Top 10 Weird Rules of Video Games

[Renodox]

Well, here's a list I wanted to post up on another site.  They ask for more description than just the list but I wanted to run this by a few test audiences before submitting it.  What do you think? 

10. Rideable animals are expendable.  You can always find more.

9. Touching bad guys is harmful to your health.

8. It's possible for a human to naturally be so big and fit that bullets can't kill him.

7. It doesn't matter where you're hit.  Even strikes to foot can beat any opponent.

6. Getting punched or bit hurts just as much as being cut with an axe or getting shot.

5. Stamina is never a problem.  Even fighting entire armies of enemies won't tire you out.

4. Women can move faster and jump higher than men.

3. Being fat makes you stronger than being muscular.

2. Eat everything.  Even stuff you find in trashcans and lying on the floor.

1. Bad guys always disappear when you kill them.

[Tabata]

4. Women can move faster and jump higher than men.

  That's not a weird rule. It's simply a compensatory justice to reality 

[Stupot]

Hehe, true.

Also, what about:
11. A good night's sleep heals all injuries and cures all ailments.

[Ghost]

Those aren't even the tip of the iceberg!

* The most powerful weapons are always where the boss is.
* Jumping on a medikit heals you, no matter how many organs you already lost!
* All aliens speak english. If they don't, they project subtitles into the foreground.
* No matter how super you are, chances are great you can not swim.
* Objects disappear as soon as you line three like-coloured ones up.
* Spaceships not only EXPLODE (with SOUND), they also explode into CURRENCY.

Madness! Madness everywhere!!!

[Armageddon]

* The coolest looking weapon is always useless. :'(

[Ghost]

* The coolest looking weapon is always useless. :'(

There is ONE exception to that rule, however 

[Renodox]

I was looking to see if you think I should change around the order of these things.  Other "rules" I have in mind:

11. You never have to hold your breath under water.  Even if you can't breathe there.

12. Objects, regardless of size or weight, never inhibit your movements.

13. Just touching a first aid kit heals you, you don't actually have to use the stuff inside.

14. "The bigger they are, the harder they fall" isn't true.

15. It's necessary to take the whole gun rather than just the ammunition.

16. You never have to use the bathroom, even after days of eating and drinking.

Let me know if you think any of these are more "worthy."

[Bluke4x4]

It's pretty funny the way video games are different from real life! Lots of potential in just this idea.

Here's some I came up with:

* You have more lives than just one.
* Men sometimes shoot at you when this is usually improbable in everyday life.
* It is possible for things to sometimes float in midair!
* Water is a toss-up: it might kill you- it might not!
* Give me an oil and a salchow anyday.
* Days are typically far shorter than 24 hours.
* It is possible to not eat or drink anything for several hundred hours.
* Sometimes you can fly.

[Krazy]

Haha, these are great. There are some totally crazy things in video games these days.

I had a few ideas of my own:

*In fps games you can not look at your feet (what are you? Invisible?)
*You can drive cars and not have to go to a petrol station and refill the car with petrol
*You can sometimes run very fast
*You can jump high
*You don't have to have a shower or wear deodorant and no one will tell you you smell bad
*You can carry many bullets for your gun, where is he keeping them? 

[Domino]

*You don't have to have a shower or wear deodorant and no one will tell you you smell bad

Unless you're are playing the Sim's

[selmiak]

12. Objects, regardless of size or weight, never inhibit your movements.

And this is a great thing. I hate skyrim for doing this and not allowing me to steal thousands of buckets and cabbage around without moiving terribly slow!


*no matter how much stuff you stuff into your pockets they don't even bent a little outwards.
(guybrush stuffing the huge monkey head into his jacket in MI2 comes to my mind here)

*people will answer the same questions over and over again without getting mad at you for not listening.

* (GTA) cheating to get millions of dollars won't attract the police as much as the normal gameplay

* all roads suddenly end in boxes or bushes or accidents that are blocking you from going any further.

[Stupot]

*Ventilation systems are never guarded or alarmed, and are always big enough for a man to crawl through.
*Anyone on your team is (generally) immune from your gunfire.
*You are always the first person to loot any crates/boxes etc... why does nobody else steal stuff before you?
*When you leave a room even two seconds after an NPC, they will have disappeared.
*Every bookshelf has precisely one book on it that will help you in your quest.
*When your injuries are healed, your clothes are also magically sewn back together.

