Tag Archives: Fallout: New Vegas

Random Moments in Gaming

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While video game programmers put a lot of work into making their creation suitable for the public, there are very few games that are perfect upon release. There are some titles that can present you with an developmental oversight that not many gamers come across. Or you can create a situation within the game that is unique to you.

I’d like to share my list of WTF moments I’ve either encountered or instigated in some of the games I’ve played. Each entry will feature the game title and a subtitle summing up the situation.

1) Far Cry 3’s The driver must really hate these guys – When it comes to first-person shooters or role-playing games, I am someone who prefers stealth or killing from a distance. In the case of Far Cry 3, this approach allowed me to see something extremely unexpected and funny. I was positioned on a cliff overlooking a beach, and there were a couple enemy soldiers patrolling the area between me and my objective. I was ready to take them down with a bow and arrow when I saw a jeep – being driven by their comrades, I might add – turn the corner and start driving through. I quickly chose to bide my time and wait for the vehicle to pass by. What I didn’t expect was for the two guys on foot to get run over and killed instantly. To make it even more hysterical, the car didn’t even slow down or deviate from its path. Of all the moments that made the list, this is the only one I could easily build a story around.

2) Skyrim’s Because I literally didn’t see the bridge – Generally, I am a very observant person – a trait that’s served me well in my everyday life and in video games. That doesn’t stop my keen eye from occasionally failing me. One of my biggest blunders occurred when I wandered into Sovngarde, the mystical realm in the fantasy adventure game of Skyrim, for the final fight of the game. It should have been impossible to miss the giant bridge leading to a temple in the center of the map. I somehow developed tunnel vision when I got to this stage and ended up walking off the edge of a waterfall in an attempt to get to the building.

3) Skyrim’s Magic-user turned creepy stalker – One mission in Skyrim entailed that I sneak into a library, grab a magic scroll, and get out by any means necessary. This proved difficult when a sorceress and two guardsmen entered the library the instant I grabbed the scroll. I was determined to try to get out undetected and spent some time sneaking my way past the patrolling guards. I thought I was home free when I turned into the entryway. I was surprised to see the sorceress seated between me and the door, but I quickly backed away into the shadows. Thankfully, she didn’t see me even though the movement made her get up and wander into the library. However, she did see one of the guards, which worked in my favor thanks to a wacky game glitch. For whatever reason, she started dogging the poor guard as he moved back and forth across the room and repeatedly said to him, “You need to leave.”

4) PUBG’s Yes, I am this easy to kill – I have only been playing the online multiplayer deathmatch game, Player Unknown Battlegrounds (PUBG) for about two months and am still very much an amateur. My general tactic is to sneak my way through the match and avoid conflict as much as possible. There are two things that need to be said so that the following anecdote makes sense. First, any player can get a speed boost by finding and consuming energy drinks or painkillers. Second, I am not very good at paying attention to my surroundings. That being said, I was running through an open field and was feeling fortunate because no one was shooting at me. The next thing I know, another player with a speed boost sprinted up behind me and beat me to death with a frying pan before I could react.

5) Fallout: New Vegas’ A deathclaw’s hidden weakness – Ever since I started playing the Fallout series, I have been terrified of deathclaws – the deadliest creatures in the game. I am scared to face just one of them, let alone a horde. In Fallout: New Vegas, one mission entailed that I clear out a quarry that had been taken over by 7-10 of these monsters. After several failed attempts to take them out without getting killed, I inadvertently discovered a game exploit that worked in my favor. They were virtually unable to get near me if I climbed onto one of the boulders spread throughout the quarry before they saw me. The one time I attempted this tactic after being spotted, the deathclaws easily followed me up there. One thing’s for sure – it’s funny watching them run in circles while I slowly gun them down.

