6 People Who Beat Video Games In Hilarious Ways
Many people would call the very concept of "video game achievements" an oxymoron -- what are you achieving, other than deepening the butt-shaped indentation in your couch and ruining your wrists? We at Cracked disagree with those critics. Some gaming feats are legendary precisely because someone spent all that time and effort while expecting nothing in return, except maybe the admiration of their fellow nerds. The least we can do is give it to them.
Completing Fallout 3 As A Baby
The start of Fallout 3 shows you snippets of the protagonist's childhood with their dad, Liam Neeson, until Neeson does a reverse Taken and gets kidnapped. During one of those snippets, you briefly get to play as a toddler -- who, it turns out, is a lot more capable than anyone gave him credit for. If you make a beeline straight for the door you can escape the room, and Neeson won't give a shit. Indeed, the entire game won't give a shit as it proceeds on as it normally would.
Except, you know, you're a baby.
You have to learn to be independent from early on if you have Liam "Tragic Death Scene" Neeson as a dad.
One player called Bryan Pierre decided to find out how much of the game you can play as a baby. The answer? All of it. So what's different? Most importantly, your character will have a high-pitched voice and randomly say "Da-Da," whether you're cannibalizing, murdering, or seducing (just like in real life). Sadly, though, you don't actually look like a baby: you simply look like a tiny version of your adult character, as if you got stuck in the washer for too long.
Still looks more believable than Fallout 4's non-animated burrito baby.
Being petite has its pros and its cons. Pro: Ever tried shooting a baby? It's really hard. As such, a lot of bad guys with guns suddenly graduated from Stormtrooper Academy. Also, enemies who just hit you will often miss, as the game wasn't designed to target someone at shin height.
But on the negative side: It's much easier for them to outrun you since the game moves at, quite literally, crawling speed. Also, babies are really squishy, so you won't have much when it comes to health. Furthermore, accessing doors, computers, desks, anything above knee height really is an arduous task, since every time you want to press a button you have to build a set of rudimentary stairs to reach it.
This is taken to its extreme at the end of the game, where the adorable protagonist has to press a button to save the world but kill himself -- a noble sacrifice that is dragged out as Pierre had to build some stairs out of pots and pans.
"When you write the history books, perhaps leave this part out, yeah?"
The Grand Theft Auto franchise is best known for letting you run over hookers and then shoot them with bazookas from your jetpack, but today's gamers get bored with that sort of thing after just a couple hundred hours. So, it didn't take long for players to start one-upping each other with increasingly radical/deranged in-game stunts, which often require hundreds to thousands of attempts and a comparable quantity of Mountain Dew.
Consider the following clips, which display a level of vehicular control unseen since the days of legal drinking and driving:
Who gave meth to Optimus Prime?
These and similar clips are Blacksmoke Billy's, which isn't an alternative lifestyles hangout, but a YouTube channel devoted to some of the most insane and elaborate tricks you'll see in the virtual world. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Tricks range from things you could probably do yourself after a few beers:
To be clear, you're the guy shitting his pants inside one of those buildings.
... to figuring out how to jump a motorbike onto a fighter jet, presumably the inspiration for and primary plot point in the upcoming Fast And Furious 8: The Fastererest And Furiousestmost.
The "A" in GTA can stand for "aircraft," too.
Others have invented even crazier methods of skydiving, like calculating how to fall through small spaces at high speeds while somehow avoiding any loss of limbs. It's like an extreme version of threading a needle:
And like in the real-life criminal underground, entire squads can make a name for themselves with a carefully planned and executed reckless act. These include the Nomad Union Crew or team Rooster Teeth, who produced a masterpiece to rival the 17th century Flemish masters:
*kisses fingers*
And, again, behind each one of these stunts are hours of preparation and failed attempts. If this is a plan to keep players too busy to kill more digital prostitutes, it's working.
