6 Hilarious Video Game Glitches You Have to See to Believe

6 Dragon's Dogma -- The Surprise Gay Ending

Dragon's Dogma, Capcom's recent RPG about dragons and shit, proved that combining video games and romance isn't always a good idea ... especially if the developers don't know what romance actually entails. What started as a perfectly innocent attempt to bring love into the game ended with thousands of players helplessly seeing their characters molested near a campfire.

Dragon's Dogma had the rare ability of allowing you to "romance" any character in the game by doing things like giving them gifts or drawing your sword in front of them (in real life, that usually gets you arrested). However, due to a glitch in the system, the only requirement for raising someone's "romance level" was talking to them -- meaning the game would unilaterally decide that whoever you talked to the most must be your lover, whether you liked it or not. So, upon reaching the crucial part of the game where you have to fight a dragon that has kidnapped your beloved, many players were surprised to find out that their beloved was ... the guy who runs the inn. Or the old shopkeeper. Or even the mustachioed midget in the jester suit you kept talking to because you were stoned and his voice seemed amusing.

Or at least that's what you told yourself at the time.

Naturally, after you rescue them from the dragon, that person you talked to a bunch of times wants to give you a reward. A sexual reward. This leads to the aforementioned molestation by firelight.

And all through that, the players could do nothing to stop what was happening to their character, while simultaneously refusing to look away in case some vital game-related information was dropped in the middle of the lovemaking session. Bear in mind that at no point does the game indicate that there's a romance blossoming between you and a complete stranger -- even players who actively pursued romances with different characters ended up with random dudes. At the end of the game, there's another romantic scene where your character wakes up on a beach and your unwitting lover runs to your arms.

So kudos to Capcom for making same-sex relationships possible, and "ewww" for making them non-consensual.

5 Major League Baseball 2K6 -- The Outfielder Who Takes to the Sky

Major League Baseball 2K6 did many things wrong, starting with shortening the wrong part of its title. On one hand, this was the first game to add many elements that made it more like real baseball, like arguing managers, audience members catching the ball, and concession stands that sell frozen piss instead of beer (presumably). On the other hand, we're pretty sure we've never seen a real baseball player just friggin' shoot up 200 feet into the air to catch a ball:

Yeah, either Clark Kent changed careers and is taking his usual lax approach at hiding his secret identity (watch as he slowly floats down to the ground after catching the ball, hoping no one noticed what he just did), or this shitty turd of a game is broken. We're leaning toward the latter possibility. Apparently, this happens when the computer thinks the outfielder should be able to catch the ball while common sense says he shouldn't, so the computer kindly tells common sense to go fuck itself for a little while.

The uploader of the video actually says the glitch happened six times in a single game. It's like one team has the grossly unfair advantage of having invisible angels who carry the players up in the air to help them win -- all that's missing is Tony Danza and a young Joseph Gordon-Levitt and this is a '90s Disney sports/fantasy movie (of the non-dog-protagonist variety). But, you know, this is an old game. Surely these kinks have been ironed out in the more recent vers-

4 Assassin's Creed III -- You Get Brutally Killed During Cutscene Conversations

The Assassin's Creed series follows Desmond Miles as he's forced to relive the lives of his assassin ancestors as they go around stabbing other people's ancestors. Or at least that's how it used to be. Assassin's Creed III, if all the glitches are to be believed, is about Desmond reliving the genetic memories of his distant grandpa constantly jacking off in public places and doing nothing while he gets murdered by guards or eaten by wolves.

The glitch goes like this: Sometimes you'll see a cutscene coming and do what we all do on those occasions, which is drop your controller and dig deep into your bag of Cheetos. However, before you can even lick the delicious orange dust off your fingers, you'll see an enemy approaching you ...

... only to start hacking away at you before the cutscene is over. See, Assassin's Creed III's cutscenes aren't just movies -- they occur in real time, meaning nearby characters will behave as they would in the normal game. Unfortunately, this also applies to hostile characters, like the gentleman with the sword over here.

If you don't press the button to skip the scene quickly enough, you'll end up getting killed because your Mohawk assassin is too polite to break off his conversation. Not that the grieving widow you were talking to will particularly miss you -- she'll simply keep having a conversation with thin air once you've fallen down.

By the way, this can also happen with wolves. Normally you could escape a wolf with a quick time event, but if attacked while talking to another person, Connor Miles just takes it like the world's most misguided animal rights activist. And the woman keeps on talking like it's nothing:

The worst part is that the wolf in the second scenario is actually spawned by talking to that woman after you rescue somebody. That'll teach you to help people.

3 Aliens: Colonial Marines -- When the Giant Alien Wants You Down, You Stay Down

By now you've probably heard all about Aliens: Colonial Marines, the science experiment where several game companies spent 12 years perfecting the crappiest game ever made in order to study the angry reactions of fans. The game was so bad, the developers got sued for false advertisement for releasing a demo that suggested it was actually playable. Hell, you've heard from us before about how the AI was so awful that when Aliens finally did show up, they would walk right by you, allowing you to run through the levels unscathed.

