Ever broken a Game at it's own Game?

toadking07

You're playing a video game, it's fun it's challenging. It's also needing a lot of strategy and planning though, maybe even requiring some respawns to get by an area. Suddenly, as if a light switch in your head goes off, you figure out something the developers DID NOT want you to find out! What was once a challenging part of the game, is now nothing more than a cake walk! You just broke the game, good job!

I'm talking about those epic battles that became you hiding in a corner the Boss Monster couldn't reach you in and you picking away at it's health with the smallest gun in the game. Or that strange power up combination that becomes so unbalanced, so ridiculously powerful whole nations of enemies die at your very whim!! What I'm going on about is that time you went through the level in less than 2 mins.

That time you glitched/broke/cheated the game at it's own game!

So what about you? What are you talking about? What games you've broken before and how have you broken them? Short cuts, glitches, dumb AI, poor game design, you name it!

Moorening

Mario Kart 64...the Wario track. Me and my brother were playing it and I thought I would test something. I hit the first dirt bump and jumped at the same time. Boom! I was over the wall...half the track was done. Then I though, maybe I can do it again from this side and end up on the other side of the starting line and it will count a lap. After a few tries it worked and it counted as a lap. Within a half an hour I had figured out the places and timing of jumps. I got my total race time from about 5 minutes (if I remember right) to just about 11 seconds.

ocious

In Oblivion, going through those gates became so tedious that I just tried running through one. No enemies can touch you. Just run to the sigil stone in every Oblivion gate and you have it beat.

Raslin

Battlefield Bad Company 2.

You can beat the game as a pacifist, just about. Just run as fast as you can to the "end" of each level segment, and it will assume you killed everything before and advance you further along.

BigDes

FFVIII, the card game.

jothki

BigDes wrote: »

FFVIII, the card game.

Heck, it seems like the only reason that anyone liked FFVIII is that the entire game was easily breakable.

UncleSporky

ocious wrote: »

In Oblivion, going through those gates became so tedious that I just tried running through one. No enemies can touch you. Just run to the sigil stone in every Oblivion gate and you have it beat.

I've done this in a lot of games. It's always a bit disappointing when you're meant to kill everyone/be stealthy and they didn't even account for someone who simply leaves. My friend was having trouble with part of MGS4 and I suggested he just run for it and it worked great.

AnakinOU

Baldur's Gate 1. In the City of Baldur's Gate, there was some magician who kidnapped a nymph or something. You went up to the third floor of his tower, and could kill him, rescue the nymph, etc. After killing him, you got his Ring of Protection +2, 4000 xp, etc. If you go down the tower, then back up, he's magically alive again, ripe for killing and looting. Repeat until you get enough XP and gold that the rest of the game would no longer challenging or interesting, and quit playing long before you beat the game.

Baldur's Gate 2. VERY near the beginning of the game, you investigate a series of murders. Lo and behold, a local tanner is guilty of them. You go to his shop to confront him, and when you do, you get a ridiculous amount of XP, then he turns and quickly runs down some stairs to escape. If you are quick, and click to talk to him again (BEFORE he gets to the stairs), you confront him a second time, get the XP again. Repeat until you get enough XP that you hit the level cap, realize that the rest of the game would no longer be challenging or interesting, and quit before you even really get started playing the game.



Yes, I completely ruined two awesome games for myself, and never went back to them. I keep telling myself "one of these days, I'll get around to it..." but haven't.

Skexis

Here's one:
I played Black & White a long time ago, thrilling at the pet progression and reveling in making my civilization a beacon of hope for peasants miles around. Then the game pitted me against an evil other god in the same land space. He would send his pet by to harass me, and it was annoying because my fatass tiger wasn't great at combat. I knew I wanted to do some of the level quests before I took him out completely, though, so I worked on those first.