[Renodox]

Top 10 Weird Rules of Video Games

10. Rideable animals are expendable.  You can always find more.

The most famous of these, of course, is Yoshi from the Super Mario Brothers series.  How many times have people jumped off his back sending him to fall to his death just to avoid falling later?  And it doesn't matter, because you just find him again later in the game.  But there are also the dragons that you find in the Golden Axe series.  They too are abandoned or attacked and eventually you find another one so what does it matter?  Strangely, no matter what you do to these animals they don't seem resentful about it either.  So they seem to be quite expendable.

9. Touching bad guys is harmful to your health.

Nearly every platformer has this rule in place.  You walk around the screen and just coming into contact with the enemy hurts your character.  WHY?  Most of the characters that are in these games just walk around at a normal pace and don't seem altogether threatening.  A good example of this: Met from Mega Man.  It's a hard hat that lies on the ground.  And yet, if you walk into it even when it's not even shooting at you, you get hurt.  Why would that hurt you?  Do you stub your toes on it?

8. It's possible for a human to naturally be so big and fit that bullets can't kill him.

This is a rule that tends to pop up in first person shooters.  There are a number of terrorists that run amok shooting at you with big guns and you can shoot them in the head with your gun which can range from a simple handgun to a shotgun.  But does this kill them?  No.  They get a little hurt but they don't die.  Strangely, they usually aren't wearing helmets either.  But somehow, they are able to withstand multiple shots from bullets.  Even after they lose the fight, they usually don't drop dead either, they will fall down off their vehicle or give up the fight but your character will still walk up to them and discover they're alive!  They've been eating more than just their Wheaties.

7. It doesn't matter where you're hit.  Even strikes to the foot can beat any opponent.

Biggest staples here are fighting games and first person shooters, but some platformers are in there as well.  Take the Time Crisis series for example: you shoot your enemies anywhere, even if it's on the leg or the foot the enemies just fall over and die.  Unless you're using mercury bullets that's probably not going to kill someone.  Then of course, in fighting games you almost always have a low kick option.  The character gets kicked on the foot or the leg and they still get hurt.  If you're really good you can beat the opponent into a knock out with just low kicks to the foot.  Kind of odd that they'd get knocked out from getting hit on the foot.  Strange anatomy isn't it?

6. Getting punched or bit hurts just as much as being cut with an axe or getting shot.

This is notorious in First Person Shooters.  Anyone who's played them has played at least one where you get five or so hits that you can take before being taken down.  And of course, you will have enemy after enemy using a number of attacks on you.  Most games have those characters that will pop up just in front of you and punch at you, or slash you with a knife and SOMEHOW this does just as much damage as if you get shot by a gun-toting enemy.  Good example: House of the Dead.  There are plenty of creatures that will just bite you.  Yet, somehow, you are no more or less hurt from that than if an axe wielding zombie takes a successful slash at you.

5. Stamina is never a problem.  Even fighting entire armies of enemies won't tire you out.

In just about any game outside of RPGs hero characters just don't get tired.  How many times have players gone through six or more stages filled with legions of enemies coming out at you?  Does Mario (who's invariably depicted as being overweight) ever get tired of all that running and jumping?  Does Sonic have to stop and rest after running for miles at top speed?  Have you ever seen Haggar from Final Fight have to stop and take a break even though he's fighting an entire gang out of a whole city without a rest?  Nope.  Somehow people just don't tire out in games.

4. Women can move faster and jump higher than men.

Okay, most people know about this one in fighting games, be they beat-em-up sidescrollers or tournament fighters.  You find yourself fighting through a bunch of male bad guys and they are pretty strong but they have a very much grounded fighting style and are almost never faster than your character.  Then, suddenly, you find the first women fighters.  Suddenly, you are fighting against a grasshopper that's almost twice as fast as every male and can jump half a screen's length.  In most cases, if you fight as a female or against a female character, the greatest assets are speed and jumping capability.  Are there any slow, clumsy women fighters in the games?  I've not found one.

3. Being fat makes you stronger than being muscular.

Oh, sure, the final boss characters are usually big, muscle men types but almost every beat-em-up fighting game has its fat guys.   And what remains consistent about fat guys?  Are they slow, easily tired out, weak from lack of proper exercise types?  Nope.  They're able to take more damage than almost any other character.  Furthermore, they can usually leap an impossibly high distance into the air and crush you with their incredible weight.  Leg strength is never a problem.  Even if these people don't jump, they can charge: an ability lost on most characters and ram into an opponent with more force than any other.  Even if first person shooters, if you have a variety of body types for enemies, you'll usually encounter not a muscle man throwing barrels, but a big fat guy throwing them.

