10 Insanely Cool Video Game Mechanics You Forgot About

There’s rarely anything as enjoyable in games as discovering what can be destroyed. Whether it’s rolling into everything to see what breaks in Dark Souls or admiring the car explosions in Grand Theft Auto V, interacting with destructible objects make games feel more realistic and immersive.­

One game that took destruction to remarkable heights was Red Faction: Guerrilla.

The third instalment in the Red Faction series, Guerilla follows protagonist Alec Mason help the titular resistance group overthrow the tyrannical Earth Defence Force on Mars. To do so, he must dismantle their operations across each of the map’s regions, which means players will be spending a large chunk of their time blowing stuff up.

Making the destruction that much better was the use of the Geo-Mod 2.0 system. A huge upgrade from its predecessor that made terrain destructible in the previous games, the new system allowed for entire structures to collapse into rubble in real-time.

Whether players chose to climb into a vehicle and ram into walls at high speed, pummel bridges with heavy weaponry, or rip down a whole building with a sledgehammer, no game to date has matched this level of insanely detailed and satisfying levels of total destruction.