Playing Rock Band With All Instruments (At The Same Time)
Doomed to forever be the Pepsi to Guitar Hero's Coca-Cola, Rock Band has nevertheless managed to attract many devoted fans. Of them, only a small number have the devotion to be able to reach the hardest difficulty, because if you're gonna mangle your fingers playing an instrument, it might as well be the kind that might potentially get you adoring groupies.
And yet, conquering Rock Band on Expert mode still wasn't a big/pointless enough challenge for YouTube user DarthGollumKong, so in 2008 he decided to turn it into One Person Band.
This is what buskers look like in The Jetsons.
Most of us used our plastic guitars, drum kits, and microphones once or twice and then banished them to the back of our closets. Kong (we're assuming "Gollum" is his middle name), on the other hand, puts his fake instruments to good use by playing all three at the same time -- or four, counting the second guitar which serves as a bass.
He borrowed the "join two guitar necks with rubber bands" technique from Slash.
If you're wondering how he can play all those instruments without a bonus pair of arms that he got as DLC, he gets around it with a method as brilliant as it is dorky: tying drumsticks to his shoes. We can only think of a couple of real-life drummers who would pull that off, and they both died of substance abuse in the late '70s. And if you think he's just tapping randomly and still getting by on the easiest mode, here's a video of DarthGollumKong rocking out to "Roxanne" by The Police with the drums on Medium difficulty, vocals on Hard, and bass and guitar on Expert:
We could totally do that. (Tape drumsticks to our shoes.)
OK, perhaps "rocking out" isn't quite the right way to put it. Between the physical demands and the pressure, he has to stay pretty stationary and looks like someone off-camera is forcing him to perform at gunpoint. But hey, who said video games are supposed to be fun?
Skyrim Arrow Trick Shots Are As Difficult As They Are Hilarious
For all the hard work Skyrim's developers put into creating a massive RPG world full of magic and danger, the game will always be associated first and foremost with annoying arrow memes. However, while everyone beat that dead horse to the ground (the joke got old about 72 hours after the release date), YouTuber Kennaay1891 decided to do something more productive with Skyrim's arrows: master their physics to screw with the non-player characters.
Everything that goes up ...
... must eventually ...
... come down on some unsuspecting villager who never did you any harm.
Think about the amount of trial and error that must have been involved in getting the projectile to go up and, 30 seconds later, land on that precise spot -- and Kennaay did it without mods or cheats of any kind. It's pure, old-fashioned nerd persistence. If spending countless hours to get a flaming arrow to hit an innocent lady isn't something you find tasteful, then what about two arrows?
Try not to think about the fact that he shot that second arrow to kill a guy for mourning his friend who wasn't dead yet.
Even when he's shooting at targets in front of him, Kennaay goes the extra mile. Watch this sniper shot so beautiful, it had him teleporting to another part of the map to witness its marvelous landing on the forehead of some poor sightseer:
"Oh, shit, sorry! I was aiming for your dick."
The best part? Although Kennaay's victims might seem random, most of them are actually the same guy, Sven. Why? Because fuck Sven. Fuck him in the eye with a flaming arrow.
"Sven" is actually an ancient form of "Chad."
Of course, as humorous as these videos may be, it's still a little sad that someone would spend so much time in- AAAAARRGGGH, WE'VE BEEN SHOT!!!
Crusader Kings: Conquer The World ... As A Horse
Crusader Kings is a medieval strategy game where the aim is to conquer the world; it's like Civilization, but without the ever-present risk of Gandhi inexplicably nuking you. The whole point is to create an empire via marriage, plotting, and general Game Of Thrones-ing -- but sometimes, you can get an Easter egg that lets you name a horse called Glitterhoof as your ambassador, Caligula-style. This is meant entirely as a joke: Obviously, Glitterhoof can't breed or marry with humans.
And obviously, one player (called Nanomaster) decided he was going to find a way to get around that and make horses conquer the world.
Hey, if the guy from The Apprentice can run for office ...
