Be Excellent To Each Other

Unimportant NPCs in role-playing games have three different phrases to say.

One you've helped an NPC, he won't mind you rifling though his drawers.

You can survive a fall of any height if you land on one knee.

These appear to be actual FACTS.

Punches hit harder if you keep your arm cocked back for longer, sometimes with no upper limit.

First Aid Kits will cure you of anything, instantly. Gunshots to the head, being caught on fire, being hit by cars, anything.

Bullet wounds instantly heal if your "buddy" sticks one hand in his buttock cleft, pats you on the shoulder with it and says "you're good to go".

Helicopter blades don't slice you up, but fling you two miles in an arbitrarily-decided direction.

There's always a fully functional Gents, even though no-one ever needs to pee.

The average member of a Gears unit can somehow walk, despite their flesh being filled with sixteen tonnes of lead bullets.

The most difficult barrier to progression is usually a foot-high fence.

People in Arkham Ciry don't need to eat or sleep.

Counter-terrorists, despite being able to shoot the fleas off a dog's back at 500 yards while stood still, can't hit the broad side of a barn if they even think about walking forwards while shooting.

Goons are capable of perfectly tracking the direction of a silenced rifle shot that's blown their mate's brain out. In an echoey heavily forested canyon.

It's never ocurred to people in Arkham City to just go and stand inside any one of the hundreds of fucking empty buildings despite them constantly complaining about how bitterly cold it is outside.

But that's where The Bigger Boys are. Even Batman doesn't go in there.

Falling from a great height and breaking a leg can be cured by simply crouching down behind the nearest crate for 10 seconds.

When conversing on any kind of head-mounted radio you have to hold your hand up to your ear. You will also be unable to move quicker than a crawl and none of your weapons or abilities will be accessible until the conversation's over. On the upside, all enemies will politely wait round the corner without attacking you until you've finished chatting.

Relatedly, other persons will not be able to hear you talking over your communications devices even if you're stood breathing down their neck.

Sometimes you can carry a whole house worth of stuff with you, other times you can only take two weapons and nothing else.

Like some kind of hierarchy of scumbags? The better fighters are allowed inside to keep lithe and warmed up for the coming battle with Batman. The puny cannon fodder get a windy rooftop (and maybe a wobbly shack on it if they're lucky).

Also, if you need to read your log or check a map, the raging firefight, even the very bullets themselves, will take a pause until you're finished.

I loved the solution that Star Trek FPS had for this. Whenever you changed guns, your character lowered the one he or she was holding, and there was a little bit of that classic Star Trek teleport shimmer; the gun vanished and was replaced by whichever one you switched to, teleported in from your remote armoury.

Or, of course, if you land in a puddle.



The Teleport Buffer? They used that in the TV show too, I think.

Removing rivets from girders can cause an ape to lose his balance.

You can refuel your car by crashing into a fuel barrel, or, sometimes, by shooting one.

There will always be an ice world, a lava world, a forest world, a desert world and an ocean world. There will be no logical progression between these places.

(May apply to Nintendo games only.)

You never, EVER have to bend down to pick something up. Just walk over the top of it and it's yours, thanks to that vacuum attachment in your hollow leg.

If you shoot off half a clip and then reload your gun, you will somehow will keep the unspent bullets for later.

If you look down, you will not see your feet.

That's true in real life.

Heh.

Tomb Raider will still be shit, no matter how many sequels, reboots and reinventions you try to do. Ditto Sonic the Hedgehog.

You can jump as high as you are tall... Even if you’re a large sumo wrestler.

Far Cry flashbacks

On the flipside of that, clambering over something is impossible.

If you've been shot in the head and are nearly dead, being grazed on the little finger is enough to finish you off.

You can take a beating and still look exactly the same as when the fight started.

Shooting an arrow into someones head will not necessarily kill them, alternatively, shooting someone else's foot will kill them instantly.

Eating food heals you of all ailments, and you can eat an unlimited amount of food.

Relatedly, while drinking alcohol does make you instantly drunk, it only lasts around 30 seconds.

Genetically engineered super soldiers actually have very limited cones of vision. As long as you're outside that cone, you could be skullfucking the corpse of one of their mothers while simultaneously fellating their pet dog, and they wouldn't react at all.

Footballs are covered in glue that sticks it to your feet, but no other body part, unless you try and kick it away.

Never cut the transport budget! You'll regret it!

Always a classic.

Sheep farmers deliberately locate their businesses as far as possible from textile mills. Also, power stations from coal mines.

You can't die if you're wearing a ring. Unless you fall down a big hole.

Might be off-topic: reversing the controls is a weak attempt at artificially increasing difficulty, and should be banned.

Thorin will never stop sitting down and singing about gold.

The lackeys of any villainous organisation or military arm are always very patient in waiting for you to come along, but are always very thoughtlessly impatient when it comes to actually formulating a minimal-risk plan for disposing of you.

Rigour mortis is a myth. Bodies will always be wavey-rubbery limbed for many weeks after death. Also, due to buoyant internal gasses created by the decomposition process, bodies can easily be flung many feet through the slightest of impacts.