6) Resident Evil Revelations 2’s Boss forfeits the fight (spoiler alert) – RE Revelations 2 isn’t the best game in the series, but it is more suspenseful and horrific than most of the recent entries. The game has a variety of different monsters that are hard to put down. Especially Neil, the traitorous human rights employee who sold out his co-workers for genetic experimentation. Unfortunately for him, Neil is in turn betrayed by the person who put him up to this and is transformed into a formidable hulking creature. I faced a bit of a problem trying to defeat him on the medium difficulty setting for the game. After getting killed by Neil several times, I decided to switch tactics and I ran underneath an overhang on the eastern edge of the map to avoid one of his jump attacks. Oddly, this resulted in Neil flat out disappearing and my playable character, Moira, speaking a line of dialogue that signified the end of the fight. I couldn’t immediately comprehend what happened, so I reloaded the game from the last savepoint and started the battle over. I was pleasantly surprised when the same thing occurred when I ducked underneath the eastern overhang. I don’t know if this exploit would work for everyone, but it is an easy way to bypass a tough fight.

7) Dead Island’s Being cautious just bit me in the ass – In addition to the zombie populace in Dead Island, you must also contend with criminals who will fight you for needed resources. At some point in the game, I ventured into the stockroom of a distribution company in search of food. I’d fought my way through a horde of zombies to get here, and I had to eliminate the criminals shooting at me before I could enter the stockroom. I thought I was perfectly safe firing from the cover of the entryway. I had only one hoodlum left to take out when I suddenly heard a noise behind me. I turned just in time to see one of the exploding zombies had crept up on me unnoticed. It blew up a second later and took me down with it.

I’m sure there are other games where I’ve either done something or witnessed something unexpected. I have other WTF moments in previous blogposts – referenced below – I’ve written. For now, here are the scenarios I remember that really stand out. I hope to collect many more good anecdotes from future games that I can write about.

I hope you all enjoyed this article. If so, be sure to tune in next month for my list of the worst games I’ve played.

For more of my video game follies, check out the following blogposts.

http://deadwoodwriters.org/2018/01/05/first-impressions-of-not-a-hero-and-end-of-zoe/

http://deadwoodwriters.org/2017/06/05/first-experience-with-mass-effect-andromeda/

http://deadwoodwriters.org/2017/02/05/the-top-ten-things-i-love-about-the-mass-effect-series/

http://deadwoodwriters.org/2016/07/05/fallout-4-wtf-moments/

http://deadwoodwriters.org/2016/06/05/fallout-3-wtf-moments/

 

 

My list of Top Ten Quirkiest Video Game Characters

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I’ve played dozens of different video games in my lifetime and have come to count hundreds of different characters as endearing. But there are also a handful that particularly stand out and whom I count as the most memorable. What follows is my list of the top ten characters who make me smile or laugh whenever they come to mind.

10) The Meeps (Quest for Glory)
Of the many quirky characters present in the first Quest for Glory game, these furry subterranean creatures are, in my opinion, the funniest. The player needs only to obtain a patch of green fur from them for a potion, but the game designers threw in a red herring on how to get the fur. The player has the option to try and attack them. But any attempt to do so bears a striking resemblance to a poorly-played game of Whack-A-Mole.

9) Kinzie Kensington (Saints Row 3 and 4; Saints Row: Gat out of Hell) – (spoiler alert)
Saints Row is a franchise revolving around a street gang that started off serious, but each new installment has since gotten more silly and over-the-top in a good way. I never played the first two games and am not even sure what drew me to the third one. But it is a series I have grown to love due to its many colorful characters. The one I found the most quirky — at least until the fourth game was released — was paranoid cyberhacker Kinzie Kensington. Of all the characters in Saints Row 3, I find her the most eccentric and interesting. What makes her stand out the most is her dual personality. At times, she comes off sweet and someone you just want to give a hug. And on the other hand, she is feisty and has one wicked mean streak. For instance, after Kinzie delivers a vicious beating to one of the antagonists in the fourth game, she rolls off him, adopts a serene Indian-style pose, and in a bubbly tone tells her friends, “I’m done.”

8) Special Agent Tanya Adams (Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2)
What I really enjoy about the Red Alert series is it takes place in an alternate history where Hitler was assassinated, the Holocaust never happened, and Soviet Russia became a more dangerous force to be reckoned with. What I love even more is the spunky female commando Tanya Adams (portrayed in the second game’s cinematics by actress Kari Wuhrer) who acts as a frontrunner and one-woman army against Soviet soldiers. She adds a unique energy to the roleplaying strategy game, and her gleeful battle cry of “Yeah, baby!” when she prepares to take out enemy infantry or take down nuclear silos is one of the main reasons I adore this game as much as I do.

