- In System Shock and other shooters, the last bullet you have has multiplied damage.

- Enemies in Bioshock will deliberately miss their first shot to give the players a chance to dodge.

- Many platformers (I think Braid was one quoted) have a window where even if you fall off of a ledge, you can still jump.

- Assassin’s Creed and Doom have more health associated with the last tick of the health bar, to make you feel like you barely survived.

- Shadow of Mordor grants additional health to dueling Uruks to increase the length of the fight for the sake of spectacle.

- Silent Hill: Shattered Memories removed one physical sense of an AI every time you respawned in a nightmare run, slowed down enemies if you looked over the shoulder, and only tow enemies were allowed to chase you at once while the rest had to flank you.

- Thumper’s time signature corresponds to the numerical value of a level

- Suikoden spawns less enemies in the world map if they’re walking in a straight line while spawning more if you zigzag (the former is good for getting to a place quickly and the latter is for grinding)

- Gears of War provided significant buffs to new players in multiplayer that tapered off with a few kills (to encourage them to replace multiplayer).

- Half Life 2 has ledges and railings set as ragdoll magnets to enemies will fall over them more often.

- Ratchet and Clank scaled enemy damage and hid enemies based on time played and total deaths of the player.

- Jak and Daxter would trip players to mask the presence of loading

- The Bureau/XCOM, enemy AI gets more aggressive if the players don’t move every 15-20 seconds

- In Thief: The Dark Project, your sword increases your visibility, meaning you need to choose better stealth or better preparation for being caught.

- F.E.A.R bent bullets towards things that exploded

- Enemies in some LEGO games have a hit or miss chance. If a projectile misses, it’s offset and has no collision. This is done to make fights more hectic.

- Alien:Isolation has the Xenomorph learn player habits (if the player hides in lockers a lot, it learns that)

- The Xenomorph has 2 brains - one that will always know where you are, and one that controls the body and is given hints by the first brain.

- Far Cry 4 reduces the damage and accuracy of NPCs based on how many are near a player.

- Enemies in Left 4 Dead deliberatly target players the furthest away from the group or have had the least aggro.

- Hi Octane displays different stats for different cars even though they all have the same internal stats.

- Enemies in Arkham Asylum do not perform 180 degree turns so the player can be stealthy.

- Elizabeth in Bioshock: Infinite throws resource to the player based on the player’s current state.

- The last phase of a boss fight in Furi has a lower difficulty and is more visually impressive

- Guitar Hero rates you out of 5 stars, but won’t give you lower than a 3.

- Enter the Gungeon has the AI warm up. The longer a play session is, the harder the AI gets.

- Good PC shooters mimic analogue controls as follows: holding movement key during a frame=1, pressing or releasing=0.5, pressing _and_ releasing during same frame=0.25 ½

- Counters to your current class in Overwatch sound louder.

- Spec Ops: The Line changed stuff in the environment suddenly to make the player question his perception.

- Firewatch counts silence as a player choice in dialogue conversations

http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/6xqtgz/an_insightful_thread_where_game_developers/dmhz7fa