Is The Best Game One You Were Never Intended To Play? 156
Wired has an interesting look at the sport of pushing proscribed boundaries in video games. Easter eggs in games have been around for years, but now finding surprises, intended or otherwise, is becoming a driving force behind the enjoyment of games. "In games as diverse as Fallout 3 and Mirror's Edge, players are pushing to find or create unexpected ways to break past the game horizon, and turn the designers' intentions on their heads. It's only a matter of time before someone releases a game where the best version is the one you were never intended to play. That's only to be expected, says David Michicich, CEO and creative director of Robomodo, the developers of Activision's new Tony Hawk: Ride, and a 14-year veteran game designer. 'Today's news gets old quick — we Twitter, blog, pass viral video. We thrive off the sudden excitement of the latest and most buzzworthy,' Michicich says. 'It's exciting to still feel like you can discover something new. It's stimulation, plain and simple.'"
This isn't anything new (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This isn't anything new (Score:4, Interesting)
While playing Pilot Wings 64, I always wanted to see what would happen if the giant balloon was bounced into the cave entrance just above the waterfall - it literally went ballistic.
Going into the caves with the jungle-hopper boots was fun as well. Actually managed to get bounced out of the cave and into the ground plane of the moutains and was able to see the tunnel network clearly.
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We called it the Torgo control, if that means anything to you. :)
The master would not approve...
I actually made a Torgo costume for Halloween when I was in college.
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Holy hell, do I know you? I thought we were the only ones who did Hunt the Raptor. We used Turok: Rage Wars. We'd have hunted a dozen of the damn things if we could, but unfortunately that game had a hard 4-player limit, so we just played 3 at a time vs. 1 bot raptor with the highest AI level.
I also do things like this in Left 4 Dead to keep things interesting when the teams are horribly unbalanced.
If you're on my team and we've demolished the other team in the first two levels of a campaign, expect to h
Vaudeville, Cinema, and Hedonistic Adaptation (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of vaudeville acts got into the movie business (The Three Stooges and The Marx Brothers among them), and they very quickly learned that a shtick that could last for years on the various circuits on the road got national exposure on film -and then they had to come up with new shticks. Games have something of the same dynamic going on with hedonistic adaptation. First the intensity goes up, but eventually the form itself changes.
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If I'm doing a barrel roll in Call of Duty 14, then I'll agree with you.
Already Happened (Score:5, Informative)
See Warcraft 3 and DoTa. The DoTa mod is vastly more popular than the original game.
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So is Counter-Strike. But I don't think the gameplay of WC3 or HL includes playing with map editors or sdks.
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I think very few people on Bnet play the standard maps that Blizzard originally wanted people to play. Blizzard made their own version of Big Game Hunters with almost limitless resources only because people wanted to play Starcraft without the complexities of being forced to expand. Obviously the pro-gamers still play the traditional maps, but I would say a large majority of the casual players play either BGH, some other infinite resources map, or as you mentioned, some custom scenario where you have to
Re:Already Happened (Score:5, Informative)
I recommend "Thief - the Metal Age". Arguably the biggest modding community on the net. Hop over to Thief: The Circle [thief-thecircle.com] for more info.
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We need a remake of that game. Not like Thief 3. The originals, the Circle, etc... all put in a modern engine with the gameplay kept as close as possible to the old.
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You can also fall "through" the ground. Once after falling bellow the playing area I found a Large Orange cube, Weird.
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I would agree that every game or platform developer believes in creating
Counter Strike (Score:5, Informative)
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I didn't forget, I just don't like counterstrike ;)
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Ha! People tend to forget that counter-strike is a mod for Half Life ! A game that notoriously sucked, in multiplayer mode...
Half Life DM sucked? Are you nuts? Half Life DM rocked man.
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And thus, Sven Coop was born.
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Counter Strike is the most prominent example, being originally a community mod for Half Life (until absorbed).
A more recent example is Oblivion. It was game with great potential, but lousy execution and horrible design decisions. Only the mods made it a great game.
Fallout 3, might go the same way, though the basic game is much better and obviously influenced by the popular mods for Oblivion.
