Absurd reality in video games produced by gameplay mechanics

[Underseer]

Look, I understand that realism always has to take a back seat to gameplay or else the game won't be enjoyable, but I still can't help noticing that this occasionally produces absurd results.

Just recently I was playing Civilization V as the Maya, whose special unit is an atlatl unit that effectively allows you to have a ranged unit before the discovery of archery. So I attacked a barbarian trireme with an atlatl unit, and the absurdity of the whole thing just jarred me out of the game. First of all, I have a hard time believing that a trireme would ever be close enough to the shore to be in range of an atlatl, but the hex grid prevents fine detail in range determination. Also, even if a trireme were in range of a large group of atlatls, I doubt that the trireme would take more than superficial damage. Any crew on the decks could see them coming and probably have time to dodge behind a railing or something, and the spears simply aren't going to cause any damage to the hull worth noticing.

Of course, Civilization has always been notorious for this kind of absurdities like this. I think the most common one cited is attacking tanks with archery units and doing damage.

Anyway, you got any good ones to share?

 

[bigfield]

Some goldies from RTS:
Infantry that can kill armoured vehicles with rifles.
Infantry that can take several direct hits from a tank cannon.
Structures that are comically under-scale compared to units.

Act of War is the only RTS I've played that has ever tried to resolve the scale problem.

 

[braces_for_impact]

I love when you drop a nuke on a city, and it just keeps on churning out production. That's fun.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Of course, Civilization has always been notorious for this kind of absurdities like this. I think the most common one cited is attacking tanks with archery units and doing damage.

I like the version of Civ where a diplomat could bribe a bomber in mid-flight.

You would probably enjoy Steve Jackson's Games: Murphy's rules.

Exactly this sort of thing, illustrated:

 

[Tars Tarkus]

Of course, Civilization has always been notorious for this kind of absurdities like this. I think the most common one cited is attacking tanks with archery units and doing damage.

Anyway, you got any good ones to share?

I remember a battleship in the original Civ being defeated by a bronze age phalanx. I rationalized that the phalanx taunted the ship close enough to shore that it ran into some lethal rocks.

 

[Achwienichtig]

Just the other night my coworker was telling me about how a pikeman took down his airplane in Civ Revolutions.

 

[KeepTalking]

Also from Civ 5, last night my Shoshone Great Scientist, Albert Einstein, helped them to discover Theology.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Of course, Civilization has always been notorious for this kind of absurdities like this. I think the most common one cited is attacking tanks with archery units and doing damage.

Anyway, you got any good ones to share?

I've lost a IIRC battleship to some primitive unit with no ranged capability.

Or on a more tactical level:

I play Dungeons and Dragons Online. (It's an MMORPG.) The game can behave pretty strangely when you don't have something under your feet. So long as you simply jumped or stepped into space you retain full control of your motion (other than the fact that you are falling.) With feather falling magic active and a jump from a very high place you can go cruising over the map, changing course at will. (How??)

If you didn't initiate things you are given no control over your movement--I have been thrown most of the way across a zone that way. Note that brushing something while in a controlled jump likely turns it into an uncontrolled jump.

For really strange you have to look at what happens when you land on something you can't stand on. There are a lot of such surfaces where they don't want you jumping to some ledge to get a safe spot to attack from--you'll surf to someplace more appropriate. Unfortunately, mobs are treated the same way and mobs can move--they can't arrange things to ensure reasonable behavior. Land on a dense enough pack of mobs and you sit there on top of the pack surfing--and since you bounced off a mob you're in an uncontrolled jump and have no control. You can be killed by a pack of mobs that you can normally easily kill.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Super Mario Bros.

There is no way a plumber could make the second jump in the infamous double B pit in World 8-1.

 

[dendrast]

Look, I understand that realism always has to take a back seat to gameplay or else the game won't be enjoyable, but I still can't help noticing that this occasionally produces absurd results.

Just recently I was playing Civilization V as the Maya, whose special unit is an atlatl unit that effectively allows you to have a ranged unit before the discovery of archery. So I attacked a barbarian trireme with an atlatl unit, and the absurdity of the whole thing just jarred me out of the game. First of all, I have a hard time believing that a trireme would ever be close enough to the shore to be in range of an atlatl, but the hex grid prevents fine detail in range determination. Also, even if a trireme were in range of a large group of atlatls, I doubt that the trireme would take more than superficial damage. Any crew on the decks could see them coming and probably have time to dodge behind a railing or something, and the spears simply aren't going to cause any damage to the hull worth noticing.

Of course, Civilization has always been notorious for this kind of absurdities like this. I think the most common one cited is attacking tanks with archery units and doing damage.

Anyway, you got any good ones to share?

How are triremes against flaming atlatls?

 

[dendrast]

Super Mario Bros.

There is no way a plumber could make the second jump in the infamous double B pit in World 8-1.

Unless he pulls up his pants.

 

[Daioh]

I remember one from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

There was a long highway connecting two parts and it ran along the coastline
I found that if you grabbed a motorbike and ranked up several points of police attention while driving slowly (About half its top speed) along the edge of the road then you could produce an interesting result
because the cops would immediately try to cut off your vehile in a pursuit by swerving in front of you and nudging the front of your car to cause you to crash
But because the motorbike is smaller, and you are going at a lower speed they would compeltely miss your bike and go sailing off into the sea
And there would be a steady stream of them, regular as clockwork all going over the cliff like lemmings
You would hear sirens, they would flash past you at top speed and you watched them fly off into the water

 

[Keith&Co.]

What i hated about the early text games was that you couldn't take any action that the programmer hadn't thought of.
Which would be fine if they provided a list of verbs.
Or if we were telepathic.

In the game of the Empire of the Overmind, we never figured out how one encounter was supposed to go.
<YOU MEET A FRIENDLY DWARF>
Talk to dwarf.
WHAT DO YOU SAY TO THE FRIENDLY DWARF?
It didn't matter. Nothing we said drew a response.
So we tried all sorts of things.
Inspect the dwarf.
YOU DO NOT HAVE A DWARF IN YOUR INVENTORY.
Take dwarf.
YOU CANNOT DO THAT TO A FRIENDLY DWARF
Attack dwarf.
YOU CANNOT DO THAT TO A FRIENDLY DWARF
Fight dwarf.
YOU CANNOT DO THAT TO A FRIENDLY DWARF

Predictably, after half an hour trying to deal with the encounter, someone will type: Fuck the dwarf.
And the game replied:
EEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!

 

[Keith&Co.]

Which reminds me of Goddess Aurora.
In another game, you had to have a certain holy talisman to invoke Aurora. You had to do this at the altar before her fifteen-foot-tall statue.
If you didn't have the talisman, you could do nothing with the obviously-part-of-the-plot statue.
So, predictably, someone would type in the command 'Fuck Aurora.'
AURORA IS NOT AMUSED! the game would say, before the goddess knocked you down to 1 hit point in a fiery blast.

We discovered that you could wish for the goddess' sexual satisfaction anywhere in the dungeon BEFORE you saw the statue in perfect safety. AFTER you saw the statue, if you said Fuck Aurora anywhere in the dungeon, an unamused statue would walk to your location and blast you down to one hit point.

Then we came to realize that you couldn't use the talisman at the altar unless Aurora was behind it. And the statue was still standing at the last place you'd, um, invited her to come to. And there's only one way to get the statue to come to the shrine....