7) Simon the Killer Ewok (Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds) – (spoiler alert)
Cheat codes have been included in video games ever since the early days in the seventies and eighties, and serve as a way to win with minimal effort. But I don’t know of very many games that feature a character who is only generated through use of a cheat code. Pressing enter and typing “SimonSays” in the game, Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds will give the player control of a single Ewok called Simon who can decimate any enemy army, soldiers and vehicles alike, all by himself. Call me crazy, but the majority of my time playing this game was spent delightedly watching Simon go to town against Imperial or Rebel forces.

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Clockwise from top left – the Meeps, Paul, John Smethells, Yes Man (photo credits at end)

6) Conrad Verner (the Mass Effect trilogy)
Behind every great hero is a wannabe who strives to live up to the hero’s ideals. I’ve seen that formula used in countless stories, but the Mass Effect series puts an interesting spin on it by giving the wannabe delusions of grandeur. Conrad Verner’s antics, ranging from asking for inclusion in an elitist military unit to unwittingly promoting a terrorist organization as the “good” guys, and Shepherd’s reactions to those antics get me chuckling every time. As with many of the characters in the trilogy, his survival at certain points throughout the three games hinges on choices made by the lead protagonist, Commander Shepherd. The sci-fi video game trilogy has tons of interesting characters to interact with, but there is something about lovable loser Conrad that adds an extra special element to the overall story.

5) Potato-Glados (Portal 2) – (spoiler alert)
The basic premise of the Portal games is that you’re playing as a character being used as a proverbial guinea pig in a science facility and made to solve logistical puzzles as you wander from one testing chamber to the next. And all the while, an insane artificial intelligence (A.I.) is monitoring and trying to dictate your every move. Through all of the first game and half of the second one, that A.I. is Glados, until another A.I. called Wheatley conspires to take her place as the governing source of the facility. Though Wheatley turns evil once he has ultimate power in his grasp, he still turns the tables on Glados in a very amusing way – by attaching her CPU and voice modulator to a common potato. Potato Glados’ lack of mobility and desire to regain control causes her to team up with the protagonist she previously tried to kill. What I find most hysterical about Portal 2 is that you literally have a root vegetable as an ally for half of the game.

4) John Smethells, the “omniscient” steward (Titanic: Adventure out of Time)
I’ve seen many games offer a tutorial to give the player a sense of what buttons to use. But the way the period-piece mystery game, Titanic: Adventure out of Time, presents it is very comical. Minutes into the game, your protagonist is greeted by a steward named John Smethells inside a nicely rendered replica of one of the ship’s deluxe rooms. Answering yes to his question on whether you need help finding your way around causes him to break character and start talking about which buttons on the keyboard are needed to move, interact with other characters, or pick up important objects. What further shatters the immersive experience is he also gives you instructions on how to register the game online. The fact that all this info about computers and the Internet comes from a guy dressed like a 1912 ship steward couldn’t be more hysterical.

3) Yes Man (Fallout: New Vegas)
Of the four characters to ally with when it comes to seizing control of the casino strip in Fallout: New Vegas, Yes Man is by far my favorite. Though he is a dangerous robot called a Securitron who has been reprogrammed by the duplicitous casino kingpin Benny to stage a coup, Yes Man’s allegiance is prone to shift to anyone who interacts with him. As Yes Man cheerfully puts it when first met by the main protagonist, “I was programmed to be helpful and answer any questions I was asked. I guess no one bothered to restrict who I answer questions for. That was probably pretty dumb, huh?” The fact that he’s stuck with a permanent smiley face and sounds so cheery even when he says something particularly dark really cracks me up.

