I have been a video gamer since growing up as a kid (back in the 1980's), with my first game system being the classic NES, and I have played many different games since then. These games includes: Battletoads, Super Mario Bros, Sonic, Mega man, first person shooter games, roleplaying games, online games (such as Adventure Quest), and plenty of other hit games out there. Of course, I have also played plenty of twisted games too and some of them are surprisingly fun, humorous, and sometimes even popular, and in this article, I will talk about at least 5 of them.
Game #1 - Become a "thug" in the Grand Theft Auto Series
Ever wondered what it might be like living the life as a thug and getting involved in organized crime (such as gangs) without actually becoming a criminal? In the Grand Theft Auto series (with the latest installment being The Ballad of Gay Tony), you do just that. The GTA universe is a popular roleplaying game, usually based in New York City (also known as Liberty City, though some games feature other cities such as Miami in Vice City and Los Angeles in San Andreas) where you usualy control a thug (such as Nikko in GTA 4) and do missions for various crimbe bosses throughout the city. Some quests involves petty crimes such as stealing a prized car that a certain crime boss wants, while other missions may have you assasinate people that have crossed the criminal organization you are a part of, such as delinquents. In GTA San Andreas, for example, Carl Johnson joins the Grove Street gang and gets involved in a gang war with rival gangs, such as the Ballas (though he also works for crime bosses such as El Salvador, Doctor Rosenburg, as well as a corrupt government agent named, Mike Torreno to name a few). Many of the newer games also have plenty of side missions you can do, such as spraying graffiti on select buildings in San Andreas, take on multiple girlfriends (CJ for example, can have up to 6 girlfriends), as well as doing smuggling missions (such as hauling freight from the badlands to Las Venturas while dodging police officers in San Andreas). Of course, on the side if you rather just play for fun, you could always go on rampages in the game, where you can steal cars, get a little trigger happy, obtain wanted stars and drive the local police crazy, drive like a maniac around the city, as well as trying to get your guy killed. By the way, you never really have to worry about getting busted or wasted in the game as your guy will simply respawn at the nearest hospital or police station, only to go on another rampage once more (by the way, never try this in real life a this aspect is very unrealistic of course). Similar games: Saints Row, Gun and Bully
Here are some interesting stuff you can do in the GTA univers that you can't get away with in real life:
Your primary form of transportation are cars you jack from unsuspecting people, and you can usually get away with it unless if there is a cop near by (who will try to bust you if he sees you jacking a car).
Cops will simply bust you, take your weapons and some of your money as a brige, and simply release you for even the most henious offenses (such as going on rampages). And when you get released, you can do more crimes as well, with the same results. Imagine doing that stuff in real life. You would probably go to jail for a very long time (or worse depending on the offense) for similar crimes committed in real life.
If your guy dies, he will simply respawn at a nearby hospital.
In GTA San Andreas, you can have up to 6 girlfriends at a time without having to worry about them getting jealous. In real life, trying to take on multiple girlfriends is quite risky as they do get jealous (at least from a guy's perspective of course), and even the slightest form of disloyalty (such as cheating) can lead to disasterous results on a relationship, as was the case for Scott towards the end of the third season of the reality TV series, "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" when Kourtney learns that Scott was cheating on her (though luckily for him, the two seemed to have gotten back together by season 4).
And plenty of other odd stuff that you can't really expect to get away with in real life.