2. Eat everything.  Even stuff you find in trashcans and lying on the floor.

Yes, this happens most often in the beat-em-up sidescrollers but there are other games.  The Castlevania series has this in which you just pick up and eat food that drops to the dark, dank and slimy floors of the castle.  Then there are some first person shooters like Wolfenstein where you eat dog food and meals lying on the floor and they heal you.  Does no one in video games know about the five second rule?   Maybe to them it's the five year rule.  Somehow, no one ever gets sick from eating food that lies on the floor.  They don't even get hurt from eating old hamburgers that they find when they smash a trash can.  What the heck?  I'll just eat some trash!

1. Bad guys disappear when you kill them.

This is it!  The ONE thing that has remained throughout the HISTORY of games!  No, not every single game but every nearly every genre has this rule.  Even the first video games where you could kill your opponents had this rule.  Remember Asteroids?  The alien ship would explode if you hit it.  Do the pieces remain floating around in space?  No.  They disappear.  Go ahead a few years to Super Mario Bros.  You kill the Goomba, and after it lays on the floor for a second or two, it disappears.   How about RPGs?  Let's take Fire Emblem: you kill the enemy, they may say a few words, but they fade away and disappear.  In first person shooters like Area 51 you kill the enemies and they disappear in a splash of blood.  Beat-em-up sidescrollers, you say?  How about Double Dragon!  The enemies fall to the ground and flash a couple times and then they disappear.  Even the modern day games have this happen: Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword a game that's just recently out has this rule.  You kill your enemies and they disappear in a flash of purple smoke.  Where do the characters go when they disappear?  Who knows?  But that's how you know you killed the character: they disappear.  If they don't disappear, they're not dead.

[ThreeOhFour]

#304: If you are a lady, the most revealing armour is the one that offers the most protection in battle.

[blueskirt]

#22 Spears are swords with a greater range of damage. They have no tactical advantage over swords or any other melee weapons.

[Blue]

Top 10 Weird Rules of Video Games

1. Bad guys disappear when you kill them.

I know of at least one game where this isn't true. Have you ever played Nemesis the Warlock on C64? Here, the enemies just pile up instead and you use them to climb on to get to the next level 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbnrTjHkAPQ&feature=related

Anyway, quite a funny list. There really is a lot of weird rules in games once you think about it.

[Eigen]

These rules are weird for a reason.

Would you like to play a first-person shooter, where you have to pee every 3-4 hours, eat at least twice a day, drink water, wash your hands and sleep. If you don't crap for a week, you die of constipation.

When you get hit once, you either die or are in so much pain you wish you were dead. When you find a med-kit, you have to take it somewhere where you can rest and use it. Also making sure you clean the wounds not to get them infected, otherwise you die. Also, without pain medications you most likely die.

When carrying a rocket-launcher you can only run very slowly for about a hundred meters. Then you are exhausted. When you are near an explosion, you either go temporarily blind from the flash or deaf from the sound-wave. Without visual or audible aids you most likely die in battle. Grenade shrapnel kills you. Instantly.

You can't climb a ladder while dual-wielding handguns.

The enemy has you outnumbered, you cannot win. You die.

When landing a high jump and hearing a crunch, that means you broke your legs and are unable to move any further. You die.

When climbing in air-vents, you most likely suffocate and die.

After murdering two hundred enemies, you most likely will not be able to function as a social person and eventually go insane. You die.

You are not a handsome looking guy. You die.

[Buckethead]

The game Deadly Premenition manages to avoid a few of these rules:

- You have to eat and sleep or you health goes down slowly.
- You have to refill the gas on your car.
- You can't run for too long are your health will go down.
- You can't aim (or play darts) for too long or you will get hurt.
- NPC actually go places.

But then as Eigen said these things only make the game more anoing.

[NickyNyce]

I don't think anyone mentioned this.

You can always (pause) to answer your text message in the middle of a battle to save the world  ...

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

12. Objects, regardless of size or weight, never inhibit your movements.
And this is a great thing. I hate skyrim for doing this and not allowing me to steal thousands of buckets and cabbage around without moiving terribly slow!

This is also a pet peeve of mine, but for a different reason.  How is it sane or logical that you can carry 449 lbs of something without any recognizable slowdown but that extra pound suddenly makes you move like a Romero zombie?  Seriously, if weight is going to impact your movement speed then let it have a gradual rather than net effect.