Are Utterly Pointless)

Have you ever been playing a game and there's a subtle visual cue or a stylistic choice that shows someone on the team went the extra mile?

The first time one of your mechs steps into a puddle in Battletech and witnessing the water ripple out is surprisingly engrossing. It doesn't do anything, you can't really use the ripples to see when hidden enemies are coming in time to do anything about it, because the action is turn-based. Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance also had rippling water – which really seems way above it's weight class, given the fact it's twenty years old now.

Mirrors are a great example of this, especially because of how difficult they are to program in games. You see unlike in real life where a mirror is just reflecting what is in front of it, a mirror in a game basically creates a reflection by reading what is outside of it and re-rendering it, backwards, in real-time. So games that put forth the effort of mirrors, especially older games like F.E.A.R., deserve the credit.

There's plenty of examples of these little visual flairs: Jagged Alliance had the mouths move in the character portraits when they talked, Doom Guy's eyes move around, and I don't think we need to bring up Red Dead Redemption 2's horse nuts in detail again.