Most console players barely touch options when starting up a game. It is the point of console gaming to have things preset, easy to hop in and out. Unless the game is competitive, players don’t really adjust their settings aside from the initial setup. Players often miss features like motion controls that aren’t advertised. This could enhance the gameplay experience, adding another layer to immersion. Motion controls can help you aim in popular games like The Last of Us, Resident Evil 4, and Resident Evil Village. Some games especially take advantage of motion controls, like Gravity Rush, Wii Sports, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and the Just Dance series. For those of us who remember these games, the feature gave a sense of novelty.
“Gimmicks,” as some would call them, do more than simply add to the experience, they can create a new experience. Strictly speaking, these aren’t gimmicks, but rather gameplay features, usually optional ways to play the game. If there’s a game you’ve already played, see if it has any feature that can create new experiences. Or even better, seek out those special ones, exclusive to games that focus on their “gimmick.”
The Charm of Gimmicks
Let me try to explain the appeal of these features. On the Nintendo 3DS, there’s a baseball game called Rusty’s Real Deal Baseball, made up of several minigames. Made by Nintendo’s own developers, it incorporates stereoscopic 3D. With 3D turned off, the game is simply about timing your swing or pitches. However, it can feel a little flat and un-immersive playing the game with its basic graphical setting. The baseballs fly at you so fast that the eye can’t recognize the shape or size of the ball. Yet, with the 3D feature on, it changes. It quite literally adds another layer to the game. There’s a greater sense of depth, and the ball pops out at you with its velocity and shape. Even the environment looks just a little less flat. The colors seem to pop out more, too.
Yes, depending on how the player images the 3D, it can be a bit disorienting or more difficult to play. But the appeal is not necessarily to replace the regular style of play, it is to enhance or replay it. For those who remember the Wii Sports days, sometimes that sense of disorientation is part of the charm. Why else would millions of people swing a Wii Remote aimlessly instead of having a button click to swing for you? I don’t discourage it, myself. I simply play both ways. It allows me to experience the game all over again, especially if I already enjoyed it once.
New Gameplay Opportunities
Features provide a new and original gameplay experience on top of the traditional, adding a layer of interactivity. Depending on the game design of a particular game, it can even fulfill the great ambition of a director’s vision. Sometimes the gimmicks become the main experience that gives a satisfaction greater than holding a controller and pressing buttons. Gimmicks can give players a new sense of discovery as well. Since it provides new opportunities, the best directors tend to insert as many gameplay features as are relevant. Several directors risk a lot of time and money to give us these new ways to play; it is an achievement of its own. It is why both players and directors alike search for the most original gameplay experiences.
Even if you don’t particularly enjoy playing so awkwardly, try finding what games you own that have a feature you’ve yet to try. Minecraft has a VR mode on the PS4 using PSVR. Resident Evil 4 has a Wii version that aims using the Wii Remote. Grand Theft Auto V has a first-person mode that I personally have used and feels quite good to play. One of the newer titles, Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition on Switch 2 has several ways to play: including motion controls, gyro controls, handheld and motion gestures as well. In these cases, the immersion either enhances the game or a new experience altogether, achieving its goal. However, some of these games are quite unique for their respective platforms, being the few among many with gimmicks. For those who are willing, there are platforms with more than just a few interesting titles.
Recommendations
I’ve already mentioned a few games that would be fun with their relative gameplay features. An easy recommendation for games with tons of interesting ways to play are the Nintendo consoles as a whole, from the Wii generation and onward. Each console since has featured motion controls, on top of everything else. The Wii had the Wii Remote, the Wii U had the gamepad, and the Switch had the Joy-Cons. If we consider the handhelds of the time, they also carry a lot of interesting gameplay on their backs. The DS and 3DS systems have dual screens, meaning developers exclusively worked their games on that form factor. They also had touch controls, utilizing a stylus for a different kind of precision.
Giving any of these consoles a try, if you haven’t already, will force you to reckon with their gimmick. You can just google the best-selling games of each console and find great games to start off with. Some titles to try are, No More Heroes (Wii), Nintendo Land (Wii U), Touchmaster (DS), Fossil Fighters: Champions (DS) and Kid Icarus: Uprising (3DS). Each of these uses their console functions to give players fun and original gameplay.
