See also: melee impact

Primarily for when you aren't trying to hit stuff with the weapon. As in, walking up to a wall causes the character to pull up or otherwise move the weapon/tool/whatever out of the way. For melee weapons this effectively means that the weapon does not pass through environmental objects but rather hits them and stops.

This also includes the character's hands/arms to a degree.

This is in contrast to games that used sprites for weapons and later 3D games that don't actually display the same thing for the player of their own character as some third party observer would see (often just a model of the wielded item and the character's hand, overlayed on the regular display). Games using sprites for the tools can simulate the effect almost as easily as purely 3D games can, so this is not limited to fully 3D games.