One of the quests ended up tainting my grain storage with disease. A bunch of my villagers were dying, and I didn't know how to stop them from eating the tainted grain, because each time I would add fresh grain, it would get tainted as well. So just to test it out, I pick up ALL the grain I had in storage, and suddenly the problem's solved. Fresh food is back to normal, and villagers are happy.

Then I'm stuck with a shitload of disease-ridden grain in my hand, and I'm wondering to myself what I'm going to do with it.

A grin spreads across my face.

It just so happens I have enough influence in the world that I can temporarily affect things even in the evil guy's village. So I hover my hand right over his grain storage, and drop him a present. He didn't show up anymore after that.

Although it was kinda creepy to go in afterwards and see his whole ghost town just sitting there.

Satsumomo

This is the best one:



Has anyone ever actually fought this guy?

FuriousJodo

Moorening wrote: »

Mario Kart 64...the Wario track. Me and my brother were playing it and I thought I would test something. I hit the first dirt bump and jumped at the same time. Boom! I was over the wall...half the track was done. Then I though, maybe I can do it again from this side and end up on the other side of the starting line and it will count a lap. After a few tries it worked and it counted as a lap. Within a half an hour I had figured out the places and timing of jumps. I got my total race time from about 5 minutes (if I remember right) to just about 11 seconds.

Discovered this just skidding and jumping around a lot at the start of the race.

Henroid

Castlevania: PoR had a shuriken weapon that was easy to max in level (which allowed you to throw four at once), decent in power, and cheap in cost per use. And you can buy it at the start of the game. Every boss becomes a chump when you hop + throw shurikens repeatedly. I mean like, down in 10-20 seconds.

I guess that's the problem when you have a vast array of skills and weapons in a game.

Klorgnum

UncleSporky wrote: »

ocious wrote: »

In Oblivion, going through those gates became so tedious that I just tried running through one. No enemies can touch you. Just run to the sigil stone in every Oblivion gate and you have it beat.

I've done this in a lot of games. It's always a bit disappointing when you're meant to kill everyone/be stealthy and they didn't even account for someone who simply leaves. My friend was having trouble with part of MGS4 and I suggested he just run for it and it worked great.

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

Maybe this doesn't work on anything higher than normal difficulty, but in the very first stealth segment after you escape from the hotel rooms, it's possible to run right past the two (three?) guards in the warehouse. They notice you as you get up onto the catwalk, but they're terrible shots.

I did the Oblivion thing too. It's a shame that the gates were so boring. They could've been a lot more interesting.

There was a Batman game for the original gameboy, based on the first Tim Burton movie. In one level, you're flying the batplane over Gotham, and have to fight a helicopter. Completely by accident, I discovered that there's a small place in the middle of the left half of the screen where you can just park the batplane and none of the helicopter's bullets will hit you.

EDIT: Found footage of the part I'm talking about, but the player doesn't seem to know about the trick.
At 6:15 or so

Skexis

Satsumomo wrote: »

This is the best one:



Has anyone ever actually fought this guy?

I looked at that post while I waited for the picture to load and I fully expected it to be this:

Henroid

Well played Skexis. :^:

FuriousJodo

Hitman games (and Splinter cell to a point) really lost their fun when you realized you could just kill everything in the level and didn't have to bother being stealthy anymore.

DemonStacey

NMH2... trying really hard to get a good time on the spaceman sidejob. I died and noticed that death started the timer over. The amount of money awarded is affected by your time. So if you grab all the collectibles at your leisure, carry the last piece right near the exit, suicide and complete it after the suicide you complete the mission in what amount to a few seconds. You become rich real quick like.

mynameisguido

Morrowind is such a breakable game. Mostly thanks to alchemy. In the game your alchemy skill (how strong your potions are, and how often they have negative) is determined by your intelligence score. Now, you can actually make potions that increase your intelligence. Thus, you can make a bunch of intelligence raising potions, and then use the temporarily raised intelligence to create even stronger intelligence potions. Eventually you can get it really, really silly high intelligence---and thanks to that super high nearly permanent intelligence you can make a great deal of stupidly overpowered potions.

