Stealth, Water physics, Light reflection, Audio panning, there are thousands of different features and mechanics that make up video games. This thread is simple, name a feature or a mechanic (gameplay, graphical or sound-wise) and say which game you think handles it best and what sets it apart from the others.

wave race 64 and wave race bluestorm
the water physics in both of them are still amazing and the water graphics in blue storm are still awesome 12 years on

Star Control 2: Mastering pc beeper - we knew there was no sound card in the computer - but it sure as hell sounded like we had magically gotten one.

Thief's sound based stealth system. Splinter Cell's open design stealth system (best in SC:1,CT,PT and Blacklist).

Age of Empires 2's age up tech advance system.

Sorry but I'd say Rise of Nations is even better in that regard.

Yeah I read this wrong. =P

But the AoE series was the first to implement it.

Mean Streets did a pretty incredible job getting good-sounding speech out of a PC speaker. I was quite impressed by it at the time.

Might and Magic IV too. For the first time I felt like my PC speaker was AdLib or something.

Call of Duty 3 That game Has the most advance grass in a game, Beats far cry and crysis out the window! Every blade moves individually, I think crysis 3 now has that but those are the only 2 games I seen ever use this advance grass engine

And has never EVER been used again in any Call of Duty game after that one... :(

This just shows that even back then on an xbox 360 it was possible and for ever what damn reason no other game did this...
http://youtu.be/tiBZcz8zsy0

Alpha Protocol handles stealth like no other game. ;)

Mount and blade (any) for its melee combat. Or the size of battles. Even its battle system in general is in its own league.