As for the other consoles, there is a smaller selection. Astro Bot is a game that uses all the features of the DualSense controller, including adaptive triggers, haptic feedback and gyro controls. Also, on the PS5 is The Last of Us duology, which includes features like motion sensor aiming, adaptive triggers and aim reticle options. These are considered accessibility settings but features like this can often overlap. Luckily, these games allow you to choose one feature over another, so your own immersion isn’t interfered with. In regard to the recent PlayStation catalogue, there is also another big feature exclusive to their hardware with several titles.
PlayStation Virtual Reality
The PlayStation VR (PSVR) and PlayStation VR 2 (PSVR 2) are virtual reality hardware that connect to the PS4 and PS5, respectively. They are headsets that you put on your head and grant the peak of immersive gaming—being inside of the digital world itself. Both have their own entire library, with each having their own gameplay style on top of the virtual reality. This is something that some players can easily take advantage of with their titles that double as VR games. When players get a PSVR2, their critically acclaimed games like Resident Evil: Village and Resident Evil 4 (2023) can be used in VR mode.
Since these titles are shooters, the VR takes advantage of the Sense controllers to accurately aim within the games. For some, this combo justifies buying the headset, even without playing the rest of the PSVR 2 library. In this case however, virtual reality might not be a “feature” of the PS4 and PS5 consoles, as it is entirely new hardware and a new mode of play. In support of it being a feature, however, is how the early days of the PSVR was noted to be a bit gimmicky and is still only used by few PlayStation players.
Accessories
Now for the really gimmicky stuff. There are some titles that, while they do not play exclusively with a certain feature, do incorporate them in a bold way. I am referring to accessories. These range from molds of fishing rods, car wheels, pedals, and straps to toys that come to life and pedometers that raise Pokémon. These accessories tend to be used to mimic actions in the game, the most popular of which being driving. Sometimes they are entirely unconventional like the Pokéwalker that counts your steps or amiibo that lets you train CPU “fighters” in Super Smash Bros.
They add a certain flavor to gameplay that isn’t quite immersion but does add to the fun. It can be pretty impractical though. Yet, I would argue that is absolutely why everyone should try using accessories in gaming. It can become its own achievement, a harder difficulty, a new mode, or simply something you just try once. Although Mario Tennis Aces has a motion control mode where I have yet to put on some tennis racket molds onto my Joy-Cons, I definitely like that the option is there. Because…why not?
The Necessity of Unique Features
From this open-minded perspective, gimmicks are a small celebration of gaming. For some, extra features are mostly appreciated from afar where they can’t hinder the experience, while for others it completely makes up the game itself and replaces the basic experiences. Especially since these features have only really been steadily added to games after the early 2000s, I can’t help seeing it as developers trying to add more value to their games by doing so.
There are likely many situations when players have taken a small feature for granted, and don’t realize how flat the game would feel without them. With no rumble, there is no oomph. Without gyro controls, there is no Splatoon or Mario Kart Wii. Without DualSense features, there is no Astrobot as we know it. Features are about the small things adding up—the special seasoning in each game. We don’t know what some games would look like without their gimmicks, but they certainly wouldn’t feel the same without them.
Finding Original Experiences
Looking at features deeper allows us to rediscover the fun in gaming, and it isn’t something that difficult to access. Whenever you buy your next game, keep in mind any special features they might have, or their accessibility options at the very least. Even the notorious Call of Duty games have various settings for color, reticles, HUD, and other customizations. Something as gimmicky as creating your own “classic” mode in these games could qualify as its own feature, changing the way you play.
Players often get frustrated with playing a single way, with a formula that has been beaten into your brain over and over. There is no need to yield to those basic formulas anymore, we can collectively choose to search for the fun in games again. That is why indie games are having an explosion in popularity. It is just so refreshing to view an old formula through a new lens. This is done from games striving to be the most original, and the most feature-rich they can be.
