Andy: I punished my team-mates in Bad Company 2 for not getting involved
Cooper: "I murdered an adopted child in The Sims"
Again, I'm using the "it was an experiment!" excuse, but only for the first half of this tale. I wanted to see what options there were to adopt a child in The Sims 2 (yes, the image above is from The Sims 3), so I called up the adoption agency and noticed that there was no way to hang up. It was forcing me to adopt. I adopted the oldest child I could, because the next part of my plan... it was dark.
The van shows up, drops the kid off, and I freeze time--building a square around the kid. The parents walked outside to meet their new son, but he was nowhere to be found. There was a weird monolith, though, and they stood beside it, crying. Inside the box the boy cried, too. They all cried. And then he died, and appeared in a grave in the back yard, and then the parents went to it and cried, and refused to leave, and eventually died. I felt like a monster.
Ryan: I punished my enemies using SimCity 2000
Back in elementary school I had a huge crush on a girl in one of my classes. Unfortunately I was super shy and couldn't talk to her (plus we were, like, 12), so my crush endured into middle school, where I deemed myself to be "very mature". So I finally mustered the courage to write her a note--the kind that asked if she would be my girlfriend and to respond by circling "yes", "no", or "maybe". She circled no; she already had a boyfriend.
Now, you might ask yourself what this story has to do with video games. Well, I developed a strong... dislike (thanks, jealousy!) for the boy she was seeing, so I did what any other person in my situation would do. I built a new city in SimCity 2000, named it after that kid, and burned it to the ground with a series of Firestorms. Goodbye forever, Keithtown.
Andy: I threw lovers into the lake using telekinesis in Destroy All Humans
Ok, so the point of Destroy All Humans is to, er, destroy all the humans. I get that. And the anal probe gun, which sees people dash around in agony, soiling themselves, before their head explodes... yeah, thats pretty funny. However, I found new ways to turn Cryptos abilities on his enemies.
In the first town level, you can find cars down by the lakeside. Its a make-out spot, and--haha--the cars are rocking as the inhabitants get busy. And they continue to rock as you lift them into the air with telekinesis. And Im pretty sure they carry on rocking as Crypto flings them deep into the nearby lake. At least they go out with a bang.
Dave: "I played conkers with humans in Mercenaries 2"
Beaching an enemy patrol boat on top of a tower is basic stuff in Mercenaries 2. Its AI trolling 101. You just get a helicopter, fly low over your waterbound prey, winch them out of the sea and drop them on top of the tallest fortification you can find. Blowing up the tower afterwards is optional. But youll probably do it.
But the real fun comes when you start playing around with the greater possibilities of that winch. Like when you realise that with a strong enough helicopter you can lift a boat, an innocent passer-bys car, or even a fuel tank into the air, head to the motorway, and swing it through the oncoming traffic. And when I say through I really do mean through. The game is to see how many commuters you can knock off the road or blow up before your own vehicular flail explodes. You can count anything that gets wiped out in the splash damage too. My record is about 14.
Andy: I drove a character to kill himself because his watercooler was broken
Good old David Cage. His games, while striving to capture the essence of the human condition, are always a great place for messing about. In Indigo Prophecy (Fahrenheit in Europe) you split your time between three playable characters, each with a penchant for self-pity. You have a mood meter, and if that hits rock-bottom your characters will kill themselves.
You can finish Lucas off in a number of ways. Get him emotionally fragile enough, and hell top himself after playing a bad song on his guitar. Tyler the detective, however, will kill himself after trying--and failing--to use the offices broken watercooler (if hes depressed enough at the time). Its a bit morbid but... come on, David Cage is practically demanding that I sadistically mess around with his characters.
Justin: "I played Sonic 2 alone. Even in co-op"
Sonic 2 features one of the first instances of drop-in/drop-out co-op play, allowing two players to play on a single screen just so long as someone picks up the second pad. Stop pressing buttons on it for a few seconds and Tails will go back to following Sonic automatically. But with only one screen and two supercharged characters zooming about, its impossible to keep both characters in-shot all the time.
If Tails gets left behind, he automatically flies back towards Sonics exact position--quite slowly, so Player 1 must wait. But if you jump just before he lands, Tails cant touch down. Player 2 cant play and its absolutely hilarious. Then its time for the special stage where you can continue the trolling by always jumping ahead of Tails so he cant get any rings.
Andy: I stole everything a man owned in Elder Scrolls just because I could
You get a lot of time to be creative in Elder Scrolls games but, if you play them for too long, that creativity starts to manifest itself in increasingly devious ways. The most cold-hearted thing I ever did in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion on Xbox 360 during my 150 hours of play was a strange twist on burglary. Obviously youre meant to kill, steal and double-cross, but this was petty, meticulously planned bastardry.
For reasons I cant recall, I took a dislike to one of the characters who lived in Bravil. I couldnt just kill him, so one night I crept into his house and stole everything he owned. Weapons, food, cutlery, clothes the lot. Still under the cover of night I waddled down to the river and dumped all his items into the water. Thatll teach old Whatshisname. He wont do whatever he did again.
Lucas: "I mocked my friend's rubbish gear in World of Warcraft"
There was a time when I was a hardcore World of Warcraft raider--back in the day, that was practically all I did. I treated it like a joke--a time to shoot the breeze with my pals on Ventrilo while the try-hards did all the heavy lifting in terms of DPS and heals. The reward for my time commitment was a tricked-out inventory rife with Epic-grade items, back before purple loot was commonplace. Though my skills were lacking, my gear bestowed me with a feeling of superiority--and such arrogance undoubtedly leads to hate.
My real-life buddy Taylor played on my server, but he rarely did dungeon runs. One night, in need of a spot mage, we invited him for a run through Molten Core. Halfway through clearing the instance, I decided to inspect his gear--and all I saw was the color green. Like a spoiled brat pointing and laughing at the poor, I ridiculed his Uncommon equipment. It wouldn't have been so bad, were it not for the fact that this jeering took place in raid chat, effectively inviting 38 other people to point and laugh with me.
Ryan: I deliberately made all the rides unsafe in Theme Park
Games like Theme Park and RollerCoaster Tycoon siphoned countless hours of my youth. There was something about building a giant metropolis of fun rides and stands of sweet treats that I found incredibly alluring, and I loved trying to maximize both my profits and my attendees' happiness.
Sometimes, though, I just wanted to watch them suffer. There were many ways to make my park-goers miserable, and my favorite methods included refusing to build bathrooms, not cleaning the vomit and fecal matter from my pathways, and, of course, disabling rides in the middle of a cycle. Deleting a section of rollercoaster track right as the coaster was about to reach it, for instance, was a particularly thrilling way to launch its passengers straight into the ground at 50+mph. I need help.
