Friday open thread: Gamer giggles checklist
Sorry for getting the open thread going so late in the day. I’ve been in meetings. 
Today’s topic: Name a game, then name a scenario in that game that you try to set up for that makes you giggle.
For example: Playing Civ III or IV and getting Ghandi to declare war on you. (Or playing the French and invading the Germans, etc)
Another example: Playing the Tony Hawk Pro Skater games, when you’re doing a rail slide and you fall a certain way so as to rack yourself, your player will do the painful move known as “grabbing the junk:” Getting Elissa Steamer to grab her junk (not to say that it wouldn’t hurt for a woman too, but it’s still funny to see a woman grabbing for stuff that ain’t there.)
What sort of situations do you try to set up in games just for the sheer nonsense of it all?
April 20th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Well, in the original Civilization I used to name my people the Evil or the Stupid, just so I’d get nifty messages like “Evil Scientists have discovered Nuclear Power!”
And the entirety of BloodRayne was a giggle. I got it knowing it wasn’t a good game. Does that count?
April 21st, 2007 at 2:30 am
[...] collected in this handy post by Tlönista. And gamers should check out Mighty Ponygirl’s “Friday open thread: Gamer giggles checklist” at Feminist [...]
April 21st, 2007 at 3:59 am
In Paper Mario 1k Door I rather liked throwing on the Luigi badge then going to talk to him.
He never reacted how I wanted him to (with shock and dismay) but it was always so very entertaining indeed.
There are others, but I can’t think of them right now.
April 21st, 2007 at 8:34 am
On the old Playstation Driver game, where you could go on this particular mode where you made sort of a film of your car chases, I used to go do insane jumps and watch my car and all the cops following me fly off about 20 miles into the sunset.
And on the old C&C games I used to sell up competely and spend all my money of infantry. With game on full speed I would then proceed to lawn mow the map, with my technicians “yeh?”ing and “okay”ing all the way. Until I would run into a pillbox and it would shred all my troops in like 0.01 seconds.
Another was on a game called F22 lighting, where I would take off, do a U turn, and then proceed to nuke my own airfield (with an actual nuke). And similarly, on a Flight simulater (cant remember which?) I would fly cheap planes outrageously until they ripped apart in mid air under the strain then watch from the trashed cockpit as I plummeted to the ground.
On Perfect Dark multiplayer I would have my brother chase me through the levels with a guided missile (the slayer I think?) I remember laughing histerically as I knew the missile was right on my ass, and I was just barely staying ahead.
On a crap game called Die Hard:Vendetta my friend and me got so bored, we spend the better part of an hour repeatedly punching this civilian in the face, laughing like maniacs constantly reloading, assuring eachother that we “wouldnt do it again”. No we werent on drugs. We never needed to resort to that for any kind of erratic behaviour.
Thats about all I got for now.
April 21st, 2007 at 10:56 am
[...] Monday’s Game Friday open thread: Gamer giggles checklist [...]
April 21st, 2007 at 11:09 am
I feel like most of the moments when I giggled ridiculously don’t translate well into stories. City of Heroes was ripe with things to giggle at, especially once you were a high enough level that low-level thugs wouldn’t aggro on you. I’ve got tons of screen-caps of me cheering for criminals as they try to break into cars, or looking like I’m having casual conversations with them, etc.
Bend’s story about DH:V is like me and my buddy Jim playing Lego Star Wars. We’d start one of the missions, and he’d force choke me with vader. Then it would devolve into the to two of us rapidly cycling through the characters killing one another. Then we’d “Okay, okay, we’re done… let’s do the mission.” And, within 10 seconds, one of us would shoot the other or force choke, etc, to the tune of much giggling.
April 21st, 2007 at 3:07 pm
A friend of mine got crazy-good at Civ 1, and at one point (playing on Chieftain) managed to develop nuclear weapons & the manhattan project while still in the BC years. When 1 AD rolled around, he nuked Bethlehem.
April 23rd, 2007 at 9:19 am
I remember the badly translated, surreal experience of Sim Tower (which was a Japanese port Maxis; of Sim City fame; had brought in). The translations were kinda…well, horrid. People would think things like “I’d like to meet a potato” and “A bomb has phoned in!”, etc. You couldn’t help but laugh.