Paradox games such as Europa Universalis III, and Hearts of Iron 2, usually also has mods which improves or expands ga
Yes (Score:5, Funny)
Unfortunately 3DRealms fucked it up
The only winning move is not to play. (Score:5, Funny)
Is that you Joshua [wikipedia.org]?
Good examples of this (Score:2, Informative)
..Include "surfing" in Counter Strike (there seems to be a whole community of guys creating maps just for this purpose, check them out on Youtube) and "stunting" in the GTA series, most notable Vice City and San Andreas (there's also a pretty thrivig community, it seems).
I also remember spending hours playing Lemmings, just having fun doing crazy tunnels/bridges and totally disregarding the actual goal.
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... and if you were really good, you could execute this while spiraling in to someone with your weapon of choice...
And that's why we will love the Duke FOREVER (Score:3, Funny)
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Always bet on Duke!
Didn't this already happen (Score:2)
... (version we weren't intended to play, I mean) .. with the hot coffee add-in for GTA?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Coffee_minigame_controversy [wikipedia.org]
doing this for years -- house rules (Score:5, Interesting)
Surely lots of people make house rules to certain games, no? And isn't that a game "you weren't intended to play?"
My buddy and I still play the 17-year-old Super Mario Kart regularly, but the game's evolved with a ton of house rules. Some exampes:
1 - If you get a ghost, you have to either steal the opponent's current item or the very next one, but you can't just hold onto it waiting for a red shell.
2 - If you get a banana, you can yell "GAME!" and the other player has to stop. Then you position yourself, and try to hit him by throwing the banana.
3 - If you have one hit left, your opponent has all three, and you get a green shell...
This wasn't the game the designers necessarily had in mind, but it's the game we like. Ghosts are too powerful. Bananas are too boring. So we tweak the rules.
TFA mentions Easter eggs rather than house rules. Easter eggs just can't be what they were before; the internet makes it too easy to learn everything about a game. There's no way the new Zelda will have a secret room that nobody knows about for years, but ~10 years went by before I found out about the secret room [eeggs.com] in Zelda for SNES. You just can't have secrets like that in popular games anymore.
Re:doing this for years -- house rules (Score:5, Interesting)
Ah yes, the "house rules", the best way to play pretty much any RTS game.
I've found that every RTS I've played with others over a LAN has gotten boring pretty quickly, but after adding a few rules (that are enforced by throwing stuff at those who break them) like "2v2, no breaking alliances and no one is allowed to cross the river in the middle of the map for the first n minutes" tends to make the gameplay a lot more fun, I kind of wish they would build such features straight into the games but most times it's just speed, resources, tech level and map when playing multiplayer.
/Mikael
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"Hey, dont nuke your ALIES!"
Good old Starcraft days :)
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The folks in the dorms way back in my undergrad days would play multiplayer Descent with a "flares only" house rule, because it was too easy to kill people otherwise.
Super Monkey Ball Elite (Score:1)
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Haven't played Super Monkey Ball, but in the apparently SMB-inspired Linux game Neverball, there are also some people who enjoy solving levels in various extreme ways. Since the game has a video recording mode, you can show off not just your time, but how you did it too.
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Easy. (Score:1)
Geometry wars 2 (Score:3, Insightful)
I was playing this at a friends and we were having more fun trying to get the quirky accomplishments than the actual game.
It was called TRIBES (Score:5, Informative)
There was a bug in the game that allowed you to "ski" by hitting the jump button repeatedly. Skiing let you gain a lot of momentum and using your jetpack to climb hills would let you maintain it.
That bug completely changed the way the game was played and made crossing large open environments effortless. The developers never fixed the bug and instead made it a feature of Tribes 2.
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No. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:No. (Score:5, Funny)
Nethack. The Devs Think of Everything.
SPOILER WARNING
This will spoil a cruel joke the Devs have played on you.
Once I was playing nethack, I encountered (I think) a fountain. I "use" it, and out pops a genie which lets me wish for any item I want. Naturally, I wish for the amulet of Yendor. I'm obviously shocked and surprised when he gives it to me. Not really believing what I see, I look at my inventory thrice. "Okay, my trusty feline friend, let's head for some moonlight!" (ever noticed how it's always full moon when you play?). Heart racing, I evade or fight off the monsters meeting me on the way. Standing at the stairs on level 1, I let go a deep sigh and reach for my keyboard.
