i'm kind of struggling to put this into words but I've replayed a bit of Far Cry 2 and was amazed by how much the enviroment reacts to the firefights. The fire mechanic, obviously, but even beyond that sparks fly when you hit metal, sheds or other structures get destroyed, explosions make the plants react to the shockwave and form some little craters.
Then I played Control which has very different style and pace of combat but it has the same thing going on. It's easily legible but you can feel like there's a lot of, like, destructive potential filling the air here currently.
Contrast this to something like even Modern Warfare 2 (pick any of the three there is, really) and while it is THE bombastic shooter it still feels flat. Yeah maybe you get a broken window and some bullet decals on the walls but outside of scripted sequences any CoD level looks basically the same at the start and once you're through it having shot 800 rocket launchers at the place.
So I'm wondering, what other games do this sort of enviroment reaction / cinematic shooting the best, where you can really feel that a lot of very fast objects are hitting a lot of different things and breaking them?
Red Faction: Guerilla and it's sequels are obvious, I'm thinking Stranglehold and at least Mafia 2 also did this really well. What else is there?
Wind Waker is not beyond criticism, even on the sailing part (what a slog in the original version in the midgame, honestly). But that wasn't really what the hullaballoo was about back then, because the game wasn't out. I personally do not understand how anyone can not marvel at the art style of Wind Waker but taste is subjective. I think this article gives an allright overview, even with "we were lied to!" by this 5 second trailer clearly styled after OOT with no mention of the actual game