Like, for example, a Flying potion that lasts for an hour or something. And strength potions that let you one-shot everything and carry nearly unlimited amounts of gear. Not only that, but since the potions were so powerful they sold for way, way more than their raw ingredients, which meant you could make a ton of money making potions. The only real upper limit was how much gold the shopkeepers carried with them.

Oblivion was also pretty breakable, but in a more boring way. Since the game scaled based on level, and your level depended on what major skills you took, making your major skills things you never used and your minor ones you actually did use, you could become stupidly powerful compared to the world---because while you were gaining in power the world wasn't scaling with you.

joshofalltrades

Skexis wrote: »

Satsumomo wrote: »

This is the best one:



Has anyone ever actually fought this guy?

I looked at that post while I waited for the picture to load and I fully expected it to be this:

I looked at that post (not having to wait for the picture to load) and I fully expected it to be this:

joshofalltrades

mynameisguido wrote: »

Morrowind is such a breakable game. Mostly thanks to alchemy.

Alchemy didn't even compare to summoning stat-enhancing equipment with a duration of 0. It would give you the effects of the item permanently and you wouldn't even have to bother with potions since every stat you had would be insanely high.

UncleSporky

mynameisguido wrote: »

Morrowind is such a breakable game. Mostly thanks to alchemy. In the game your alchemy skill (how strong your potions are, and how often they have negative) is determined by your intelligence score. Now, you can actually make potions that increase your intelligence. Thus, you can make a bunch of intelligence raising potions, and then use the temporarily raised intelligence to create even stronger intelligence potions. Eventually you can get it really, really silly high intelligence---and thanks to that super high nearly permanent intelligence you can make a great deal of stupidly overpowered potions.

Like, for example, a Flying potion that lasts for an hour or something. And strength potions that let you one-shot everything and carry nearly unlimited amounts of gear. Not only that, but since the potions were so powerful they sold for way, way more than their raw ingredients, which meant you could make a ton of money making potions. The only real upper limit was how much gold the shopkeepers carried with them.

Case in point: beating the game in about 7 minutes without cheating. That includes the intro scenes and everything.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1IRxTN-_kU

EDIT: Maybe this isn't the right video, looks like he exploits some bugs. I saw one which was almost nothing but making potions and flying straight to the final boss.

KidDynamite

What was the boss fight in Final Fantasy X, it was towards the end, and it was just tooth and nail the whole time.

Until you realize that they have death inflicted on them, and a pheonix down is a one hit shot. It was the fight on top of the mountain.

Felt good when I figured that out.

Henroid

How about Final Fantasy 6, where you can use phoenix down on the freaking train?

Not as fun as having Sabin suplex the thing.

Edit - Though this isn't really a glitch or anything, I'm sure it was intended. Still, it's awesome.

Warlock82

KidDynamite wrote: »

What was the boss fight in Final Fantasy X, it was towards the end, and it was just tooth and nail the whole time.

Until you realize that they have death inflicted on them, and a pheonix down is a one hit shot. It was the fight on top of the mountain.

Felt good when I figured that out.

That's a bunch of fights in FFVI as well (and probably others). Not really unintended by the devs though.

Undead Scottsman

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts

THere's a race in the game with the additional challege of the checkpoints being up in the air, above a stack of boxes blocking the track, so you had to put jump springs on the bottom of your car. It was basically a pogo race.

At this point in the game, I was slapping rocket engines on everything, and this car was no different. On a whim, I put on some fold-out wings because I thought they'd be cool.

Race starts, I get the first checkpoint, pogo and unfold the wings to see if I could glide: Forgetting that wings + jet engine = sustained flight. Coupled with the checkpoints being in the air, and I could actually just go through a checkpoint, and skip the curved track and head in a straight line to the next one.

I'm pretty sure I lapped everyone at least once.