SPOILER STILL GOING ON
Congratulations! You made it out of the dungeon alive. Would you like your items identified? (y). You hold: a sword, an armor, 3 rations, and a cheap plastic imitation of the amulet of Yendor.
I nearly fell of my chair laughing. Truly, The Devs Think of Everything.
SPOILER OVER, BUT AVERT YOUR GAZE ANYWAYS!
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"Okay, my trusty feline friend, let's head for some moonlight!" (ever noticed how it's always full moon when you play?).
It's only the full moon in-game when it's the full moon in real life, about one week out of the month.
Max Payne - Baseball Bat Challenge (Score:2, Interesting)
Logic fail (Score:4, Interesting)
If the best version is one in which one must unlock something, find as an "easter egg", or some how activate a cheat, and it is intended to be that way, then the game is intended to play in that mode and finding how to activate the mode becomes just another part of the game.
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I believe they're talking about a game whose designed game modes are not nearly as fun as the glitches that people figure out how to do in it.
Saint's Row comes to mind.
I've always had nearly as much fun trying to break a game as I have playing it. I still remember Secret of the Silver Blades [wikipedia.org] for PC and my first experiments in hex editing savegames.
Was I trying to cheat and give myself crazy stats? Not exactly... I was trying to give myself items with implausible names:
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Maybe, but I think that this:
which is the part I was referring to, rules out that interpretation.
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not really news (Score:2, Interesting)
Two words (Score:1)
I played that crap mini game for hours.
My Dog, I am old and if you played it so are you.
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I remember that. And the Stooge Fighter 3 in the later one. I spent probably a month playing and replaying that minigame before finding a walkthrough on a BBS and discovering you were *supposed* to lose the first time you played it (and in fact, it was enforced. If you got the opponent down to almost out of life, it'd cheat). Ticked me off :)
Dumbest article ever (Score:2)
We've already seen this years ago, user-edited WAD files with Doom. It's all about letting the customer start hacking on the product. Palms were never meant to be word-processing tools but inventive users started dicking around with the memo fields and eventually hacked one together. This sort of thing was not envisioned by the original engineers but are embraced by smart companies. Enthusiastic users put their own time and effort in free of charge so that they can get exactly the product or specs they want
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I've just discovered the Atari800 emulator for Linux. About a decade ago, I archived all my old BASIC programs onto a PC. Running them through the emulator, it was really amazing to see all those programs running again, even the ones with 6502 assembler coded as DATA statements.
Then I read about MyDos (which seemed to be the default OS for the Atari in the USA), 6502 C compilers (CC65), find internet archives of just about every Atari game and cartridge that existed. It makes me really want to learn more ab
Desert Combat (Score:2)
I mean, I doubt I was the first person to do it, but I'd never seen or heard of anybody else doing it before after playing it for months myself...
There was also that annoying crap on Alamein (I think?)
Re:Desert Combat (Score:5, Informative)
I remember back in the days of Desert Combat when I was in early high school, getting the idea of parking mobile AA on the hillside, allowing you to get the gun pointed down farther than being level and using the AA guns against people - was great stuff,
I mean, I doubt I was the first person to do it, but I'd never seen or heard of anybody else doing it before after playing it for months myself...
Oh for the lack of history education now a days ... I suspect the great desert fox himself might have invented the technique circa 1941...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/88_mm_gun [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Rommel [wikipedia.org]
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Yup, 3 Burnout Paradise. I too bought it on impulse, when it was added to the PlayStation Store. Downoaded it, and it's since become one of my favorite PS3 games. I especially love the DLC that added the Ghostbusters car and the General Lee.
I'm Free! (Score:1)
Damned gru (Score:2)
got me again......... :-(
I know one (Score:2, Funny)
A strange game - (Score:3, Interesting)
How about a nice game of chess?
Team Fortress Classic (Score:1)
In TFC, the soldier's "rocket jump" was an unexpected result of the force given by the rocket's explosion while jumping, and the damage wasn't enough to kill the player. This could propel them to battlements and so forth to cause hell.
Because the community loved the 'feature', VALVe included these strategies into TF2 with explanations of how to do it, and animations to support the action.
