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Games within games: or HOLY SHIT GET THE GNOME TO THE CHOPPER
Sorenson
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I just got out of a most enjoyable game of Left 4 Dead 2 in which the usual strain of survival and escape was replaced with the fulfillment of one of the game's most interesting achievements. Somewhere early into a campaign, the players must secure a rather large and cumbersome garden gnome with the purpose of escorting it through the remainder of the campaign and making their escape with it in their possession. Given that the carrier of the gnome (A) is unable to use their weapons without dropping the gnome and can only do a minor melee attack, and (B) the gnome must be carried through hordes of zombies, hunter-killers, choking whip monsters, horde-summoning bilebags, impish hijackers, acid spitters, deadly-but-senseless she-devils, and muscle monstrosities that can turn you into a thick red paste, this changes the nature of the game considerably. And when you finally pull it off and you see that achievement announcement pop up (and hopefully had a cool group that was down with the challenge in question) it is fucking awesome.
But that makes me wonder about other escapades of this type. A similar idea to what I described above that was discussed prior to L4D2's launch involved ferrying a propane/air/gas tank from the first level/encounter of a campaign and escorting it all the way to the finale and rescue (compounded by its flammable and explosive nature). Other popular games over the years have also had their own proto-games developed and played by its fanbase, some informal rules and others outright mods. And having no idea in hell how I would search for such a concept on Google, I figured that instead my best hope of learning more would be to throw it upon this, one of the finest bastions of gaming on the internet.
So share, fellow gamers! Share your tails of bizzarre and madcap exploits, of rules within rules and games within games! Share with me the most tantalizing and intriguing of game twists and reassemblies!
But that makes me wonder about other escapades of this type. A similar idea to what I described above that was discussed prior to L4D2's launch involved ferrying a propane/air/gas tank from the first level/encounter of a campaign and escorting it all the way to the finale and rescue (compounded by its flammable and explosive nature). Other popular games over the years have also had their own proto-games developed and played by its fanbase, some informal rules and others outright mods. And having no idea in hell how I would search for such a concept on Google, I figured that instead my best hope of learning more would be to throw it upon this, one of the finest bastions of gaming on the internet.
So share, fellow gamers! Share your tails of bizzarre and madcap exploits, of rules within rules and games within games! Share with me the most tantalizing and intriguing of game twists and reassemblies!
Sorenson on
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Crank up those bots, but give them only knives and you've got yourself some DIY zombies.
It was fun, but nothing compared to L4D.
edit - I just realised that's probably the LEAST exciting and imaginitive game within a game, ever.
Seriously though, kind of funny they put in a 'bucket bitch' achivement. If you are looking for more literal 'game in a game', then theres super turkey puncher in doom 3,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eao7qZjmuYA
and that vertical moe shooter in No More Heroes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEWHlw_AUTY
Ah, there it was. I can't find a decent quality video I'm afraid.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSGHmvdre6M
Archomage
that is all
Triple effing triad.
I got all the cards in that one time. ALL OF THEM. All the card queen cards and everything. That was hard.
But if you mean meta-games within games, then I have to applaud Halo 3's vidmaster challenges, specifically the one where you and three mates have to do the final warthog run on ghosts. On Legendary. With Iron on. Absolutely brilliant. Took us about 2 hours, but was so totally worth it.
I've played loads of player invented games over the years. 'Bot siege' on timesplitters 1 was good. Stick all the bots bar one on the enemy team on hard. get the bag. Run it to the dead end in the middle of the map. Hold on as long as you can.
An excellent game, made even more manic by the fact that if you don't tell your friends you're about to die when carrying the bag, your bot (usually gingerbread man in our case) grabs the bag and leaves the canyon, dying pretty quickly, and you have to retreive it! Ace.
Man, once I did the quest to get that deck I spent more time playing that than M&M itself.
I played the shit out of Anaconda. The others you could find just couldn't compare to that game. I don't think I ever played it with a full 4 person team but I did 3 and it was great.
The Raid
i have a save right before this so i can play it any time
i would buy whatever game this is
I was doing really well at that until a physics glitch teleported the Gnome away from me in the burrows. And then of course, you don't need to carry the fucking gnome with you through that section so I got pretty pissed off.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
Three hours later, I would log off. Once again, no new content cleared.
It really started to get sad when I would find a new tile. Regarless of where I was or what I was doing I would immediately make a bee-line for the nearest Pazaak dealer.
I heard the actual game "Knights of the Old Republic" was pretty good. I wouldn't know. I never finished it.
No wait, that sucked.
This.
I mean, VII was a great M&M, but VIII was not. Arcomage was far better than the one of the two games it was included in.