Game 2- Fight to the death in the Mortal Kombat Series
If any game were to take after the infamous gladiators events during the days of ancient Rome (where people fight each other to the death), it would probably be the Mortal Kombat series. On the surface, Mortal Kombat takes after similar fighting games, such as Street Fighter 2, where two opponents fight each other in matches consisting of three rounds, with the opponent winning at least 2 out of three rounds being the victor of the match. Usually, the loser simply gets knocked out in his/her losing round, with the winner moving onto the next level. However, in the Mortal Kombat series, there is a whole new twist to fighting: the winner of each match has the option of terminating his or her opponent using special finisher moves called, fatalities. If you have played any of the Mortal Kombat games, you would know that when you knock out your opponent during the final round of a match, the announcer (presumably Shao Kahn in most games) will say "Finish Him!" (or her if your opponent is a female character). When this happens, if you have five seconds or so (some games have cheat codes that allow you to disable the fatality timer if you want extra time to pull it off) to finish off your opponent by entering a certain button combination in the right sequence and in the right distance within the time frame (the exact move does vary by fighter by the way. Pulling a fatality (or similar move, such as animalities, friendships, etc) can be tricky at first, but if it is done correctly, a special tune usually plays, the screen goes dark, and your character will do a special move that basically finishes off his/her opponent. Each character has their own fatalities, by the way (Scorpion, for example takes off his "mask" and hurles fireballs at his defeated foe, while Sonya will blow a kiss of death at her foe that incinerates him/her instantly). The list of fatality moves goes on and on (some people have posted fatality demonstrations on youtube by the way if you are curious about all of the moves), but you get the picture. By the way, if you prefer not to do fatalities, you could always do a friendship move (where your character "befriends" his/her foe), a babality (where your opponent gets turned into an infant), or even simply knock out your opponent with an uppercut. Despite the obvious dark nature to the Mortal Kombat saga, the games have been quite popular as there have been many sequels in the series (my favorite is probably Mortal Kombat Trillogy), several movies produced (with the latest one being Mortal Kombat Armageddon), a short lived cartoon series, as well as sound tracks released. Of course, this game is probably not recommended to the younger audience or people that are easily offended as these games definiately has death matches in them (similar to MTV's Celebrity Death Match). Similar games: Killer Instinct
Game #3 - Play "God" Sims 2 (and most other games in the series)
I don't want to sound blasphemous (I am a Christian by the way), but do you ever wonder what it might be like to play God for a day? It might sound wiered, but in SIms 2 (and similar games), you will pretty much be doing that. Sims 2 is an open ended game for the PC (though there are also versions on the consoles, such as Play Station 2) where you build a virtual home in a virtual community, along with creating a simulated family (consisting of a mother, father, kids, etc) that you will help manage as you play through the game. Sim families function much like a typical family you would see at least here in America: they work, have emotions, go to school (if they are sim kids), do chores, socialize with other sims, get into relationships, sleep, relax, watch TV, build skills for a job or career they have, and sometimes even raise a dog or cat (at least in Sims 2 Pets). You could simply watch them live out life and make their own choices, or you can intervine and give them stuff to do. For example, if they need to go to bed at a certain time in order to get to work or school on time and they are say watching TV, you could put it in their minds to go to bed, and usually they will. Maybe there is a person that you want your sim to meet or interact with, you can have your character strike up a conversaion with another (complete with dalogue options of course, allowing you to choose how they interact with each other). Or maybe you need to help the sim keep their motives up (such as having them eat when their hunger stats are low, using the bathroom when their bladder stats get low, interating with other sims when depressed, etc). Of course, as "God" in their world, you can also take after Satan and abuse your powers and ruin the lives of your sims. Here is a breakdown of some funny and twisted stuff you can do to your sims:
Cause a sim to become a jerk around other sims. Whenever you have your sim strike up a conversation with another sim, dialogue options will open up, and while you can make your guy or girl friendly, you can also cause him/her to say and do things to be mean (such as insulting others, slapping others, tell lies, gossiping about other sims, or even picking a fight). By the way, be careful about creating fights between family sims as some sims will move out if they take too much abuse from other sims.
Sit back and do nothing. Usually the sim(s) will make bad choices and suffer the consequences for it (for example, if he/she misses work too often, he/she will get fired).
Allow kids to get bad grades in school (usually happens by allowing them to skip the school bus when it comes). The only downside to this is that they can be sent to military school if their grades get too low.
Kill off a sim. One way you can do this is simply by letting him/her to starve to death. Of course, there are plenty of other ways for a sim to die (such as electrocution, drowning in pools, getting scared to death by ghosts, etc). Once a sim dies, beware of the fact that they can come back as ghosts and haunt your sim family (by the way, in Sims 2, one can get scared to death if their mood is too low when the ghost is active in the house). By the way, one funny thing you can do in the PS2 version of Sims 2 is that you can actually control the ghosts, which can be quite hillarious as you can scare other sims, posess them, and even cause them to behave erratically (such as throwing up).
Cause your sim(s) to get abducted by aliens. Usually happens if they look into a telescope at night too often. By the way, in SIms 2 for the PC, there is actually a cheat I found a while back that allows your sim to get abducted at will instead of by random and even caused my entire sim family to get abducted by aliens as well).
If you are a control freak, you can also turn off free will (it is usually on by default) and bend them to your will. Can be useful when dealing with a stubborn sim that won't listen to you when you give them a tas k to do (no matter how foolish it is).
The list goes on, but as you can see, Sims 2 can be quite twisted when you think of it and yet it has been quite popular especially among the younger audience, and has spawned many sequels (including Sims 3), youtube videos, as well as console versions of the game which tend to be a bit different from the PC versions (in the PSP version of Sims 2, for example, the game is more of a roleplaying game where you control this dude who finds himself in Strangetown, a desert city that has lots of paranormal happenings in it, and go on a quest to stop an evil genius from taking over the city and escape the ghosts and aliens infested town).
Game 4 - Play as Alien Invaders in "Destroy All Humans!"
