Be Excellent To Each Other

I'll be transparent about this, this is for a magazine feature. But I'd like to get a fresh perspective on it, and it might also make for a good read. Stranger things have happened!

I'm currently writing about Gaming Confessions - in which I explore the worst things you've done to NPCs in a gaming world for your own amusement. I don't mean things like 'I shot a prostitute in GTA III LOL', I mean more creative, ant-under-the-magnifying glass type things.

For example, fencing people off in Theme Park so they can never leave, with only a torturous roller coaster and the world's saltiest fries for company, or winning the Animal Crossing FlowerFest by getting up at 4am and trampling over Chevre the Goat's flowers while she sleeps. Or even just chopping an enemy's legs off in Ninja Gaiden II and watching them attempt to crawl over to you for hours on end. That sort of thing.

Just how cruel a gamer are you?

Well there's the infamous Sims bricked up in a room until they starve one, or the "see how many times I can shoot that Goldeneye woman in the hand until she dies" one.

Haha, I used to love doing that. Ditto seeing how many limbs I could blow off in Soldier of Fortune before the body hit the floor — I'm pretty sure I managed to turn several into tumbling jelly beans.

Now I want to buy Soldier of Fortune. This thread has started badly.

In fact, there's that Fable 2 acheevo where you have to taunt a bandit 4 times in different ways before killing him, too.

Oblivion and Fallout allow you to drag corpses around to desecrate the bodies afterwards. You can strip em and place them in sexually stupid positions. I haven't spent hours doing that. I HAVE NOT.

I found it far too much hassle to get them where I wanted (scroll down to the attached image). For some reason, the dog didn't want to be dragged, either.

I used to love casting damage-over-time spells on bunnies and squirrels in World of Warcraft, too. Watching them leg it off into the distance, then leap into the air with a satisfyingly innocent terminal squeak never seemed to get old.

Oh man, I forgot about this one until now. In Oblivion I used to use the longest paralyse spell I had on an NPC in their home, then try to balance as many objects from around the house on them as I could before they blurted back to life.

I removed ALL the roads in Sim City and forced people to use trains.

That must have been terrible for them.

I got branded a THIEF in Links: Awakening. Which was a bad thing. And then I finished the game, which of course meant....



I've read that. Its genuinely upsetting.

Kicking chickens in Fable II was obviously entertaining - though obviously not that unexpected, given that there's two different achievements for it.

Ultima 7 was brilliant for it. stacking explosive barrels around people, or assembling stacks of crates in such a way that they were trapped in front of the barrel of a cannon.

I spent hours on the original Half Life in the bit where you get off the tram, spawning as many limpet mines on the walls as I could, then spawning a Barney in the middle of them. All console cheatery, of course.

From Mr Campbell's top 100 -



It was a game where you'd spend a lot of the time firing so I just used to put a weight on the fire button and mow everything down, civilians and all.

Those bastards shot me dead just outside the lift in L4D.

If that was when I was there, it was fucking hilarious. The lift wouldn't close, you were outside with no chance of survival, and the horde were approaching. OPEN FIRE, CHAPS!

Probably to stop you walking into the lift with a 'lit' pipebomb.

I once punched Ken in the face as Ryu. I reckon it could have broken his nose!

He did a top 100 sadistic moments? Or is this part of his top 100 Speccy Games feature?

Fantastic effort by the way, guys. I knew you had it in you.

In Landstalker there's a hidden ledge or two that you can only access by standing on something so it's usually a case of throwing a dog or chicken there and hoping it stays in roughly the right location for you to jump from it.

Lemmings.

Good call. Setting up two blockers as close to the trapdoor spawn as possible, waiting for all of the litte bastards to drop out, and then seeing how far you could drill down with the apocalypse timer.

killed all the birds in hunter using my hovercraft

oh and the whole of commando libya
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commando_Libya

"That was Gaddaffi's children"

I spent a good while chasing deer round in Far Cry 2 in a jeep! They looked dead scared!