Nanomaster's path to equine domination began by making Glitterhoof a Bishop, but even that required some political maneuvering. First, the horse was converted to Catholicism and given land -- this meant that when the old Bishop conveniently died, Glitterhoof would be the highest ranking Catholic around. When that happened, Glitterhoof became the new Bishop and brought in his own advisers ... who were also horses, but had none of The Hoof's limitations. These horses could marry and have kids, while Glitterhoof was still a virgin (no wonder he went into religion).
Suddenly, the world had sentient, ambitious horses who were totally DTF. What happened next was Game Of Thrones as played by Mr. Ed. A new horse called Clever Hans was forcefully placed as the new lord of Tangiers, and he brought in his own advisers (so, more horses). Meanwhile, the king's eldest son was married to a lively teenaged mare called Buttermilk.
He looks like the sort of person who would marry a horse even if not forced to.
Obviously, marrying the king's son angered a lot of closed-minded people who just don't understand bestiality. What happened then was every ally and rival systemically attacking them, getting defeated, getting overthrown, and getting replaced with, you guessed it: horses.
Just as our racist uncle foretold on Facebook.
As such, horsekind had basically taken over ... but not officially. The old king died and his son became king, making his horse wife, Buttermilk, queen. They had three children: two human sons and a younger horse daughter (no centaurs, sadly). Obviously, the sons had to go, and the king was too busy chasing literal horse tail to give a shit about his usurping daughter.
No, really.
The daughter, called Rainbow Dash because of course she goddamn was, spent her childhood bettering herself, learning about military tactics, politics and etiquette. Her rise to heir was surprisingly easy, as one of her brothers died of illness and the other topped himself-- wait a second, did George R.R. Martin plagiarize this?
As such, when her father died, Rainbow Dash struck a monumental achievement for feminism, horsekind, and the much maligned My Little Pony fanbase:
Long live the Queen! Or as long as horse lifespans last, anyway.
That was the hard part; the rest of the conquest was just a series of brutal wars as Queen Rainbow Dash brought back Christianity, dispensed of the remaining two-legged freaks, and reformed the Roman Empire in name of horse-manity.
Playing Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time Blind ... Literally
Engineering student Terry Garret has been completely blind ever since he was 10 years old, but he never let that little detail stop him from playing video games. And he doesn't just finish them: he conquers them. All it takes him is extensive trial and error, borderline superhuman senses, and an OCD-like compulsion to save his game every few seconds in case he messes up.
As a kid, Garret started playing Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus on PlayStation by listening to sound cues and visualizing the game's world in his mind until he'd mastered it. Like Daredevil, except not full of shit.
At least he didn't have to deal with his mom telling him not to sit too close to the TV.
Soon he had expanded to other gaming franchises, only asking for help when he needed someone to read text or explain confusing cutscenes to him. When the challenge of beating certain levels of Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time blindfolded went viral (why, even Cracked talked about it), Garret raised his hand and said "I can do something better than that." You might think he's doing basically the same thing, but covering your eyes to play a game you already know by heart is a piece of cake compared to going into it literally blind like he does.
And so, Garret began his 46-part Zelda playthrough on YouTube -- which, yes, includes all bosses and the infamous Water Temple (aka, the point when most people with working eyes get frustrated and quit the game).
The most essential item in this level is the GameFAQs tutorial you'll inevitably have to consult.
And just in case you don't feel inadequate enough about your own gaming abilities by now, Garret also rules at Guitar Hero. He memorizes songs by going into practice mode and blindly strumming the guitar until he hits notes, and then just learns to play them back almost flawlessly (even in Hard mode).
OK, that's just showing off now, dude.
Adam Koski can also be found talking about the craziest sci-fi movie ever. Follow Tiagosvn's Twitter here.
For more people whose eyes and thumbs probably hurt a whole lot, check out The 6 Most Mind-Blowing (And Pointless) Gaming Achievements and The 5 Most Insane Things Ever Accomplished In A Video Game.
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