Games involving aliens have been quite popular probably since the days of Atari (such as Space Invaders) and have evolved quite a bit since then. There have been plenty of different games and even films in this genre, with titles you are probably familiar with including: Space Invaders, the Simpsons Game (Kang and Kronos launch an alien invasion near the midpoint of the game), Independence Day, the Star Wars and Star Trek sagas (not all of the alien race are hostile in Star Wars or Star Trek, of course), Aliens vs Predator, the Contra series, as well as even the Halo series (where you get a hostile alien race bent on wiping out the entire human race). Usually you fight against the aliens, however in "Destroy All Humans", you actually get to play as the aliens themselves, controling an alien named, Crypto who is a part of the Furon empire, an alien race that wants to acquire human brains for some odd reason. The game is pretty big and spans many missions, starting with Crypto crash landing in farmlands and terrorizing both cows and farmers alike, and later with Crypto launching a full scale invasions against towns and cities. And yes, you do play as the bad guys in this game as your job is to conquer Earth (particularly North America as the game is centered in the United States). Besides terrorizing civilians, you can also take on human form and blend in with the crowd (can be useful for infiltration missions, for example), go up against government agents (such as the "men in black"), do mind control on people, making them do as you wish, razing villages with your flying saucer, as well as taking on huge bosses that try to stop you in your invasion (which is natural of course when you are controlling a hostile alien race bent on the destruction of the world). Despite the twisted nature of this game, it can be quite humorous when Crypto goes on rampages, along with creating hysteria among citizens, harrasses cows, destroys buildings using his saucer, as well as battling government agents trying to stop Crypto. Similar games: Alien Homid and Overlord
Game 5 - Conker's Bad Fur Day (also known as Conker's Live and Reloaded if you have played the Xbox version)
Platform games have been popular probably since the debut of Mario Bros in the 1980's, and have spawned many popluar titles in the genre, with hit titles including: Super Mario Bros, Sonic the Hedgehog, Kirby, Castlevania, Crash Bandacoot, the Mega Man series, as well as the SImpsons Game. Many of these games have similar themes: you play through different levels in various kinds of terrain, go up against an evil villian and his/her cronies (such as Dr Robotnik in the Sonic the Hedgehog series), fight plenty of huge bosses (usually cronies and close associates of the evil genius, unless if you are on the final showdown), and save the day (such as recuing Princes Peach from Bowser in Super Mario Bros). Most of these games are obviously geared more towards the younger audience (barring some games, such as the newer Castlevania games given the "M" ratings on some of the newer titles, such as "Curse of Darkness"), especially in the case of games like Mario Bros and Sonic, where kids will usually play these games more than adults do. Anyways, with that said, there another platform game that I have played through that is quite twisted when you think of it: "Conker's Bad Fur Day" (I played the Xbox version by the way). Conker's Bad Fur Day appears to be a typical 3D platform game (Super Mario 64 style), complete with a storyline, boss fights, an evil genius to defeat (namely the Panther King), and many colorful stages to play through. However, if you have checked the rating for the game, you would probably see the "M" rating. That is because Conker's Bad Fur day is pretty much a platformer that is geared more towards an older audience. Here are some features in this game you will usually not find in most other games in this genre:
Most of the characters swear (though in some versions, the swearing is censored by a beeping noice when they swear).
There are some crude levels in the game. In one area in the game, for example, there is a poop themed level where you are surrounded by poop and one of the bosses you fight in this area is literally one giant piece of poop (his voice actually reminds you of that of Christopher Lee, with the heavy british accent, though he is actually voiced by another guy named Chris Marlow).
There are some sensual scenes in the game. In one level, for example, you have to help a bee "pollenate" a feminine sunflower plant. Also, Conker does have a girlfriend, named Berrie, who gets kidnapped by the Panther King.
There is a grim reaper in the game that wants to kill cats for some odd reasons (his voice is somewhat funny as well).
Alcoholism does play a role in this game. At the beginning of the game, Conker has a nasty hangover after a night of drinking beer before the story officially begins. Also, alcohol is a powerup that Conker can use in the game that causes him to get drunk and urinate on foes (funny and crude if you ask me).
There are plenty of other adult themes in this game (though I won't list them all), but you get the picture. This wacky game is sure to both offend some people (for example, if you are a kid, this is certainly not a game you would want to play with your parents near by) and make other laugh.
Well, there you go, those are some of the most twisted and yet surprisingly fun and sometimes popular games I have seen throughout my gaming career. Obviously there are more titles I haven't mentioned (such as Overlord, Bully, etc) but, you are welcome to add to this list if you want to and feel free to comment on this article as you are free to agree or disagree with me.
Links of Mine:
Ryan Jones is the webmaster of the Snohomish Ebook Store at http://www.snohomish-ebook-store.net and Ryan's Xbox 360 Fan Site at http://www.xboxfreak.ws
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