This goes waaay back to sometime in 2004-2005ish, and the game that provided the wonderful experience was none other than Grand Theft Auto III. Heh, remember that game in it's glory time?
Anyway, In Grand Theft Auto III, as well as Vice City and San Andreas, whenever you had the wanted level above one star, the AI was designed to constanty chase you. It wasn't like in GTA IV where you had the option of outrunning them and eventually getting away by avoiding contact with them. No matter where you'd go, there would always be a police vehicle of some kind pursuing you until either you or it was destroyed. If the player was within a certain range and not in a car, or in a car and not moving at a feasible velocity, the AI would have the occupants exit the police car and attempt to apprehend you, either through their sticks and goofy voice overs, or by simply shooting you. If the player was not in the proper range, regardless of the player being in a vehicle or not, they would instead continue to speed after player in their vehicles until the right distance was met, circling around obstacles if unable to reach the player through normal means.
Well, unfortunately for them, I had been attempting to get away from them in my sweet-ass red Ferrari Testarossa, and made a wrong turn towards one of the bridges that connected the main islands of Liberty City. Remember how at the start of the game you're restricted to only the first island as the bridge was blown up? That knowledge sorta skipped my mind for a bit, and I wound up shouting a curse that likely inspired the Tourettes Guy as I found myself speeding towards a massive gap in a blown-up bridge. Hitting the brakes, I ended with the front two fires dangling over the ledge as I tried to get out of the car, but in that awkward transition where you can't control the character until he exits the vehicle entirely, a police cruiser nudged my car foward enough that it started to fall off the ledge. When the transition ended I found myself fall down with it, but unlike my Ferrari, which was now relaxing in the back end of a fishing boat, by sheer luck I had instead fallen on the very edge of a steel girder protruding twistedly from the wreckage of the bridge.
The distance between the ledge I had been throw off of and the girder I had fallen on was great enough that the crucial range parametre the AI seeked in order to exit their cars could not be met. Instead they took to the AI script of scooting around until they could find a probable vector to get to me and pull up to meet the distance requirement. Unfortunately for them again, there was no legit way to get to me, as the place I was in was probably not a spot the game was ever expecting a player to be.
So what were they doing to try and get to me?
They were driving off the ledge of the bridge...
You know how in Mercenaries 2 you can blow up a bridge, and the AI will still proceed to drive over the bridge as if nothing had happened, only to plummet down into the sea below? Well, imagine that, only instead of casually driving off the ledge, they're gun booting it off as if trying to drive off a ramp Dukes-of-Hazard style, and they're all police cars. I just stood there and watched as groups of police cars would jolt off the bridge one after another in pairs of two, sometimes three, and zip into the ocean below. The officiers inside would exit their cars and try to navigate towards me, some getting as far as turning around to face my general direction in that breif moment while they're in midair above water, before plopping into fish domain and eventually drowning. A cold, dead silence would then follow for a few seconds, as the bodies of the police floated in the water, only for it to break into another moment of hilarity as another group of police cars rinsed and repeated the exact process their fallen comrades attempted. They wouldn't even start their sirens until the very moment they started falling into the sea, almost like either the cops were trying to impress me, or as if the cars themselves were screaming as they fell to their demise.
By the fifteen minute mark the ocean was littered with cars and dead cops, when suddenly the wanted level flashed to indicate the level was changing. Four stars? I was the apparent blame for all the deaths of these professional law enforcers, and soon enlonged black-and-white SWAT trucks were flinging themselves off the bridge as a result of my horrid doings. One ran off the ledge so fast it slammed into the other side of the bridge and did a septuple backflip into the water. Apparently they didn't include swimming lessons as a part of the training courses for the law enforcement in Liberty City. That, or they were all so stuffed with donuts and unprecedented determination that they couldn't get their strokes right. By the twenty minute point the framerate was actually starting to drop. There were so many floating cars and dead bodies that not even the game could withstand it all at optimal strength.
Think it gets worse? It does. Apparently the mayor/governer/whatever of Liberty City (Who I like to imagine was Rick Perry in a stupid hat and a thick cowboy accent, flanked on all sides by bloated money bags) took to putting on his serious face and called in the FBI, and even the army. Black FBI ranger trucks and stocky M1A1's soon joined the party, and I would watch as tanks pile drived into the growing mass of sunken vehicles, detonating them all upon contact. Yeah, remember how tanks would make vehicles explode by just touching them?
The horror. The hilarious horror.
