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Crazy Videogame Logic


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I've just played Super Cobra (Coleco) for a bit and pondered the wisdom of destroying fuel sources in order to refuel your craft. It's an undeniably fun mechanic (and a vg trope of course) , but explaining it requires some seriously convoluted mental gymnastics. Quantum bombs which don't really explode but suck the fuel out and direct it to your craft thorough a multidimensional wormhole is the closest one I came to.

 

Videogames are obviously littered with such amusing conundrums. What's your favourite one?

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Videogames are obviously littered with such amusing conundrums. What's your favourite one?

 

Ooh! I've got a recent fave. :)

 

The notion that unless you coupon clip your gaming setup down to a Raspberry Pi, and aren't completely happy with it, that somehow makes you a hardcore elitist with funky perception.

 

That's just utter ridiculousness, I tell ya! :o

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I'm sure there are lots of examples of this... can only think of a couple right now, though...

 

Explosives in games where you can stand just a few feet away and are unharmed (like in HERO for the 2600 for example).

 

One that I've seen on Reddit a lot was in Fallout games (and I'm sure there are others) you can almost die from drowning, then drink water to regain health.

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The notion that unless you coupon clip your gaming setup down to a Raspberry Pi, and aren't completely happy with it, that somehow makes you a hardcore elitist with funky perception.

 

 

Word of advice: if you're so obsessed with somebody's comments from a past thread that you feel compelled to carry this grudge, bid your time, and make a lame & desperate "rebuttal" in this persons new, completely unrelated thread, then it's perhaps time to step away from the keyboard. Get some fresh air, reevaluate your priorities re: virtual/real life, read up on concept of "different opinions" - stuff like that.

 

That aside from practicing your reading comprehension, since seeing that crude drivel you're accusing me of above is a proof that the other discussion went completely over your head.

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Get a room, you two. I can't handle the sexual tension between you.

 

Absurd video game logic?

- Find a hamburger in the street? Eat it, you'll feel better.

- Jump on the heads of your enemies to defeat them. Except when you can't.

- You can murder green things. Everything else is bad for you.

- Kill everything to open a door.

- You can throw watermelon for a long time, until the ice cream is almost melted.

- Everything about Raiders of the Lost Ark on Atari

- Shoot the fuel tanks in the river to keep your jet flying

- Fight your opponent at full strength, don't slow down even if you have a tiny sliver of health remaining (I like how Bushido Blade subverts this)

- You have 9 shields in your spaceship, but your opponents explode at the slightest touch

- Eat and eat and eat and never get bigger or excrete anything

- Collect plastic boxes (and cardboard too) containing chips holding mere kilobytes of information

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I consider it not just absurd but asinine game logic. RTS games since about Warcraft /Star Craft, C&C Red Alert forward. The games took this dramatic shift on the campaign mode. The older stuff allowed you to take your time or not, and you could approach the enemy compound(s) from multiple angles using all sorts of units and make it hell for yourself or far easier but either one was acceptable. The stuff from the change forward was just absurd because it went into this tunnel vision design where it basically is like they're trying to sell expensive strategy guides or old 900# hint line calls because if you didn't use a specific set of units/squad and take a predetermined path you would just fail. A genre I used to love I can't tolerate anymore. I've tried going back to them off and on and they're still down that dumb path, probably since it's more slapped on to the greater interest of multplayer types.

 

I'll just agree with the list flojo put too, but the RTS going down the tubes came to mind.

 

Here's another -- you get shot, stabbed, electrocuted, covered in toxic waste, irradiated to a nice green glow, walk on mines, hit with a rocket -- and you can just pick up a little box on the ground, or hide behind cover for 3-5sec and you're 100% healed.

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Flojomojo reminded me of a few...

 

Open a tomb that been sealed for hundreds of years and find bullets for your gun.

 

Break open a wall in an evil castle to find a tasty roast chicken.

 

Catching bombs in a basket? Totally safe.

 

That thing in front of your spaceship? Completely indestructible. Your spaceship? One scratch and it blows up.

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How a key you find can offer the option to open countless locked doors around. (That's a security issue right there..) But once you choose one then it inexplicably disappears.

I have keys. They don't evaporate when I unlock the car.

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This 3D game has a completely destructable world! Except for these cardboard boxes that are keeping you from moving beyond the level's boundaries.

 

In RPG's, I always find it funny that random monsters seem to be carrying lots of cash. Somehow it's even more ridiculous than them carrying items, because it implies that they're planning to buy stuff. With an item, maybe they just found it on the side of the road and they're walking around with it in their mouth, like a dog. But 339 gil? That sounds like they're saving up for something.

 

In the Fallout games, you pick locks with bobby pins. And there are just bobby pins lying around all over the world. In offices, in factories, in the middle of the desert, etc. I don't think I've ever in my life just run across a loose bobby pin.

 

You can really extend that to a lot of things, but somehow finding random bobby pins seems even weirder to me than finding loose ammunition being stuffed in office desk drawers, in basically every game like that. Were all these employees planning their own office shooting sprees before the end of the world happened?

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My least favorite is the racing game mechanic of "perform a _______ to get a speed boost"

 

Generally the blank is filled in with:

"stunt"

powerslide

complete lap

draft

etc.

 

The worst example I've seen is mario kart "snaking," which involves chaining these powerslide-boosts at all times, even down straightaways.

