Submitted 1 day ago by Elevator7009@lemmy.zip to patientgamers@sh.itjust.works
Stolen from myself 6 months ago at lemmyverse.link/lemmy.zip/post/35616522
I know I remember seeing some people talk about how nice some of the environments in Hitman were, and that they’d just walk around as a tourist from time to time, treating it like a walking simulator/virtual tourism thing instead of the stealth assassination game it is. Curious about other things like that, where you play a game totally differently than it was meant to be played.
Not me, but there’s a great example of this in chess.
There’s an opening called the Bongcloud. You move the pawn in front of your king out for your first move, and then for your second move you move your king up a square. It’s memed as being the strongest opening possible, but it’s actually almost the worst 2 opening moves you can possibly make. Because modern chess does have a large online component and the current best players are young and like memes, it has been played in tournaments, which means that if you play it in an up to date chess programme the programme will name it as the Bongcloud.
A lot of people seem to think that it’s called the Bongcloud because you’d have to be stoned to play it. But almost all chess openings are named after one of three things: a person, a place, or an animal. In this case, the Bongcloud is named after a person - Lenny Bongcloud.
Lenny Bongcloud is a now-inactive user of chess.com. He would always open with the moves described above. That’s because, unbeknownst to them, Lenny wasn’t playing the same game as his opponents. They were trying to checkmate him. He was trying to walk his king to the opposite side of the board as quickly as possible. If he gets checkmated, he loses. If he gets his king to the other side of the board he counts it as a victory and resigns.
So, yeah. One of the oldest known games in the world has an opening the “official” name of which comes from a jokey alias adopted by someone who was deliberately playing the game wrong.
I knew about the Bongcloud but not that origin of the name!
remeember dueds, ghet KING LENNY, the mastir of chess to the othier side, dueds!
I used to just drive around in GTA: Vice City with an appropriate 80s soundtrack.
‘Temptation’ by Heaven 17
New Super Mario Bros. (For the Nintendo DS), in the multiplayer battle mode.
There is a multiplayer mode where you fight over collecting stars in 6 different maps, using the main game’s mechanics and powerups.
In one of these maps, there are bullet bill launchers. One of the powerups is a mini mushroom that makes you tiny, and when you are tiny you just harmlessly bounce of enemies when you jump on them instead of killing them. That lets you ride the bullet bill, repeatedly bouncing off it. The multiplayer maps loop, so you do this indefinitely, and every time you get back to the launcher, it will add another bullet to your train.
My brother and I would deliberately avoid collecting stars, and instead try to make the longest bullet train and try to stay in the air as long as possible.
Not me but my friend. In any game that has a crafting component they will hone in, ignore the story, and just play the crafting. If it has a marketplace they will sell their creations and basically become an NPC shopkeeper for other people.
My friend and I got into Wurm Online and we went way too hard doing this. Like to the point we managed to upset half the server (and I’m not exaggerating, there were many forum threads about us lol).
Has your friend ever tried EVE Online? I guess a better question follows: should they ever try EVE Online?
I’ve never completed the main quest line in any Elder Scrolls game.
The majority of my playtime in Oblivion was spent breaking into NPC houses and stealing their shit. I’d stalk targets based on who had the most valuables in their pockets when I’d see them wandering in the cities. I basically played the game as a stealing simulator, only ever completing the Thieves guild quest line and the Dark Brotherhood line when I wanted to be add some murder to my thieving.
I don’t think this is uncommon with the Elder Scrolls games.
The Witcher 3 is just an RPG minigame you can play between rounds of Gwent.
Woman: My child! Please save my child!
Geralt: Care for a game of Gwent?
Woman: nod
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is just a horse riding simulator in between games of Farkle. A beautiful deadly simulator.
Didn’t knights of the old republic have farkle in too? It’s a good game, and I guess just unfamiliar enough to bolt into a fantasy setting.
No it isn’t! ヽ( `д´*)ノ
Jk, I suck at Gwent
I was never a fan of how StarCraft 1 is supposed to be played.