Didgeridoo

KidDynamite wrote: »

What was the boss fight in Final Fantasy X, it was towards the end, and it was just tooth and nail the whole time.

Until you realize that they have death inflicted on them, and a pheonix down is a one hit shot. It was the fight on top of the mountain.

Felt good when I figured that out.

Seymour and his little pet death snake, I think! Yeah, that fight was a bitch until I figured that out and then I was all 8-)

baudattitude

I love RPGs where they throw you a character, usually a girl, who is clearly designed to be the Main Healer and has a ludicrously high stat in MAG or whatever the game's equivalent is, and then you teach her all offensive spells instead and she turns into death incarnate.

FFX and Grandia II were two of my favorite games for this. Yuna is especially nasty if you hop her over to (is it Lulu? I can't remember)'s section of the sphere grid and spend the rest of the game levelling nukes.

BTP

:P

But seriously, Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga.

I'm about to go to the final area of the game, but before I do, I decide to check out something regarding equipment I could buy.

You see, ever since I got the Amulet Coin or whatever it was that gave you double the amount of money you get in battles, I had it equipped on Luigi for the remainder of the game. So by the time I was about to go to the final area, I was almost at 9999 coins. With all of that money, I decide to try out the best of the equipment that gained extra power relative to the number of mushrooms you had in your inventory and then buy several hundred mushrooms.

The increase in power was ridiculous.

When it came time to battle

each of the seven Koopa Kids

, I could knock them all out with a single Level 3 Mario Cyclone. If that wasn't enough, a single standard attack from Luigi would be.

I was surprised by how challenging the final battle still was despite my increased power.

Also, obligatory Youtube of this video:
Who needs two players when you have two hands?

Edit: I'm going to post this too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJd7RAh09SM&feature=player_embedded

Drovek

FuriousJodo wrote: »

Hitman games (and Splinter cell to a point) really lost their fun when you realized you could just kill everything in the level and didn't have to bother being stealthy anymore.

Well, Hitman games become more fun when you try to reach Sociopath rating, which is killing everyone but having no one suspect a thing. No bodies found, violence seen.

Then it's just a matter of creativity.

DasUberEdward

FFXII

Okay so mist quickening. Once you have two characters that can do the mist charge thing all you have to do is do your mist chain until the very end. Mist charge. Kill one character and revive them immediately.

Bam full gauges again.

Broke the game so quickly that I never even finished playing it. Every boss was cake with that strategy.

Raiden333

World of Warcraft.

You see, I played a rogue. A nice gnome rogue by the name of Anklegank. I had other characters, but Anklegank was my favorite and so they rarely got played.

Now, Rogues aren't very needed in WoW. So I spent a lot of time just using it as a chat room killing time in town. That's how I learned to wallclimb, just fucking around.

This led to me finding some rather nice views and interesting places.

I used to give "Hyjal Tours" where I'd show people how to get in (this was before Caverns of Time's Hyjal had opened yet), I was the first player on my server to get inside Zul Aman via some roundabout climbing and careful use of that beer that made you slowfall (though it wasn't really modeled yet, and it was called "Unknown Area"), and my proudest achievement: Climbing to Nefarion's balcony atop Blackrock Mountain from the outside.

That one took about 5 hours of frustrating work. At one point I had to nail a back to back sequence of 35 wall jumps without a single mistake.

toadking07

Hey if anyone has any videos of them breaking a game, I want to try to put together a video series called Broke The Game showing player's messing with games and doing crazy things the designers didn't know or want you to do.

If you want to get your video in and have your 15 minutes of fame send them to brokethegame (at) gmail.com with the title 'I Broke The Game'

Best to send them in a .wmv file, but other movie files can be used too. If they are too big upload them to a file share site like megaupload and send the link in the email.

Send in anything that's been mentioned here or hasn't been mentioned but you've done, doesn't matter if other people have done it before, or if it's something you came up with. Old games or new games, doesn't matter.