As it turns out, the exploitation of this awful mechanic is actually the only viable strategy for winning the game with any reliability, since otherwise it's a complete slot machine that punishes all other forms of talent.

Edited by Reaperman
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Open a tomb that been sealed for hundreds of years and find bullets for your gun.

That reminds a a neat survival-horror game, Overblood (which, despite the name, feature almost no blood).

Ammo is so rare in the game, that you only actually find two or three clips in the whole game. (and it's adviced to save it for the game boss, the very few ennemies you find in games are easily dealt with without the gun).

One of those clips is in a basement, into a furnace. When pcking it up, the hero comment "Who put ammo in there? this makes no sense!"

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Kill everything to open a door.

Open a tomb that been sealed for hundreds of years and find bullets for your gun.

In RPG's, I always find it funny that random monsters seem to be carrying lots of cash. Somehow it's even more ridiculous than them carrying items, because it implies that they're planning to buy stuff. With an item, maybe they just found it on the side of the road and they're walking around with it in their mouth, like a dog. But 339 gil? That sounds like they're saving up for something.

 

Funny stuff. And, "crocodilians". Cute :)

 

Mind you, perhaps monsters dream about electric sheep too?

 

-you buy an item in a shop but when you try to sell it back it's worth 10% of the initial value. Harsh!

-you can carry 6 swords, 3 types of armour, 100 potions, 10 food rations and move at full speed. Add a paper scroll and you're overburdened & stuck.

-boss has a weak spot, quite often heavily signposted: a big, red throbbing bulb if you work for Bydo Empire. How did they get to be a boss with such poor evolutionary traits?

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In the Fallout games, you pick locks with bobby pins. And there are just bobby pins lying around all over the world. In offices, in factories, in the middle of the desert, etc. I don't think I've ever in my life just run across a loose bobby pin.

 

It was the fifties! Ladies didn't have all of today's styling products available to them. Bobby pins everywhere! Ask your mom/grandma.
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-you are vulnerable to bullets, missiles, grenades, etc. However, when an NPC is busy hacking a computer, grenade concussion does no damage to them yet you are knocked back and killed.

 

-a monster is vulnerable to fire but when you run to safety but can still peg them with your weapon, it has no effect-either damage or their attention.

 

-the bad guys store weapons, ammo and armor behind non descript walls assumably just in case they need them. Yet when the hero is mowing the troops down no one gets to the cache.

 

-one space ship against an armada and spacial hazards is always the best method of attack....

 

One combatant can ram two swords into the other's torso, yank them out and the opponent continues to fight with the energy and strength of an Olympian.

 

-I can crash into cars, walls and such in a racing game but never scratch the paint.

 

-in the early days of FPS games I could carry enough weapons and ammo that would realistically need at least an SUV to carry. And I could still run at a full sprint.

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Funny stuff. And, "crocodilians". Cute :)

 

Mind you, perhaps monsters dream about electric sheep too?

 

-you buy an item in a shop but when you try to sell it back it's worth 10% of the initial value. Harsh!

 

This totally real. Been to Gamestop?

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Here's one--racing games where your car goes faster while airborne. Also cars that steer in the air.

 

Yes, that's a sweet jump on the track, but when you go off it with a vehicle that gains speed entirely by spinning wheels that are in contact with the ground, very few situations should make it faster than just staying on the ground. IRL an airborne car might tend to show a higher speedometer rating if the wheels were spinning faster, but they certainly wouldn't overtake cars with verticality.

 

Oddly, the one game that seems to always punish players for taking those sweet jumps, is star wars ep1 racer--which has none of the wheel-related velocity issues. That's also a game, based on a movie which establishes that jumps=getting first place, so it's extra weird. So why even put the jumps there? Because they're still sweet.

 

I've jumped my share of RC vehicles, and it seemed to me the only actual control I had over the car mid-air was as it related to pointing the nose down. That's not a video game mechanic, though, because it's not a terribly fun thing to control.

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Here's one--racing games where your car goes faster while airborne. Also cars that steer in the air.

Heh heh, yes. But we know why that exists -- because it's fun. Jet Car Stunts and SF Rush Stunt Mode are among my favorites.

 

Add to the list

 

Change direction in midair after a jump

Fall huge distances without getting hurt (a la Super Mario Brothers)

"Double jump" -- how would this even work in real life?

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SF Rush Stunt Mode are among my favorites.

 

 

That's an interesting one, and strangely, the exact one that I thought about when I posted (been playing a lot just today).

In SF Rush 2049, you can overtake in the air because your car is faster, and because game is fun--however, they do nail not being able to control your car mid-air.

Yes, there are wings which extend flight, and allow control in pitch/roll to help players land flat. But it'd be much more useful to yaw your car, which intentionally absent. Additionally, there is zero control over the cars heading mid-air--meaning that hitting a jump just right, in terms of heading and yaw angle, is the most important strategy in the game. Somehow I've made that all sound boring.

 

I just love how they break up what would normally be a snooze-fest straightaway with several nerve-wracking jumps in a row, making it the hardest part of the whole track.

That game just might be perfect.

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-you are vulnerable to bullets, missiles, grenades, etc. However, when an NPC is busy hacking a computer, grenade concussion does no damage to them yet you are knocked back and killed.

 

That kinda reminds me of the Last Of Us. You have to pull all kinds of stunts to be stealthy and hide from monsters, yet Ellie gets a free pass and can prance around. Great game, but this is an inexcusable, gargantuan immersion-destroying flaw.

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