I kind of wished I had picked it up when it was released as a standalone game.
Then again I kind of wish I hadn't sold my M&M collection some years back when I was strapped for money.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
If i recall correctly it is indeed a real game, but I think it got canceled. I'm not interested enough to google around but if you find anything. Let me know
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/might_and_magic_6_limited_edition
Sucks it doesn't come with 7 though.
I pretend VIII and IX never occurred.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
I just want to point out that this is actually how Left 4 Dead got started.
Oh god. Me and my friends would play Anaconda for hours.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
http://www.gamespot.com/users/Garudoh/video_player?id=KiFhn2H95b8Iuz7a
(it's the first couple seconds of that vid)
BACOCK!
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Occ2uE7O9I4
There was also something for starcraft, you started owning a corner of the map and couldn't build anything besides what you're given. You can spawn nearly infinite marines and you get resources for killing enemy marines which you use to buy upgrades. Whenever a new upgrade was bought you'd see the tide turn.
Fun game.
Guy Savage.
Some people believe the game evolved into Nano Breaker.
First it was finish every level without being seen.
Then it was kill every enemy in every level without being seen or having any bodies discovered.
Then it was to do that using only the sword and grappling hook (i.e., no special items)
As a side challenge, we'd also play what we called "samurai mode," in which we had to deliberately be seen by every enemy and fight them in honorable combat. We'd pull as many guards at once as possible and see how many we could beat simultaneously...that sort of thing.
Then, one day, we discovered by accident that land mines (which exploded, as you might expect, in a huge shower of flame and set characters on fire) remained active during the in-engine cutscenes and could be triggered by the player or NPCs. After that, we'd bring nothing but land mines on every mission, and the challenge was to orchestrate the most creative and spectacular pyrotechnic display by pre-positioning land mines and then triggering the cutscenes.
I miss that game...none of the sequels ever quite measured up to the open-endedness of the original.
You'd have to stand on the roof of your team's base, fire all your grenades towards the middle, and then charge on foot with your energy sword. By the time you reached the middle, the grenades would be exploding all around you, dudes would be fighting with swords, and it was just glorious panic.
I also remember going through Splinter Cell not being seen and having a blast.
Trying to figure out your friends' secret missions without revealing yours was a game in itself. Missions varied from "never heal anyone" to "take as much damage as you can" to "pick up every single item (or pick up NOTHING)" or "open every chest." When your friend offers to keep the boss busy while you sneak past and get the treasure, is he offering tactical help or just trying to accomplish his mission and steal your loot?
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
And I remember staying the hell away from Pazaak for the first 20 hours of KOTOR. I had terrible memories of Final Fantasy 8's Triple Triad, and thought Pazaak was much the same. Then I decided to give it a go and yeah... I've booted up KOTOR a few times in the last year JUST to play Pazaak.
Man, I wish I had more than two GBA to Gamecube hook ups to do that. Did it work with two players? That game was so awesome and fun multiplayer and I really felt that the massive amounts of peripherals needed brought it down. Although what you talk about wouldn't have been possible without those peripherals, since you have a personal screen.
EDIT: I felt I had to add a self created game to this post. It is kind of like this:
Only we did it in James Bond 007: Agent Under Fire for the Gamecube, on the VIP missions where the VIP would step off the train, and you'd have to protect your team's VIP til he got on the next train. We spent all our time not fighting each other, just taking turns putting ridiculous laser mine traps around where he patrolled in different patterns. We also did this in regular games, without the VIP. Laser Mine only matches are crazy.
I thought Pazaak was absolutely horrid. Instead of giving us sabacc, which has been mentioned in the Star Wars fiction constantly and is actually interesting, we get a slightly modified version of blackjack. It was also veeerry slooow in an already-slow game. Triple Triad, on the other hand, was fun, interesting, and had neat artwork for the cards. It was also useful to the game in general. The Tetra Elemental card game from FF9 was terrible, though; it's like Square thought about how to make something like Triple Triad, except completely terrible.
From the original Halo, I remember abusing the overcharge invincibility for lots of fun. If you grabbed the overcharge, you had a couple seconds of invincibility while your shields overcharged. Stack 40 grenades underneath a warthog sitting next to an overshield, hit a checkpoint, and then time grenades so they explode as the other guy picks up the overshield and hops in the hog. KA. BOOM. Thirty seconds of flight time for the warthog was pretty easy.
Speaking of the original Halo, you could also glitch NPCs by crossing loading lines while they were on the other side. They would freeze in place, but damage against them would accumulate. Dump two needlers worth of needles into them (the needles wouldn't explode yet), hit them with a few tank blasts, then re-cross the loading line. Suckers would fly all around the room on pink explosions. Fun times.