It had a map editor that allowed scripting and people used it to make tons of other games inside of StarCraft like tower defense games, drawing party games like you would see decades later on mobile, and RPGs. There’s literally thousands of unique games out there on archive websites.
That’s also how DotA started, except in Warcraft 3.
Yeah, the ‘use map settings’ was by far the most fun I had in starcraft. Eventually someone showed me how to play the actual game well, and I went and steamrolled the campaign, and then it was back to the fun.
I’m absolutely ass at RTS, but I really really love Starcraft and Warcraft lore. Every few years, I’ll replay WC3 and Starcraft 1 and 2 using cheats. I use as few cheats as possible so that I still experience as much of the game as intended, but I still make sure I can’t lose.
The Bongcloud chess story reminded me of the StarCraft 2 player printf. Theoretically it is intended play, but he will start every single game with a cannon rush.
A cannon rush is when you attack your enemy’s base with immobile cannons that are actually meant to be used defensively. When the enemy doesn’t know that they are being cannon rushed it can be devastating, especially for inexperienced players. But when you halfway know what you’re doing and spot it quickly enough it is easy to defend.
But printf plays at a level where he’s not likely to encounter inexperienced opponents. And anyone who has any interest in the game is very likely to know who printf is. And he never hides his identity and he always opens with a cannon rush. And he’s still super successful with it.
He’s played it so often with so many variations he can probably (maybe he does) teach the top players a few things about that strategy. And although it’s always the same it’s still interesting to watch him play.
Any game that has a fishing mechanic will be used as a fishing game.
Ah yes, finally a break from this incessant combat to catch a weird fish.
(Speaking of Hades)
This. So much this.
For me, the peak fishing game was Final Fantasy XV :D
Helps that it has some of the most absurdly hype fishing music ever. Sounds like a boss battle.
Even if you don’t want it to to be…
Currently got my Sonic Adventure playthrough on pause because I can’t for the life of me catch that stupid frog in Big’s fishing mini game!
Big has the most optional upgrades of any character in it. Try going back to his hut in the forest and picking up his bed for a better lure. There are more hidden around. I wouldn’t feel bad using a guide, as there’s not really any clues pointing to them like other character’s upgrades.
Sorta along the same lines, but, I love how differently my husband and I play Rust. He’s on his official server doing what the game is meant for, and I’m just on my pVE building a villa/farm.
We need the farm update on console. I need pies and chickens. With the jungle update, my Lenovo Go can no longer handle Rust at all, so I’m back on console. It’s missing some of my favorite features for farm build. I want to chase a chicken for that elusive egg fresh after wipe! And the flowers! Oh…
Picking up taxi passengers in GTA V is fun. Especially when I drive them off a cliff.
I have spent days up on days of irl time looking for bigfoot in that and san Andreas.
In Battlezone II single player, there is a custom map called “Moon 2000” that I love. It is a huge, open lunar crater, with a big flat ledge around the outside. It is difficult to get your recycler up onto the ledge, but I will take the time to do it. Then, I build a huge, sprawling base up in a flat corner. Absolutely surrounded with defenses. To the computer, an impenetrable fortress. To me, an experimental playground.
I have an area that I take enemy ships i have sniped the pilots out of, where I perform weapons and explosives testing. I have a whole series of nav points set up where I can go out and hunt for more enemy ships, and I can direct my tugs to come pick them up and take them back to base entirely by keyboard (they are dumb and will get stuck if you send them directly to base). It’s not a matter of beating the computer. That could be done easily. It’s purely the joy of collecting samples for my research. I have taken my findings, and have deployed them against my brother.