All videos must be recored by you, as best you can, and show you or someone "breaking" a game and playing it a way the developers didn't want it to be played. Keep the video as short as possible, though we'll handle the editing.
Please also include a description of what game you're playing, what you're doing, and what is suppose to happen normally.

Henroid

I was wondering when someone was going to post about WoW.

Wasn't expecting Anklegank though.

Shadowfire

Warlock82 wrote: »

KidDynamite wrote: »

What was the boss fight in Final Fantasy X, it was towards the end, and it was just tooth and nail the whole time.

Until you realize that they have death inflicted on them, and a pheonix down is a one hit shot. It was the fight on top of the mountain.

Felt good when I figured that out.

That's a bunch of fights in FFVI as well (and probably others). Not really unintended by the devs though.

Yea, you could use a pheonix down, but that's not what men do...

Real men get their hands dirty


Though, speaking of Final Fantasy VI... Vanish/X-Zone.

BTP

Just when you thought you could break the game, the game breaks you right back!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSXKLX_aKJw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr9sy37GIRc&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ1st1Vw2kY

Edit: Oh man! I can't forget these!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FasM9R7cic&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkF7Xjxn9jc&feature=related

Raiden333

Henroid wrote: »

I was wondering when someone was going to post about WoW.

Wasn't expecting Anklegank though.

Heh.

I still miss the old days, I loved playing WoW with the Lads back then but TBC...

8-)

burned me out.

Rabidredneck

An old Turbographix 16 game called Keith Courage had a final boss that was a robot that would split into two robots and rejoin. My friend and I found out that when falling into his lair, if you fell at an angle and landed right in front of him, he wouldn't activate and you could pound on him at leisure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkT6T-uhSMA

Glitch at 2:45

Zoku Gojira

Too many times to count in Armored Core. Some enemies were just bullshittingly, infuriatingly cheesy and flew around in impossibly hot-rodded ACs that would either be far overweight or desperately short on generator power if the player attempted to build them. So the only workable plan was usually to get them stuck behind terrain and hammer them with vertical launch missiles.

Antithesis

Raiden333 wrote: »

World of Warcraft.

You see, I played a rogue. A nice gnome rogue by the name of Anklegank. I had other characters, but Anklegank was my favorite and so they rarely got played.

Now, Rogues aren't very needed in WoW. So I spent a lot of time just using it as a chat room killing time in town. That's how I learned to wallclimb, just fucking around.

This led to me finding some rather nice views and interesting places.

I used to give "Hyjal Tours" where I'd show people how to get in (this was before Caverns of Time's Hyjal had opened yet), I was the first player on my server to get inside Zul Aman via some roundabout climbing and careful use of that beer that made you slowfall (though it wasn't really modeled yet, and it was called "Unknown Area"), and my proudest achievement: Climbing to Nefarion's balcony atop Blackrock Mountain from the outside.

That one took about 5 hours of frustrating work. At one point I had to nail a back to back sequence of 35 wall jumps without a single mistake.

You could get up to that balcony? Nice.

I've long since lost the screenshots, but I remember managing to get into both Hyjal and the Caverns of Time. And taking a shortcut over Ironforge to Westfall everytime I had a low-level character.

My favorite was how, at the base of the Worldtree at the top of Hyjal, right as the road leading up from the bottom ended, there was a construction sign saying Stop!

I drank a lot of Noggenfogger Elixir.

Cantido

The Scroll Glitch in Final Fantasy Tactics. It made FFT actually enjoyable for me.

It completely cut out the grind while still requiring experience. My first playthrough spend a LOT of time with my characters healing/kicking the shit out of each other just to beat Velius. I was very happy to be done with that game when I finally beat it, but when the Scroll Glitch appeared, I tried again and couldn't put the game down.

Elvenshae

Cantido wrote: »

The Scroll Glitch in Final Fantasy Tactics.

Do tell.