I used to enjoy jacking a cab in GTA3 and driving off just above walking speed and seeing for how long the cabbie would follow me, shouting abuse all the while. As long as I didn't speed off, they would stay running behind and chasing for ages. It was also fun trying to lure out them into geting run over at a busy junction or squished by another vehicle, but not always that easy.

In Sim Copter it was always amusing to chuck people out of the copter when it was as high as it could go.

Yeah, or waiting with the casualties in your chopper until they died. "EEEEERRRRRRRRRRCHHH!"

I posted Mr Daves Burnout Mug shots on a lost kids website. He is now on the milk cartons of 367,000 Americans breakfast tables.

I've just had to suppress a massive fit of teh giggles, due to this.

In Gears of War's multiplayer there's nothing more satisfying than letting a downed enemy crawl well away from you before you run up & crush their skull with the butt of your gun or standing over them with a shotgun aimed at their face for several seconds before you get bored & off them. Special bonus fun is achieved by offing them with their shiny golden gun which you relieved them of earlier

In Skate I love 'Coffin Bombing' (lying on the board & hurtling down hills) & in tribute to the nameless fella we saw after a club night at the Glasgow School of Art I always send my avatar under the wheels of a car near the bottom. (He got 3 streets down & went into the side of a bus!)

In Saints Row, I'll quite happily walk through the streets until I encounter a roller-blader then in an act of vengeance for the countless times I've been snaked at the skate park, I trip them up & kick them in the crotch till I get bored.

Roundhouse kicking people sitting quietly in their cars into the sea was a fun pastime in Crackdown.

Finally, when I first got N+ me, Gill & her nephew sat playing it in her house. Whenever the wee man got pissed off & said it was impossible I'd jump through the level nice & fast and then just as I was about to hit the exit I'd self destruct & hand him the controller back

Mercs 2 - C4ing someone's car, then just as they think they've escaped into the distance, blowing them sky high.

In the GTA games I walk around and target pedestrians with my gun. When they notice, if they beg for mercy, I let them live. If they mouth off, they die.

In Fable II I did tricks and bought presents for a girl to make her fall in love with me. I then took her to her favourite place to propose, but changed my mind and stabbed her to death. MUWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Funny you should mention this.

It's been a slow day, so I've been playing Civ2. At the end of a long and bloody campaign to slaughter all non-vikings in the civ world, I was almost victorious. All that remained was one Spanish city, Toldeo. I decided not to steam in and wipe them out, but surround them and see what they'd do. Toledo was open on one side to a small body of water. The city, for some reason thought the best response to their imminent slaughter was to build a fleet of battleships and float them into the tiny body of water.

Needless to say, I took no pleasure in crushing the poor worthless Toledens to dust.

A winner is me.

In GTA4 there is a knee high low wall alongside a pavement and road. On the other side of this comically useless barrier is a long drop down to the start of the dock area. One can, if one so wishes, play a very amusing game whereby you slope alongside someone and then absently nudge them over said wall - How many can be pushed before your spree is stopped?

If you can get 12 you're doing well.

DavPaz reminded me of the excellent Galactic Civilization II diaries at PC Gamer -- http://www.computerandvideogames.com/ar ... 0&site=pcg and http://www.computerandvideogames.com/ar ... 0&site=pcg

admittedly I had a lot of fun in Postal 2 doing lots of bad things but I think they were all planned for.

the main one = cutting the queue to a church confessional but dousing all the people in petrol and setting fire to them.

also, a lot of my co-op gaming involves tit-for-tat mischief with Tiq from Peoww (and occasionally here). Highlights = blinding him with flashbangs before big battles in R6: Vegas, saying 'follow me' and leaving proximity mines behind me in Crackdown and lobbing a grenade into the tattoo studio as he was getting one in Saints Row 2.

that said, given a moral choice in a game (BiLOLshock, Black and White, whatever) I always prefer to be good rather than bad.