Largely any of the bard’s dialogue in NWN 2 got a laugh. “Letting you have is like giving the village idiot a trebuchet.” Bard: “No, I’d say it’s more like letting the village idiot have a dangerous, blood thirsty wolf that doesn’t understand commands like ’sit’, ’stop’, and ‘Oh God; put those two halves of a villager down!’” I was in *tears* laughing at him. (paraphrasing those lines fanbois, no need to go all “Legend of Zelda: Sucks” thread on me).
At the recent company meeting, there’s a racing simulator where 8 people can simultaneously race cars. In an earlier race, I discovered where to hit the cars to send them flying into the wall and cause them to crash. When it came time for the big race with a number of coworkers, I delighted myself by repeatedly knocking them all over the track whereever possible, to many curses, profane gestures and promises of swift vengence. Muahahahahahaha…
April 23rd, 2007 at 10:05 am
In Bushido Blade 2, some of the characters have throwable weapons, and a few of those characters throw their actual swords at their opponent. Once we figured out how that works, the game turned into a ridiculous quickdraw competition, with bonus points for style, like being able to shank the other guy clean through his skull, or sidestepping and then casually hurling a rapier while the other guy is unarmed. It got a bit like Roy’s story about LSW, with everyone agreeing we were gonna have a proper fight this time, no lie, and then both players would throw-kill eachother anyway.
Street Fighter EX 2 and Rival Schools had high potential for silliness, too. For competitive fighting games, you’d be surprised at how cooperative the players can be when trying to pull off the big, flashy, ridiculous combos, just to see what they look like.
April 23rd, 2007 at 10:57 am
Oh, yeah!
I remember when I unlocked Katze in the first Bushido Blade. None of us had used him yet, and I selected him. The match starts, and the other player starts to circle around, switching stances and waiting for me to do something. Then he starts rushing me, and Katze just fires off one shot and kills him. Heh.
I similarly enjoyed Fighter’s Megamix, and using the cop from Virtua Cop (I forget her name now). We fight through the whole match, and then I accidentally end up pulling out her gun and shooting the other player dead. Both of us sort of dropped our jaws- “Wait… she can actually use the gun?!” It never came into our heads that she’d actually be able to use the gun.
Racing games have great potential for ridiculousness- we used to play the original Need For Speed on Saturn, but usually we’d just get really far apart and try to have head-on crashes to see who would flip their car the highest into the air, or go the farthest after the crash.
April 23rd, 2007 at 12:22 pm
In Space Quest I liked making Roger Wilco try and fit large things into his pockets to make him say “You can’t fit a ladder in your pocket! Ouch!”
In the NWN expansion Hordes of the Underdark I made my Tiefling companion fall in love with my character so he was always like “Yes, my love?”
April 23rd, 2007 at 12:53 pm
On the subject of force chokes, on Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast (phew!!) I used to love throwing hapless storm troopers off ledges using the powerful force choke. Very un-jedi like, but satisfying none the less.
April 23rd, 2007 at 2:06 pm
I completely forgot about that until you posted Bends! Hahahaha! Yes; tossing hapless stormies into objects, off high places, watching them fall and scream, vaporizing them with that sniper rifle…oh such joy. They’re faceless soldiers of an oppressive over-government; it’s ok to kill them mercilessly!
I really liked that game.
April 23rd, 2007 at 2:42 pm
On the subject of faceless soldiers of oppressive over-governments and manipulating gravity, I got a somewhat similar kick towards the end of Half Life 2, with the super gravity gun. Ohh, I can see it now! “Okely dokely (Freeman = Flanders), Ill just rip this terminal out of the wall and hurl it at oncoming combine elites! Strike!!!”
Of course for Jedi Outcast it was also fun to force pull enemies weapons out their hands and wait for them to surrender. Then you were pretty much free to kill them in any way possible that the game would allow. “Hold still while I plant this remote mine on your face!”
April 24th, 2007 at 7:28 am
Yes, the end of Half-life 2 was a blast as well. Reminds me that I picked up Episode I for it, but haven’t played through it yet (recently decided to try to finish Oblivion first.) But another great example!