2) Muggy (Fallout: New Vegas – Old World Blues)
When the player ventures to an area called Big Mountain in the Old World Blues expansion pack, he or she find the main hub of a science facility at its core houses a number of everyday appliances given artificial intelligence and unique personalities. While other A.I.s in the hub, such as the toaster or jukebox, are entertaining, the mobile obsessive-compulsive little robot called Muggy steals the show. Like Yes Man, Muggy is a Securitron, but is much smaller than any other one found in the game. In addition to his small stature, Muggy has a permanent cartoonish teacup displayed on his face monitor. He was deliberately programmed to be obsessed with cleaning the ceramic cups and occasionally curses the scientist who made him this way. Much as he might hate his compulsion, he is doomed to drone on and on about it. Best quote: “Mugs, Mugs, Mugs. Mugs, Mugs. Mug-a-mug. Mug-a-mug. Mugs! God, why can’t I stop singing this f***ing song?!”

Last but not least, here is my all-time favorite quirkiest video game character:

1) Paul (Saints Row 4)
Much of the plot for Saints Row 4 entails the systematic destruction of a virtual world built to enslave humanity. This task falls into the hands of the leader of a street gang. Step one: the leader must rescue his or her teammates from each one’s individual simulated hell. Of all the virtual “nightmares” encountered, the one built for Pierce Washington takes the cake. This particular simulation kicks off with a battle against human-sized energy drinks – or rather humans dressed up as purple aluminum cans. And just when you think it can’t get any crazier, in comes Paul, a gargantuan soda can that roars and has the ability to shoot laser beams from his eyes… It’s hard to find the words to do this character or battle justice, so here is a YouTube video of that, courtesy of one of my favorite gamers out there, RadBrad.

If you enjoyed this list, feel free to leave a comment below. And be sure to tune in next month for “My Top Ten Favorite Badass Video Game Characters.”

Photo Credits:
The Meeps
Yes Man
Steward
Paul

Fallout 3: WTF Moments

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Despite now being an avid fan and having logged over 300 collective hours of gameplay, I had zero knowledge of the Fallout video game series until I took a game design class at a local community college. One of my classmates played a clip of the first twenty-some minutes of Fallout 3 while pointing out elements that made it a well-designed video game. The notion of playing as a character who lived their entire life in a fallout shelter venturing out into an unknown world in search of a missing parent was enough to intrigue me. I got hooked and wanted to experience more of this world.

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First view of the world outside the shelter

I’ve since come to learn that I am a lot more cautious and patient than most players. I spent the majority of my time trying to go unseen by the game’s dangerous monsters, robots and humans while wandering through this post-apocalyptic wasteland. And sometimes, what I would find more frightening than some of the mutated creatures were the glitches that seemed to pop up unexpectedly. After much thought, I decided to put together a list of 10 of the most jarring or bizarre things I encountered from Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas.
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1) Didn’t see that coming
I knew from my classmate’s demonstration that one set of creatures I could expect to encounter would be giant black ants. I ran into some early on in my gameplay and didn’t find them all that difficult to kill. A few good hits with a melee weapon–my general favorite at the time–made short work of them. Then I acquired a quest to clear a town of giant fire ants. The first one I saw upon reaching this town was red instead of black. I didn’t see any other difference until it got close. Before I knew it, my entire screen and vision was filled with flames that the fire ant was spewing at me.

2) Think I just had a heart attack!
All enemy units appear as a red blip on the radar, but you can only see the blips present in whatever direction you’re facing. That being said, I was crouched and sneaking through a wide, open area with the computer’s volume off when the word “Danger” flashed on the screen. This means that something is moving in to attack. I could only see one blip on my radar. Since I was playing without any sound and unable to hear anything coming, I watched intently for several seconds to try and see what was approaching me. When I failed to spot anything, I turned around…and a molerat’s face filled the entire screen with its mouth open.

3) Do I have to fight this thing?
I had exercised so much caution during my first play-through of Fallout 3–even sometimes taking detours to avoid a fight–that I didn’t see or even know about the game’s most dangerous creature until very late in the main questline. I was trying to escape from an underground facility known as Raven Rock when I came upon this large crate at the top of a staircase. I used a nearby computer terminal to open the crate and watched in terror as this demonic-looking creature with long sharp talons stepped out. Fortunately, it didn’t see me and it moved away to attack the enemy units further down the hallway. It took me three to four minutes of sitting by the crate before I worked up the courage to move.

