Patient Gamers

In Battlezone II single player, there is a custom map called "Moon 2000" that I love. It is a huge, open lunar crater, with a big flat ledge around the outside. It is difficult to get your recycler up onto the ledge, but I will take the time to do it. Then, I build a huge, sprawling base up in a flat corner. Absolutely surrounded with defenses. To the computer, an impenetrable fortress. To me, an experimental playground.

I have an area that I take enemy ships i have sniped the pilots out of, where I perform weapons and explosives testing. I have a whole series of nav points set up where I can go out and hunt for more enemy ships, and I can direct my tugs to come pick them up and take them back to base entirely by keyboard (they are dumb and will get stuck if you send them directly to base). It's not a matter of beating the computer. That could be done easily. It's purely the joy of collecting samples for my research. I have taken my findings, and have deployed them against my brother.

We would typically play X-Mod 3.3. That adds nuclear silos. We, as gentlemen, have an agreement not to use them. Same with APCs. However, naquada bombs were still fair game. Those have a 30 second timer, and give you a notification that shows their exact location so you do have a chance to destroy them. One thing I found that I was only able to use once, was my discovery that the X-Mod probe Droid could have its forcefield replaced with a naquada bomb. So, I made 50. Had to make 50 naquada bombs, too. It took forever. But, finally it was time to attack. The probes are so small and fast, they didn't show up on his radar until it was too late. Their small size and speed helped most slip through his defenses. Suddenly, upwards of 30 naquada bomb notifications flood his screen. I can imagine the confusion then shock he must have felt. The horror that even if he destroyed one per second, it still wouldn't be enough. One was enough to take out his recycler. The bombs went off. Almost all of them. It was a good sized base, with healthy defenses. The bombs detonated in quick succession, leveling it entirely.

That tactic was immediately outlawed. But I discovered other deadly weapon combos to unleash on him. I still have and play the same save game of my test site, decades later. For what was intended to be like, a 30 minute battle against the computer.

Not sure if this counts, because I'm not sure if there is a wrong way to play Fallout. I am going through New Vegas again, but for the first time in years. Completely disregarding the main storyline. Just wandering the Mojave, helping people as I go. Like David Carradine in Kung Fu. Mostly trying to do things peacefully, and gain as much karma as I can. Completely opposite of how I normally play Falmouth game. I need all that karma to offset how many people I've eaten, which is tremendous. Don't die around my character if you want an open casket. I gave myself lockpick and science skills via the command line, because this playthrough is about my interest in where the storyline take me, not about grinding to be able to open a lock.

New Super Mario Bros. (For the Nintendo DS), in the multiplayer battle mode.

There is a multiplayer mode where you fight over collecting stars in 6 different maps, using the main game’s mechanics and powerups.

In one of these maps, there are bullet bill launchers. One of the powerups is a mini mushroom that makes you tiny, and when you are tiny you just harmlessly bounce of enemies when you jump on them instead of killing them. That lets you ride the bullet bill, repeatedly bouncing off it. The multiplayer maps loop, so you do this indefinitely, and every time you get back to the launcher, it will add another bullet to your train.

My brother and I would deliberately avoid collecting stars, and instead try to make the longest bullet train and try to stay in the air as long as possible.

When i was a kid, every RTS skirmish game was about building an empire and keeping in control the CPU opponent in a small space. At some point it was more like playing a city building game.

I like to look for secrets in Action Half-Life maps

Probably all of them... I mostly play single player games, which I either mod, and/or edit memory/save games to skip grindy parts. I am there for the story, exploration and puzzles.

By the most different way I play, would be Beyond All Reason, where I mostly just spectate public matches, since I am pretty sure I would be stomped, and to get good at it, might be out of my abilities. But watching is fun.

I doubt it. I can say I played a ridiculous amount of blitzball in final fantasy 10. Like I very well may have spent more time playing blitzball than the main game.

I was never a fan of how StarCraft 1 is supposed to be played.

It had a map editor that allowed scripting and people used it to make tons of other games inside of StarCraft like tower defense games, drawing party games like you would see decades later on mobile, and RPGs of every franchise imaginable. There's literally thousands of unique games out there on archive websites.

Picking up taxi passengers in GTA V is fun. Especially when I drive them off a cliff.

I love just driving around doing nothing in Cyberpunk 2077.

Not me, but there’s a great example of this in chess.

There’s an opening called the Bongcloud. You move the pawn in front of your king out for your first move, and then for your second move you move your king up a square. It’s memed as being the strongest opening possible, but it’s actually almost the worst 2 opening moves you can possibly make. Because modern chess does have a large online component and the current best players are young and like memes, it has been played in tournaments, which means that if you play it in an up to date chess programme the programme will name it as the Bongcloud.

A lot of people seem to think that it’s called the Bongcloud because you’d have to be stoned to play it. But almost all chess openings are named after one of three things: a person, a place, or an animal. In this case, the Bongcloud is named after a person - Lenny Bongcloud.

Lenny Bongcloud is a now-inactive user of chess.com. He would always open with the moves described above. That’s because, unbeknownst to them, Lenny wasn’t playing the same game as his opponents. They were trying to checkmate him. He was trying to walk his king to the opposite side of the board as quickly as possible. If he gets checkmated, he loses. If he gets his king to the other side of the board he counts it as a victory and resigns.

So, yeah. One of the oldest known games in the world has an opening the “official” name of which comes from a jokey alias adopted by someone who was deliberately playing the game wrong.

I really like Dark Souls/Elden Ring multiplayer PvP. I especially like Dark Souls 3 and it's still pretty active, at least on PC! Hosts can choose to be invaded by intentionally using an ember and the dried finger and even try to "gank" the invader by teaming up with other players to fight them with a massive advantage. It's fun to invade these worlds and have a duel, or try to overcome a gank. I got pretty decent at fighting, spacing, parrying, weapon-swapping during animations for massive critical damage, etc.

But the game will also ember you after beating bosses, opening you up to invasions even if you didn't want that. And invading is such an aggressive act that I don't find it fun to hunt down and kill someone who doesn't even want to PvP. So when I encounter someone who very obviously doesn't want to fight me (and I can't entice them to attack), I'll just follow them around in underwear or a crazy outfit, staying out of the way and gesturing and yelling by using the carvings at all the PvE enemies they kill. You can also drop items for other players. It's a silly, time-wasting thing to run around until the host goes to fight a boss and you get kicked out of their world...

I place most MMOs as Auction House PvP.

When I regularly played Need for Speed: Most Wanted (the old one from the 2000s), I often intentionally didn't escape the cops at low wanted levels in order to get to higher wanted levels. Not sure this counts because it's basically what you have to do if you want to have fun in this game...

Recently I've been playing a lot of EA FC 25, and when I'm already clearly winning (or losing), I usually commit a lot of fouls just because I can.

Hollow Knight and Silk Song. I put an unlimited jump mod on. There's too much back and forth from getting lost or finding hidden area and im trash at anything platforming.

I wanted to play a Mass Effect game, but I suck at cover-shooters. So I put it on easy and ran around punching my way through the game.

I love factory games. I have over a thousand hours in Factorio.

I've almost entirely avoided trains. I just build conveyer belts everywhere. Huge long world-spanning conveyer belts. I just dont like having to think about trains, when conveyer belts are so simple to use.