We would typically play X-Mod 3.3. That adds nuclear silos. We, as gentlemen, have an agreement not to use them. Same with APCs. However, naquada bombs were still fair game. Those have a 30 second timer, and give you a notification that shows their exact location so you do have a chance to destroy them. One thing I found that I was only able to use once, was my discovery that the X-Mod probe Droid could have its forcefield replaced with a naquada bomb. So, I made 50. Had to make 50 naquada bombs, too. It took forever. But, finally it was time to attack. The probes are so small and fast, they didn’t show up on his radar until it was too late. Their small size and speed helped most slip through his defenses. Suddenly, upwards of 30 naquada bomb notifications flood his screen. I can imagine the confusion then shock he must have felt. The horror that even if he destroyed one per second, it still wouldn’t be enough. One was enough to take out his recycler. The bombs went off. Almost all of them. It was a good sized base, with healthy defenses. The bombs detonated in quick succession, leveling it entirely.
That tactic was immediately outlawed. But I discovered other deadly weapon combos to unleash on him. I still have and play the same save game of my test site, decades later. For what was intended to be like, a 30 minute battle against the computer.
Stellaris. I cheat and mod to put my empire in the middle of the galaxy and have extremely overpowered player-only technologies. Then I just explore the galaxy and guide the AI; usually picking a favorite and try to help them grow e.g. a peaceful uplifted species in a very hostile galaxy. I’ve also done this in multiplayer where I played a bit of a Game Master role. Built a quest line as part of my custom mod that had lore and let players slowly discover me and the galactic core (cut off from the hyperlane network; this was all custom scripted before mods like the birchworld existed on the workshop)
Your way of playing Stellaris gives me similar vibes to this person on my original thread
I like to play crusader kings II from the point of view of God. Using console commands, sketchy cheat mod, and knowing the right game mechanics you can make characters do all types of crazy stuff. Using the “observe” console command let’s you play as a spectator, you can use the “play” command followed by a character ID and you will jump into playing as that character. I like to find a character, give them insane stats, and give them all of the best traits, make them immortal and then spectate for a few hundred years and see what my chosen one made the world into. I also like to try to determine before hand what I want them to do, like becoming emperor of brittania or whatever, and see how close I can get from just 1 or 2 interactions with them.
I also like to try to determine before hand what I want them to do, like becoming emperor of brittania or whatever, and see how close I can get from just 1 or 2 interactions with them.
Reminds me of the beginning of the book The Ellimist Chronicles.
That way of playing Stellaris sounds really cool! It makes me want to install Stellaris again
I don’t play it any more, but the only thing I did for most of my time playing The Sims was cheat in money and design baller houses. Couldn’t have given less of a shit about he Sims themselves.
I love just driving around doing nothing in Cyberpunk 2077.
It is a beautiful map
It’s also accidentally a good trainer for motorcycle skills. Not that its physics are good. They’re not. It does have one thing that is really useful: traffic tends to pull out on you and do unpredictable things.
That makes it a pretty good simulator for training against target fixation. You tend to drive/ride towards whatever you’re looking at. When someone pulls out on you, then you will tend to look at the car and hit it. If you train yourself to look to the side, you will tend to miss it. This is a good skill for drivers, and can make the difference between life and death on motorcycles (and motorcycles pretending to be ebikes).
Most other games with a driving element don’t have cars pulling out on you a lot the way Cyberpunk 2077 does. Makes it worse as an overall game, but it does have some value.
Back when i played Hearthstone (briefly) my friend and i woulf pass until the 10th turn and then try to one-shot eachother before the other is able to.
I spend a solid amount of time in RDR2 camping. I’ll go to town, gather some supplies, and head out in a random direction with no map.
Gather food as I go, hunt for game as I find it, craft supplies, and live off the land.
You can take multiple in-game days to get places and even better is choosing a mountain or similar in the distance and making that your destination.
You still come across plenty of side missions with this approach because of how much is going on in that game, but it feels quite genuine when you do.
One of my coworkers who’s big on hunting and fishing in real life has almost exclusively been trying to 100% the hunting and fishing trophies on RDR2
I would argue this is an intended play style. They made camping and the natural world extremely detailed on purpose.
Back in the early Sim days (~97?), I lived with a bunch of friends in a duplex and shared one house computer (always on, seeding, etc.) that had a perpetual session running. Any housemate at any time could pop down to check on their Sims, some more than others. Me, though? Not at all.