4) The mother of bad ideas….
One of the side quests for Fallout 3 entails retrieving an important document being guarded by a dangerous cyborg inside a small office. I didn’t have the skill set needed to persuade him to hand over the document without a fight. After several rounds of trying and failing to beat this cyborg, I got frustrated enough to try an alternate–and very stupid–tactic. In a nutshell, firing a mini-nuke launcher in a small, enclosed space is effective at both killing and committing suicide.

5) This area is totally f***ed!
There is a location in Fallout: New Vegas called Black Mountain where so many odd things occur that I call it Game Glitch Central. Repeat occurrences of seeing monsters literally appear out of thin air right next to me, my character being randomly thrown back down to the base of the mountain path, and game crashes, among other problems, eventually made this an area to avoid at all costs, for me at least.

6) Can’t we talk this over?
When I first started playing Fallout 3, it was on a laptop with a mouse touchpad. The touchpad was highly sensitive and more than once, the gun I was using would discharge when I least expected it. This really became a problem when I was roaming around one of the friendly wasteland settlements and accidentally shot someone. The next thing I know, I had every single adult inhabitant running at me with guns drawn ready to take me down.

7) Oops!
Being a gamer who prefers stealth over frontal assaults, I had adopted a unique tactic over time. With a high Sneak skill and decked out in the Chinese Stealth Armor that made me invisible when crouched, I planted land mines in the path of any enemy unit or monster I came across to take them out. This tactic didn’t work as well when several Enclave soldiers made a turn at an intersection before reaching the mine. I maneuvered to get ahead of them undetected and planted another land mine without picking up the first. Once they had been taken out, I was looting the bodies for good stuff to sell when I heard this booming sound behind me. When I turned around, I saw I’d inadvertently killed a merchant who was passing through the same intersection.

8) Reload required?
The first expansion pack for Fallout: New Vegas, called Dead Money, took you to a highly toxic area centered in and around a derelict casino. The overall mission requires the player to access the casino’s vault in search of treasure. For me, it was a very time-consuming and dangerous undertaking. At one point, I had to escape from a radio tower that had half a dozen monsters roaming about outside. This wouldn’t have been a problem if I wasn’t at only one bar of health, had no healing items, and very little ammo; all it would take to kill me would be one or two hits. It took some doing, but somehow I made it out of that situation in one piece. A good thing too, since the last time I had saved was about 50 minutes of gameplay earlier.

9) This is beyond freaky.
I don’t know how many players, if any, encountered the unique game glitch that I did in Fallout 3. Strangely, this one only seemed to target a specific creature, the Yao Guai, a mutant black bear. When killed, it would sometimes fall into the ground and then spring back out with a distorted, taffy-like appearance. I sort of wish I had a picture of this effect, but it was always unnerving enough to send me running off in another direction.

10) WTF?
One of the weirdest glitches I encountered in Fallout 3 was when I approached one of the many mountains and was seeing two red blips on my radar. It’s a good thing I looked up to see the sky, or I would have missed seeing two black shapes launching into the air. My initial, irrational thought was that something was jumping over the mountain to attack me. I looked around wildly until my gaze landed on my A.I. companion; he was holding his gun at a perfect 90 degree angle. I watched him stand in that position for a couple seconds. Then, lowering his gun, he said, “Oh, they got away.” I later found out that there’s a glitch that randomly launches some monsters into the stratosphere.
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Prior to my hours spent playing Fallout 3, I don’t believe I had ever played an open-world game. I’ve since come to love the idea of exploring a large map to your heart’s content and being given the option to just ignore the main game story indefinitely. Despite how many hours I spent playing and replaying Fallout 3, I don’t think I explored every nook and cranny on the map. The world of Fallout: New Vegas was a smaller scale, but gave the player the option to gamble on slot machines or card tables set it apart from its predecessor.

Yet, each game had its flaws. I don’t feel the main story of Fallout 3 was compelling enough to make me want to play it over and over. Fallout: New Vegas does have an interesting plot and gave the player the option to become the ruler of the Casino Strip, but it doesn’t have a big enough map in which to roam around.

Even though I may never go back to playing the two previous games, especially after the recently-released Fallout 4 has eclipsed them by far, I can still look back fondly on those moments that made 3 and New Vegas a particularly memorable experience for me.