6 Hilarious Unintended Ways You Can Beat Famous Games

6 The Best Way To Beat Oblivion Is To Become A Junkie

RPGs are usually about some forgettable Joe Average going around killing hundreds of rats until that somehow makes him superhuman. For The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, speedrunners found a much simpler and more intuitive approach: They got totally high. On magic. And also drugs.

Elder Scrolls games have an item called skooma, an illegal narcotic substance that increases your speed, agility, and strength ... along with inducing less useful side effects like mood swings, addiction, and possibly death. The third game, Morrowind, already let you stack up the effects until you became a doped-up version of The Flash.

6 Hilarious Unintended Ways You Can Beat Famous Games — Bethesda Softworks via MrAske

But for Oblivion, you can turn your character into a full-on junkie and beat the entire game while high on skooma. For instance, there's a part where players have to stop a dark ritual and kill everyone attending, but through the sheer power of hard drugs, they can simply yoink the scroll the Lovecraftian knockoff cultists needed to perform the ritual and run away, avoiding any violent confrontation.

5 Swimming Through The Air In God Of War II

God Of War II is, for the most part, not an underwater adventure. Still, there are some levels in which the fearsome and brutal Kratos has to swim. And speedrunners noticed that he's better at swimming than running. Next logical step:

If players confuse the game a bit by rolling into the water or attacking and reaching the menu at the same time, every spot with a body of water present, no matter how shallow or tiny, can render the surrounding environment swimmable. The best part is that the game already has a fish costume (aptly named Cod of War), so going through the entire story like this looks natural. Everything happens for a reason.

But as silly as the fly-swimming animation may be, it's even weirder when the game doesn't activate it and effectively gives Kratos an invisible hoverboard:

4 You Can Fly In Crysis, And That Changes Everything

In Crysis, you play a badass army man dressed in an exosuit that gives him powers like super speed, super strength, and ... regular stealth. What it doesn't give you is flying capabilities, because come on, then you'd be Superman and the game would be too much fun. And we can't have that, can we?

Wait, yes we can. Here's a delightfully misspelled tutorial:

The circle jump glitch allows players to float in the air if they move their mouse left when they're pressing the move right key, then move their mouse right when they're pressing the move left key. It's like flapping your wings, but clumsier and much stupider.

This is great for all sorts of missions, especially those in which the player has to rescue someone. Unfortunately, Crysis-Man isn't a very subtle person, so he just grabs the people he's supposed to be rescuing by the neck while they look around befuddled.

This flying glitch can be put to its best use by turning the player into a hovering maniac who's able to punch helicopters to death. We now present Man vs. Vehicle Air-Boxing -- the sport you never knew you loved.

And if you're afraid of heights, here's a good alternative: shark surfing. Simply hop on a shark and gently nudge it toward your destination. Do this at home, kids!

Legal disclaimer: Don't. That's what the ocean is for.

3 Wind Waker's Extreme Surfing

Breath Of The Wild, the newest iteration of the Legend Of Zelda series, introduced a whole bunch of innovative physics-based mechanics, like letting you surf on your shield, propelling yourself to faraway places by grabbing onto items, or making you hate the rain so damn much. That might have been the first time Nintendo intended for those things to happen, but Zelda players have been engaging in such shenanigans for a long time.

In the HD remaster of The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker, the player can become a master of teleportation by willfully not understanding how a bow is supposed to work.

"Item sliding" is a whole science, but it basically works by moving your joystick in weird, non-Euclidean directions and aiming with the bow, slingshot, or hookshot. This makes Link build up speed, so when you release him, he'll be propelled like a cannonball (probably helps that his head is shaped like one). No place is too far when you are your own arrow.

As you might know, this game is like 20 percent Zelda, 80 percent sailing simulator. But by combining item sliding with some giant hammer action, you can surf across the ocean at ludicrous speeds without having to put up with a talking boat sidekick.

2 Half Life 2 Is A Lot Easier If You Jump Backward

Like most games, Half-Life 2 limits your speed when you're moving ... as long as you're moving forward. But like in real life, there are no rules when you're moving backward. (Seriously, try it! Cops hate this one weird trick.)

Accelerated back-hopping works precisely because the game limits forward speed. If you're going faster than the speed limit and jump, the game will try to slow you down by pushing you backward. But if you're already going backward, then your mutant jumping powers are exponentially multiplied. Vehicles are rendered obsolete, and it's even possible to use it to see things you're not supposed to.

In the release version of the game, players could also jump on top of the item they were lifting up with the gravity gun for all kinds of hoverboard tricks to get over obstacles, dystopian Tony Hawk-style. This was later "fixed," if removing such an awesome feature can be considered a fix.

1 The Games That Can Be Instantly Finished Out Of Nowhere

We've established that glitches can be used to make games hilariously easy, but some speedrunners don't have time for easy. They want things done instantly. Luckily, some games are so ineptly programmed that this is possible too.

Some of you have already guessed that we're talking about the 2006 Sonic The Hedgehog, which is such a messterpiece that players can instantly win the story mode simply by committing suicide. Doing this requires starting a dialogue with a character while you're jumping to your death, allowing you to accept a mission after you've died. When you come back to life, you'll be able to accept yet another mission, prompting the game to have no idea where to put your character once you finish it. So the game will accept that you're not to be trifled with and take you directly to the end credits.

Another game that allows for players to literally dive into the credits is Spyro: Year Of The Dragonfly, which only requires the players to perform a head bash move near the entrance to the final boss area. That's 99% of the game done right there. All that's left is to defeat Ripto, which experienced players can do in under a minute.

"RIP" is already in his name, after all.

Yet another example is House Of Caravan, which has a glitch that unintentionally turns players into ghosts as long as they're holding objects, so they can fly through walls in order to get the master key that opens the door to end the game. The speedrun record is currently at right under 12 seconds, meaning this game can be completed in less time than it took you to read this paragraph. (NSFW language in the video below.)

Back to Oblivion, which you can also finish in a few minutes if you simply clip through one door. Yes, there's a door in the game whose only purpose is to end it, saving you a lot of money on drugs.

Tiagosvn can be found on his Twitter trying to glitch his real life into success.

For more, check out 5 Video Game Puzzles Totally Designed To Gaslight You - Video Game Purgatory:

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