Re:Team Fortress Classic (Score:4, Informative)
The only game devs which did not know about the RJ were... ID Software when the released Quake 1
scar3crow: Quake has always had wonderful deathmatch, and it certainly popularized something many take for granted these days - rocketjumping. Aside from your lateral use of it in Mt Erebus in Doom, did you foresee it in the way it came about in deathmatch? John Romero: We had no idea until after the game was released and I started hearing the word being used... Even then I thought it meant jumping over someone's rocket! When I saw it in action i was amazed and immediately starting doing it all the time.
scar3crow: It certainly makes for a different dynamic in the flow of maps, in some cases completely circumventing the pace the mapper may have intended (such as in DM4 where it makes the map even tighter).
John Romero: Yeah, most of the single-player maps break with rocket-jumping. E2M1 in 11 seconds. Heh
src: http://qexpo.quakedev.com/interview_romero.php?page=2 [quakedev.com]
Re:Team Fortress Classic (Score:4, Informative)
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Please. Rise of the Triad had the rocket jump back when Doom 2 was new.
The first Marathon [wikipedia.org] had it two months previous to RotT. And it was necessary to reach many of the secrets.
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I find it pretty hard to believe that whoever was programming the physics in Quake1 didn't realize the rocket jumping possibilities that he/she was allowing. I honestly doubt that there wasn't at least one person who was play testing that thought "I wonder what would happen if I pointed my weapon down and jumped at the same time." The rocket jumping seemed like it was balanced to me. As a game programmer myself, I just don't see how programming a physical response like that wouldn't lead a programmer
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Headline sounds like Satan (Score:1, Troll)
tempting Eve to try anal.
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...huh?
Self-defeating (Score:2, Insightful)
If you make easter eggs an intentional part of the game, something that players are supposed to find... well, guess what, it's not an easter egg anymore.
These kinds of things are only interesting because they weren't part of the normal gameplay. Most easter eggs are actually pretty dull if taken on their own merit (a "developer room" with NPCs standing around doing nothing? Wow, so glad I spent 500 hours trying to find this place).
Truth is that if you can really do something in a game that completely borks
Enough Already You Twits! (Score:3, Insightful)
However, I'm sick of seeing Twitter referenced as a major milestone in communication. What influence did Twitter have on the latest Tony Hawk game? It's impact on the way people play video games is negligible at best. If Twitter went away tomorrow Facebook and MySpace would fill the void without a single enhancement: "Playing Tony Hawk 49, found a door I can open on the Tokyo level." What would be lost without Twitter, other than the verb "twit"?
This already happened, back in 1992 (Score:3, Insightful)
Combat for Atari 2600, and ThrillKill for PS-1 (Score:2)
Combat for Atari 2600 had a warp effect in the tank vs. tank games. Start the game, turn your tank around and begin driving at the screen edge. Keep moving toward it full force while also firing the gun. Eventually you will warp out and come back somewhere else on the screen, sometimes to good effect and sometimes you blow up when you come out.
It worked very well. It works in the emulators too.
But when I think of games I was never meant to play at all, I think of ThrillKill for Playstation. This was a
Descent II, fun with guided missiles (Score:2)
In Descent II, there's a level towards the end with a very large room just past the start room, with a door directly across from the door to the start room, and lots of crossbarred windows to rooms all over the level that require keys for the ship to reach, but which missiles can fly between. If you start the level with a full load of guided missiles, and you get really, really good, you can take out more than half the bots in the level without even moving from the start spot. I probably got more replay v
X-Com, Civ 3, etc. (Score:3, Interesting)
Civ 3 was literally made for creating such games. I created a "space colonists marooned on a hostile planet" scenario where you started with all techs, but only had one city and could build no more. Surrounding you were hostile civs bent on destroying you. Victory was limited to finishing the "colonize Alpha Centauri" ship. Fairly difficult game, and not at all like the "regular" version.
