The basic theory behind video game progression is pretty simple: Better weapons let you kill harder enemies, who in turn give you better weapons. It's the circle of not-having-a-life. And it keeps on turning until you eventually have the best weapon in the game, and you weep like Alexander, for there is nothing left to conquer. But every once in a while, via laziness, sleep deprivation, or just a good ol' fashioned rabid cocaine addiction, the developers throw gamers a curve ball ...
The best parts of the Assassin's Creed series involve you scampering up buildings and leap-killing the hell out of an unsuspecting guard or, if the targeting system readjusts at the wrong moment, hawk-stabbing the Christ out of Todd, some guy standing six inches to the left of the unsuspecting guard.
Ubisoft
The worst part of the Assassin's Creed series is ... everything else. The plot is based on something the developers half-remembered from a History Channel special, the premise is less cyberpunk than it is cyber-soft-rock, and the dialogue aspires to being wooden -- right now it's particleboard.
So in order to keep you entertained though the 20-hour slog of story endurance, you get increasingly awesome ways to teach Todd to watch where the hell he's standing: battle hammers, axes, maces, halberds, and uh ... brooms?
Ubisoft
Ubisoft
You thwacked that guy with a broom so hard blood flew out. Remember that force equals mass times acceleration, so that straw has to be travelling at relativistic speeds. Here's that same broom, bludgeoning the Catholic out of a guy wearing full plate mail:
Ubisoft
You probably never bothered with it, but the broom in Assassin's Creed II is a magic death machine that can be found everywhere, never breaks, and can even slit a guy's throat:
Ubisoft
The Elder Scrolls series take place in a world filled with mythical creatures, magic, and gods. As anyone familiar with fantasy tropes might assume, many of those gods are evil -- or at best, kind of dicks. In The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, you square off against one named Mehrunes Dagon. He is kind of a dick. Kind of a giant, red, four-armed demon dick.
Bethesda
How the hell are you supposed to take out an enormous elder god who opens portals to Hell at will? The answer is, you aren't. He gets defeated in a cutscene, where Sean Bean morphs into a dragon and rips his throat out, heroically sacrificing himself. Wait, we already said it was Sean Bean; the sacrifice is implied.
Your only less-than-heroic interaction with Dagon is to run between his legs, resisting the urge to glance up and catch an upskirt of the devil, in order to get the cutscene to start. You're welcome to try to fight him, but attacking an immortal 300-foot god when you're just a level-12 cat-person is about as effective as attacking a functional social life when you're a level-12 cat-person. No matter how long you wail on him with your Longsword Of Misspent Time, it won't make a difference. The creators of the game made him as indestructible as a fratboy's self-confidence.
Bethesda
Unless you kept one seemingly trivial item from a random side-quest. While Dagon is the main god stirring up shit in Oblivion, he's by no means the only one. Sheogorath, the God Of Madness, gives you whimsical and nonsensical quests, like the one where you make it literally rain cats and dogs. The reward for that one is a mage's staff called Wabbajack. It's just a fun novelty item: Swinging it randomly turns any enemy into a different enemy. Fighting a bandit? Hit him with Wabbajack! Might turn him into a sheep ... or it might turn him into hideous spiked-tentacle beast from beyond who's got a big-boy crush on your orifices. Either way, the enemy returns to full health after being transformed -- so it isn't terribly useful in the actual game.
Most adventurers screw around with the Wabbajack for a while, and then ditch it in their junk drawer when it's time to get down to business. But what if, against all reason, you kept it with you, and decided to use this glorified party trick against King Fuck Of The Hell Dimension?
Bethesda
Yes, the invincible god of fire and stomping just up and melts. Mehrunes can deal with any amount of damage, but the Wabbajack doesn't deal damage, it rewrites its target's stats. He doesn't know how to deal with this, so he just opts out of existence. Bethesda probably didn't plan for this -- you don't get a special ending thanking you for being a jackass; the game doesn't know what to do after this. But still, it feels poetic that the Achilles' heel of the super-serious Prince Of Destruction himself is "tomfoolery."
