I was thinking about a few games where I have broken the tone or balance. Wondering what other people have done similar?
My two examples:
This War Of Mine. A moody, atmospheric game about survival and the toll of war. The city is randomly generated, but depending on what locations are available it is breakable. The most common way for me is a super market location with the event of a lone soldier preparing to attack a woman. If the player has a knife, backstabbing the soldier is an easy kill and nets an assault rifle as loot. An early game assault rifle opens a ton of possibilities when you learn how enemy AI works. AI enemies can be ambushed by making noise on the other side of a closed door, when the enemy is in their animation to open the door they are easy pickings. I have used this technique to single handed wipe out an entire military base which nets more food, weapons, and supplies than I’d ever need. My survivors end up living in a comfortable, fully upgraded house.
STALKER Shadow Of Chernobyl. This is a more messed up break. In the early game the player starts in a village of rookies, and down the road is a small military check point. I take the terrible starting pistol and shoot potshots at the military patrol to aggro them, and I lead them back to the rookie village. Once the military and rookies start fighting I go hide near Sidrovich’s bunker and go inside if somebody finds me (enemies don’t follow into the bunker). Eventually the military kill all the rookies but take casualties themselves and are wounded. I pick up a few guns and finish off the military survivors. Then make lots and lots of trips to Sidrovich to sell him dozens of assault rifles and armor sets.
I still love breaking Oblivion
Spells that nuke entire rooms? Check.
Jumping over city walls? Check.
Wearing armor that makes you permanently invisible and multiplies all damage you do? Check.I like to do this with games I have several playthroughs completed in. One of my favorites is Bloodborne, with so many sequence breaks and glitches that can be done as soon as you start the game that you can basically tackle whatever area in whatever order you want.
Oooh please enlighten me in your ways
This is the most recent and consistent setup for the COOKIE skip, which is done in the starting clinic area and gives you immediate access to the Forbidden Woods:
Bloodborne Skip to Forbidden Woods (Current Patch)
Once you get that you have access to a ton of late game resources and weapons, and if you combine it with the Shadow AI freeze glitch (which is incredibly easy to do) you can reach Rom in less than 20 minutes, stock up on supplies and upgrades, and break the game wide open.
Lol this is hilarious I’m trying this on my next run
I think I enjoy many games less now than the first time. Learning how the AI works is probably the biggest cause.
Morrowind can be completely broken with its magic system, but I consider that a feature.
I love that you can go full Limitless and make potions that make you make better potions that make you make better potions… until you can make a potion that maxes everything
I must agree, especially with horror games based on enemies (Slender, Amnesia etc.). As a child/teen, I did not have any idea of how enemies worked in most games, which made the game have some sort of aura and be really terrifying. Now that I have more knowledge on how the AI works, the same horror game I used to play are less scary (at least, the way the monster works)
Fable money bug for me
While not exactly what you’re talking about, I was thinking about it a bit ago and I think Vampire Survivor might actually be a good example of “game breaking” as a mechanic. You can get a good synergy of items that create a feedback loop, and use items on the map to get above the item limit and it feels like the fun you get from breaking a game. But, interestingly, it’s balanced around that, and when the enemies suddenly jump in strength you don’t feel so powerful anymore.
Yeah for sure! Slay the Spire and The Binding of Isaac feel very much like that too. So satisfying to break haha.
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Amazing
In Elder Scrolls Oblivion I managed to have a build that basically made the enemies ignore me. Outside of glitches, that’s the worst I broke a game.
Monopoly on the Switch. Basically you can take out a Mortgage on a street and sell it to the AI. But the AI seems to be hard coded to immediately pay off said Mortgage. After that you can buy back the street. Repeat until the AI runs out of money.
I am not allowed to do that when playing with other people… somehow…
Any fallout game: Immediately crank your luck to 10.
I once intentionally used the console in fallout 4 to set all SPECIAL to 10 and unlocked every perk (including the gender-locked ones for the ultimate bisexual survivor) and it was the most bonkers fun I’ve had in a fallout game in a long time.
I recently did a 9 luck run in Fallout 1 (I intended to increase the luck by 1 in-game with a special event) and it can be very broken.
Early combat was very difficult. I had a high agility, but very low strength and low hit point character. I had difficulty fighting molerats. Even with the small guns skill tagged I could only beat molerats by burst firing an SMG. Raiders or anything else toasted me.
But eventually, with my high luck and tagged gambling skill I raised gambling up to the point where I was more statistically likely to win than lose. I walked into a casino, went to a slot machine and held down the enter key. The game has no counter balance to winning at gambling. Casinos have infinite caps and they won’t kick you out for winning.
Once I had something like 100,000 caps I walked over and bought out all the available guns and gear. I might have been low level and physically weak, but I was wearing combat armor and had a burst firing shotgun.
Eventually I got the Red Ryder BB gun. With my low strength I couldn’t use large guns well, but a BB gun was easy to handle. Ammo weighed almost nothing. And I could fire three times in a turn. With my luck, hits were basically guarenteed to be critical. I could explode super mutants with a single shot.
I killed the final boss with a BB gun.
I beat the first act of Inscryption by making a deck that makes infinite ants. I don’t remember exactly how it worked but I could sacrifice a squirrel and just spawn infinite ants. I think you’re supposed to eventually break this but it was still fun as hell.
I broke the Binding of Isaac during the only successful playthrough of it that I’ve ever done. I had the giants foot, which randomly comes down and smashes enemies. I then had an item that made me in invincible when I stood still. So I could just walk into a room, stand in place, and wait for all the enemies to just be killed.
I know I’ve broken Slay the Spire multiple times, especially using the Construct. I think I also found a way to give myself infinite knives with the Silent. Again, I cant remember what specific cards I used but I played that game A LOT.
Ultrakill is one of my favorites because to S rank you need to break the mechanics. Levels and boss fights that took me hours after a few tries take me minutes at most because you go from fighting on a relatively fair field to exploiting every weapon in your arsenal to absolutely wreck your opponent. Im talking stun-locks, traps, and exploits to take a big bad from a threat to an obstacle in the way of your run to the tune of 15 seconds. I love it :P
It’s more like cheating, but I used to be pretty frustrated when losing at Faster Than Light. So I used CheatEngine to give myself a lot of health/money. It was fun at first, I was able to see more things and have so many weapons on my ship. But it did not make up for my lack of skill with the game, and I quickly lost interest with the game, because there was no more challenge.
7 Days to Die, although it isn’t hard. If you go intelligence and go into explosives, you can end up with a ton of turrets and traps, and also use explosives to basically trivalize the hoards.