It took them months to talk me into it, and even then I gave in, exasperated. So, I decided to be the weird house. Started with a second floor on stilts/pillars and made the first floor a hedge garden & statuary promenade with a pool out back. At first, it was funny to see the random burglars have no idea what to do with a front door that opened directly to stairs —and that’s only if they found the front door before wandering into the hedge maze. IIRC, they despawn eventually (environmental effect, not actual Sims), but I didn’t expect the neighbors to wander over and into that maze…
Quite a while went by before I logged in again to check on my crime family, and it was really only inspired by a few housemates complaining the game was losing their Sims or something. When I looked in on my house, I soon found their Sims… A couple of them had yet to succumb to their neglect, but most died of starvation and/or fire inside the unintentional maze under my house.
Oops 😅🥹
There seems to be one or two Sims channels on YouTube where the people running the channel have little or no interest in playing the game and instead just build and furnish houses/shops.
I thought The Sims started out as an architecture/interior design game and the social/life simulation stuff we all know it for came later.
I’ve seen it said in several places; this was the most credible-looking spot I could find on the first page of my search.
It’s actually really fun to do interior design and architecture with it.
I’m half convinced the folks who mod in new furniture and decor are already architects…
I love factory games. I have over a thousand hours in Factorio.
I’ve almost entirely avoided trains. I just build conveyer belts everywhere. Huge long world-spanning conveyer belts. I just dont like having to think about trains, when conveyer belts are so simple to use.
Not enough throughput? well, that’s what upgraded belts are for. Still not enough? that’s what extra belts are for. Still not enough? see previous comment.
I haven’t gotten to trains yet in satisfactory (I’m desperately trying to get some friends to play with, because I have a tough time on singleplayer modes of these types of tasks), but my conveyor belts can be seen from space, I’m sure.
Dont sleep on trucks! You can record a route you drive, and set it to repeat. They do need coal as fuel, but you can set up a truck station as a fueling station and have your trucks stop by on their route.
I usually recommends belts for short range, trucks for medium to long, and then trains are for crossing the map to other regions. Trains take some planning though. Its best to have two tracks running parallel with each going one direction only, or else you run into problems when you have more than one train.
All that said, you can finish the game with just belts. The first time I finished thr game I only went from the southern grass fields, east to the oil lake, and slightly north to the autumn looking area with aluminum.
I literally spent like 12 hours this week figuring out how to do trains in factorio. Good times.
Do you use as many conveyor belts as Josh does in Satisfactory?
trains are cool but i get on one daily, conveyer belts are a fun factory fantasy i do not interact with daily, i see you
Not sure if this counts, because I’m not sure if there is a wrong way to play Fallout. I am going through New Vegas again, but for the first time in years. Completely disregarding the main storyline. Just wandering the Mojave, helping people as I go. Like David Carradine in Kung Fu. Mostly trying to do things peacefully, and gain as much karma as I can. Completely opposite of how I normally play Falmouth game. I need all that karma to offset how many people I’ve eaten, which is tremendous. Don’t die around my character if you want an open casket. I gave myself lockpick and science skills via the command line, because this playthrough is about my interest in where the storyline take me, not about grinding to be able to open a lock.
I doubt it. I can say I played a ridiculous amount of blitzball in final fantasy 10. Like I very well may have spent more time playing blitzball than the main game.
When i was a kid, every RTS skirmish game was about building an empire and keeping in control the CPU opponent in a small space. At some point it was more like playing a city building game.
Command and conquer, rush the resources, keep the other side in poverty by surrounding their base with turrets and laugh like J.Jonah Jameson as they try to aquire more resources, or build advanced buildings.
The laugh like J.Jonah Jameson was in Empire Earth 2, when i had tanks, airstrikes, and missiles, the poor CPU was still using bows and horses, having no resources to advance to the next age. 😂
Yes, I love doing that.
Quake / Quake World was really the epitome of “not how it was intended to be played”. It introduced zigzag, wallhug and bunny jump through some clever exploitation of game mechanics, and completely changed its game play plus that of future fps games of the time. And people would just come up with stupid maps where you could do fps-parkour. I often did it myself for hours on end, just jumping around a map alone or with friends while chatting or listening to music.