Deux Ex (Score:2)
People have come up with many interesting ways to play that game. I'm not talking about mods even, but things to do in the vanilla game that makes things either more of a challenge, or gives you new ways to tackle obstacles:
* Attach a grenade (doesn't matter which type) low enough for you to jump on, attach another grenade above it and jump onto that, then crouch and remove the first grenade since your arms are just long enough to do so. Then attach a new grenade, jump, remove the previous one, and repeat t
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This is immediately what I thought of. I really enjoyed reading this guy's Deus Ex "walkthrough" [it-he.org] where he breaks the hell out of the game. Similar things exist for most first-person RPG-esque games, where the possibilities to totally destroy the game mechanics are there.
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Wow, that's a pretty interesting writeup, thanks for that!
Make your own rules (Score:2, Interesting)
Interestingly these self-made modes and challenges are now not all that uncommon in retail releases. With games awarding prizes for things like only using one weapon all game or the Don't come second mode was in a Rayman game my friend
Follow The Fish (Score:2)
A Settlers sub-game classic
Icewind Dale (Score:2)
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I like achievements that reward for completing aspects of the game that would stand on their own. Such as defeating boss X, clearing instance Y or achieving Z kills in a deathmatch.
However, I intensely dislike achievements which are the extra content - such as exploration, collection and some hard-modes.
The overwhelming majority of the WoW achievements are, in my opinion, achievements done wrong. The ones that reward your average raider or pvper for accomplishing the goals that they were shooting for before
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Why not just produce new content and gradually phase out old stuff?
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Re:Real cheap way to extend gameplay (Score:4, Interesting)
I frankly think the WoW achievement system is entirely done wrong, because it is neither social nor rewarding. You get absolutely nothing for all your troubles, save for a few near-impossible meta-achievements that give you a mount or shiny underwear or something equally useless. A challenge needs a reward to make things interesting, and warm fuzzies don't count in most cases.
I much preferred LoTRO's achievements, which offered minor improvements to your stats for experience-related things like killing N spiders or completing M quests in a city, while being separate from the singular XP total. That gives struggling players other avenues to improve and customize their characters, and high-level players something to appease their OCD. They made the game-within-a-game worth playing.
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Indeed, the deed/trait system in LOTRO is probably the best "achievement" system I've seen.
Generally they come in 2 levels (I think 3 or 4 for the quest related ones), level 1 is a title you can display, level 2 is a stat boost that can stack up by finishing deeds in different areas.
Some give insane boosts to your character, enough give you a big advantage in PvP, or make your life so much easier in PvE.
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There really is no reward for finishing a game either, nor is there for playing it. It's all an arbitrary reward structure to make you want to consume the content in the game.
I find that the best-designed trophies and achievements are ones which cause you to explore playing a game in a style different from the one you would have originally chosen - perhaps you're normally gung-ho and charge through the whole game on twitch reflex power alone. An achievement which makes you get through the levels without k
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>>Even going all the way back to the despised Zonk days can I think of another article so utterly inane as this one.
Yeah, it's like they finally discovered the mod community after 15 years.
Kinda like how Quake 1 was moddable, and the TF guys made TF for it, then I made CustomTF from that, then some aussies made Aussie CustomTF from that, then a Portuguese guy made ProzacTF from that, and then I made a new version of CustomTF from ProzacTF, then some other guys wrote additional code from that...
They're
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If you're still playing a game from 2003, you're probably not buying many new games are you? If lots of people do what you do, doesn't that mean that they won't have a lot of money to develop new games? And don't you get bored playing the same game for years on end? Sure I still play an even older game, the PSone port of Diablo now and then, but it's not my primary game.
I have a hypothesis that the modding community sprung up in part due to the lackluster release schedule of PC developers and high school
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Well the Mechwarrior 2 PSone game is pretty fun, as long as you have the big dual analog joystick (it's almost impossible to play well without it)and USB gives more control options these days. So they could add more simulation elements.
But what I really want on my PS3, is a version of the turn-based tabletop game with internet play. MechCommander is real time, but it should look somethin
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>>That is one of the reasons i stick with PC gaming, the mods give you so much more replay than you ever get with a console.
Yeah. The fact that the top mods are often head and shoulders better than the original game helps as well. =)
Like I said, I'm still playing Quake 1, and have a library of older games (Baldur's Gate 2, Diablo 2) that I've been itching to play again after reading about some of the mods for them.
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Turns out that was a dude, I thought she was just hairy.
possible spoiler if you still play gamecube: (Score:1)