The Last Of Us: Left Behind is a DLC adventure that finally gives fans of the grizzled, zombie-bashing tragedy exactly what they wanted: cute tween bonding. A big chunk of the game is just two teenage girls messing around in an abandoned mall doing BFF stuff: asking a Magic 8-ball questions about puberty, raiding an arcade, and posing in a photo booth. They even have an adorable water gun fight.
Naughty Dog
That water gun fight is controllable, by the way: you can use the gun, and stealth mechanics, to soak your friend. It's a fun little diversion before zombies come and ruin it all. Caught off guard, Ellie and company are largely helpless. If only they had a shotgun, a flamethrower, a baseball bat -- something!
Oh right, the water gun! No seriously, one player hacked the game and discovered that the zombies shared a secret weakness with the aliens from Signs: poor scripting.
Naughty Dog
If that splash of weirdly rendered water hits any enemy, they fall over dead almost instantly. Add to that the fact that the water pistol has an area of effect, like a shotgun, plus infinite ammo -- and the best weapon in The Last Of Us is a goddamn brightly colored plastic squirt gun.
Naughty Dog
Minecraft is an open-ended game world with no real objective or ending. It's about creativity, rather than fighting some overwrought boss and "winning." Except gamers just don't feel right if they're not killing something dramatic, so they added an end boss called the Ender Dragon. As one would expect, the dragon lives in a sort of Hell dimension that exists outside of time, so if you want to kill the bastard, you first have to build a portal to his realm, stock up on potions, strengthen your armor, forge some master weapons, and steel yourself for the fight of a lifetime.
Mojang
Or you could just build a bed.
In normal gameplay, beds are used to rest, which resets the game clock to morning. In The End, however, resetting to morning is impossible because neither morning nor night exist. You'd think that trying to rest in this realm would do nothing -- you wake up and it's still just "unnight" or whatever. Instead, the immovable timelessness of The End collides with the unstoppable force that is bedrest, resulting in a huge explosion that destroys everything nearby, including the Ender Dragon. It's one of the fastest ways to beat the toughest enemy in the game, and all you have to do is to craft a bed, wait for him to get close, then take a well-deserved nap.
Mojang
Grand Theft Auto is more than the name implies: Every game includes tons of extra features that are neither grand, nor theft auto. You can hire prostitutes, go bowling, play fetch with your dog, or hold up corner stores for quick cash.
Rockstar
Robbing stores seems a bit pointless, though: You walk in, wave your rocket launcher in the face of a terrified clerk who thinks that's just a bit of overkill, he gives you a small amount of cash, and then you've got a wanted level. Evade the cops, and it's back to planning your multimillion-dollar heist while wondering why on earth you bothered lifting $347 from a Circle K when you jacked a brand new Ferrari just to escape.
Here's the thing: You can hold up stores with every weapon in the game -- from pistols to switchblades to ... baseballs?
Rockstar
Rockstar
Now, maybe the shopkeeper assumes that where there's a ball there's a bat, or maybe your character can throw super hard -- but more likely, the game just wasn't programmed to differentiate between "harmless ball" and "lethal hand grenade" when an item is equipped to the throw slot. It doesn't matter. The end result is the same: you walk around town with an elbow cocked and the entire city is fucking terrified of your devastating fastball.
Rockstar
Ed would like to thank his sister for her help with The Last Of Us, and for her patience whilst he prattled on about game plots.
For ways the developers are messing with us, read 5 Video Game Easter Eggs That Were Absurdly Hard To Find and 6 Video Game Easter Eggs Developers Didn't Want You To Find.
And be sure to check out 9 Types Of Coworkers To Make You Want Your Head To Explode, and let us know about other headsplosion-worthy employees we may have missed.
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Ed Stevens
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