But the beauty of this game is that there are endless ways for it to randomly break on you -- like when the invincible Alien gets completely obsessed with your character and won't let you continue the game.

That seriously happens 11 times to the same dude over the course of this video. See, one section of the game calls for you to escape from a super Alien that's impervious to your shots -- you're not supposed to fight it yet, just run from it like a little bitch. But, for some reason, a common glitch (it also happened to Zero Punctuation's Yahtzee) causes the super Alien to develop an unhealthy fixation with a member of your party and start repeatedly throwing him to the ground. If you attempt to revive your fallen comrade to continue the level, the Alien is like "oh no you don't" and furiously runs back, slamming him down again before the recently revived character has a chance to really do anything.

So strong is the Alien's obsession with that one player that, as long as he remains dead, this giant monster that's supposed to be chasing you through the scene will just ignore all the other players and focus its attention on ... um, the walls, apparently.

And, every time, as soon as the marine is back on the ground, the Alien goes back to searching for its car keys, or whatever it's doing. This metaphorical tug of war between marine and Alien with the worst attention span ever goes on for a couple minutes, as the players lose more and more of their shit due to the hilarity of the situation. See, guys, if you'd included this part in the demo, no one would be suing you.

2 Grand Theft Auto IV -- Niko's Schizophrenic Relative

The fourth entry in the Grand Theft Auto saga controversially replaced the sillier aspects of the previous game, like the jet packs and the haircuts, with "more realistic" elements and a social aspect, because clearly this game is aimed at well-balanced people with a firm grasp on reality. For instance, there's the not at all irritating feature where your character, Niko Bellic, gets constant and non-ignorable phone calls from friends asking to hang out.

One of those friends is Niko's cousin Roman, who speaks in a multipurpose European accent and likes eating on your dime, getting lifts from you, and inflicting his terrible shirts on unsuspecting people. As if that wasn't enough, when you're dropping Roman off at his place in your car, a rather nasty glitch will sometimes kick in and cause your cousin to suffer from violent, inexplicable mood swings -- one moment he's thanking you for a wonderful evening and telling you to "hit me up if you want to hang out again soon" ...

... and literally half a second later he suddenly cold cocks your ass for no reason.

After pushing you out of your own ride while yelling that it's actually his, the very confused Roman lingers on the front seat for a moment with a vacant stare on his face, as if trying to remember where he is and whether he took his antipsychotic medication this morning or not. Then he quietly gets out of the car and disappears.

Is Cousin Roman displaying early signs of dementia? Will Niko be forced to take care of his relative while getting constantly sucker punched? Actually, this glitch happens due to another vehicle blocking the passenger's door of your car, and the game's lack of non-carjacking animations for leaving through the other side. Thankfully, someone created an animation where you hit the ungrateful fucker back.

1 Dark Souls and Super Smash Bros. Melee -- Slapstick Enemy Suicides

Since the Smash Bros. games are meant for when you have some friends and cheap liquor around, it probably wouldn't surprise you to know that they don't have the smartest AI in the world when you're playing alone. What you might not know is that Nintendo went to such lengths to accurately recreate the intoxicated state of mind of most people playing Super Smash Bros. Melee that you can beat the computer-controlled enemies by simply standing still, thus letting your rivals fall defeated in a pool of their own puke after taking their first swing at you.

Enjoy this video of Luigi beating every single Melee character on the maximum level of difficulty by doing nothing -- the AI gets so stupidly aggressive, it becomes its own worst enemy, often throwing itself into a pit while trying to get one hit on you. Most fights last like five seconds. OK, but how about a motionless Luigi versus a team of three Level 9 characters with two lives each? That'll bring you up to nine seconds. Even the most powerful characters in the game are no match for Luigi's apathy.

But the crowning moment of Melee's AI trouble is watching what happens when you fight Fox McCloud on the Jungle Japes stage and give him 50 lives. Surely one of those incarnations will manage to inflict at least 1 percent of damage to the static Luigi? Nope: Instead, the result is that Fox winds up living his own personal Groundhog Day as he endlessly throws himself off the stage.

See, this is why real gamers don't bother with this Kidtendo bullshit and prefer games that actually take some effort to beat -- like Dark Souls for PS3 and Xbox 360, in which you fight bosses like Taurus, a giant werewolf/minotaur thing that not only will murder your ass if you stand still, but also has an advanced AI that lets it dodge your attacks and ...

... huh. Never mind.

Check out Sever R's YouTube channel 2D Game Theater, where you will find some of the best tech discussions and armchair video game commentary around. Codie nitpicks video games at her site, Codiekitty.com.

Related Reading: This ain't Cracked's first trip to the game glitch round-up. Click here for the Assassin's Creed nightmare orgy from hell. What, that doesn't sound like a good time? These ghastly Super Smash Brothers mash-up characters are a different sort of stomach-turning. To let that queasy feeling ride, discover the wonder of Bioshock's severed body part dancers.