A very short demo of how crazy it could get, speed indicator top right. 320 was the default movement speed.
Q3Defrag vids still blow my mind. I can strafe jump somewhat consistently, but then I watch stuff like the team trick jumping in the “Event Horizon” series and it’s just humbling. I tried some simpler strafe maps recently (there’s surprisingly still a couple active Defrag servers out there) but I’m still awful at it - and rusty now to boot. Couldn’t maintain speed to clear the larger hops, or when I did then I couldn’t air strafe well enough to be heading the right way for the next. Air strafing was a lot easier to do in CounterStrike & Source.
I’m pretty sure the “bhop” and “surf” maps in CS/S directly benefited from the same physics quirks, being descendants of id’s engines. I was a surf_skyworld addict for a while. Just the same it was easy to throw on some tunes and lose a few hours surfing with friends on some of the 24/7 servers, back when CS:S was in its prime.
I was a CS player first and a Quake player second. VQ3 movement never really hit me the same because of my CS background, but CPMA movement got me into defrag.
There is also a game called MomentumMod. Free on steam and it has all those quake and source engine movement minigames.
Rocket jump, bhop, defraq, surf and others. It has lobbies to play with other people and keeps leaderboards. Highly recommend checking it out when you next want to play any of these gamemodes.
Booting up the old defraq mod has its nostalgia tho, with the rabbit and all 😄
Forgot to mention, back then we would optimize fps for refresh rate. 120Hz CRT monitors with 120 fps constant was the sweet spot for a while (until people started playing in multitudes of 60 fps on LED-based displays). It’s entirely possible that if your fps is not optimal, you can’t clear larger gaps or gain as much momentum in QW/Q3/CPMA or similar.
I’ve never played HLDM or CS, so I’m not that familiar with derivatives in those games.
Yeah, we can basically just put every speedrunner of every game into this topic. “Man, I love this game so much. Let’s see if I can break it so I can 100% it in under a minute!”
When I regularly played Need for Speed: Most Wanted (the old one from the 2000s), I often intentionally didn’t escape the cops at low wanted levels in order to get to higher wanted levels. Not sure this counts because it’s basically what you have to do if you want to have fun in this game…
Recently I’ve been playing a lot of EA FC 25, and when I’m already clearly winning (or losing), I usually commit a lot of fouls just because I can.
That’s how people play football in person too
I like to look for secrets in Action Half-Life maps
I won’t do the main quest in Starfield. I don’t want any special powers, and those Foundation guys are lame. I’m like level 58 and I’ve never found an artifact. I do enjoy killing people and stealing ships tho.
I won’t stick the chip in my head in Cyberpunk. Nope. I know its got a virus on it. Just seems like a really really bad idea. That leaves me stuck in the first part of the game, because you can’t break out of it anymore since the patches. I might mod it someday.
Wait, really? You have to choose to put the chip in your head for the game to continue? That’s literally as far as I got and I was like “yeah no fuck that, why would I put that in my brain”… I stopped playing shortly after so I never realized.
There’s like 700 Cyberpunk mods. I looked through some last night. Surely there must be one that jailbreaks me past that. I haven’t found it tho.
GTAV. I don’t care for the story or the shooting aspect, I just love to drive or walk around. I can’t do either irl, so I love it when games give me the option.
I wanted to play a Mass Effect game, but I suck at cover-shooters. So I put it on easy and ran around punching my way through the game.
Probably all of them… I mostly play single player games, which I either mod, or edit memory/save games to skip grindy parts. I am there for the story, exploration and puzzles.
ace_garp@lemmy.world 53 minutes ago
In Super Sprint, on the track below, once I get enough lead up on the 3rd or 4th lap, I would enter the red arrow 360 loop and then just keep spinning the steering-wheel left. This makes the car do 2-3 donuts around the loop, until going out of control backwards to explode into the barrier.
Always worth it.