Syndicate. Using the Persuadertron on the level with the big parade, driving down the street to persuade all the onlookers - then leading them into the enemy base to be slaughtered in their hundreds, giving my agents vital cover.

This^ I think I was there too!

I once put out a hit on a per-(BANG! - Ed).

Seriously, though, I stopped someone from running from NPC guns after they ganked someone. And podded them. And got their loot, the loot hey were trying to get. Successful day, it was.

I watched my housemate taunt a fat man in GTA4 for absolutely ages, by chasing him down the street, and gently nudging and leaning on very slightly until he tilted over and fell, rolling, to the floor. He never hit him or actually attacked him - just frightened and leaned slightly on him until in his panic he tipped. Eventually he gave up trying to stand, and instead curled up in a near-foetal position. It was utterly, utterly amazing. Lung-achingly hilarious, the poor guy was waddling and shuffling and wobbling as fast as he could to get away from LEANY FOLLOW MAN, and I should be ashamed of being so amused by bullying an innocent fat man, but I'm not.

Crushing a rebellion in Fragile Allegiance not by hiring more security forces or building leisure facilities for the miners, but by shipping out the ore, then demolishing all the hydration plants, leaving the entire colony to die of thirst.

Getting so pissed off with a general who ran from a battle (one of the Beadle's handful I'd lost) in Medieval Total War, causing a rout from a fight that would have been an overwhelming victory had he any stones, that merely disbanding his army wasn't enough. So, in went the assassins. Fucker.

Clubbing a homeless child over the head to get back a packet of food I later threw away. I did this in a game once, too. Deus Ex, to be specific.

Cornering terrified civilians in Hitman Blood Money, then as they cower, casually tossing a handgun at their feet. Then just watching them, coldly, daring them to pick it up.

Taking tribute from a subdued enemy in Galactic Civilisations 2 in return for not attacking them. Then giving part of that tribute to someone else so that they'll attack instead. Hey man, I held up my end of the bargain.

A bandit in Fallout killed my dog. So I broke that bandit's legs, picked up his weapons and left him in the desert fifty miles from anything.

Picking up a car complete with terrified driver in Crackdown, then hurling the car to defend myself from oncoming rockets. A friend also killed a woman by kicking a corpse into her head.

i used to love camping gates and podding the players in shuttles

Adding another manager in Championship Manager, taking over Man Utd and sabotaging them so they dropped down the leagues.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=665



In Transport Tycoon, you could block roads by parking a cheap locomotive across level crossings. The half-arsed sequel, Locomotion, made it even easier as you could just buy the cheapest boxcar and put that down instead.

When an AI opponent had a terminus, you could build a train depot at the end of their platform on unowned land. When one of their trains pulled into the station, you could send a train out of the depot with the 'ignore signal' button and it would collide with the AI's train, blowing it up. You could drive all their routes out of business in this way. A related glitch even let you just jam their signals on danger so no trains could pass them.

In Police Quest 3, whenever you pulled over onto the side of the freeway, unless you used great care you'd be clipped by a passing car. I used to deliberately get hit, just to hear the character's girly squeal of shock as he got smashed.

I cripple all of a foe's limbs in Fallout 3 with the dart gun... and then just leave them to it in the wasteland.

In GTAIV a lot of weekend warrior-style bikers hang out at the Burger Shot on the western highway near the airport. If you just stand there, they take exception to you, start insulting, and then start punching. I'd call 911 as soon as they started shouting at me, which generally meant a patrol car would come past just as they threw their first punch. Immediately armed cops would pounce and haul them off to jail for assault. Heh.

Wow. That is some ducked up shit.

God's massive ectoplasmic cock I've got to go and play Hitman Blood Money again. Just for the satisfaction of luring everyone into the toilets on the second level to garotte them and see how many I could stuff into the cubicles.

Sneaking into people's houses at night in Oblivion, stripping down to your pants and then climbing into bed with them while they're asleep.