Your Best Self- Imposed Challenges in Gaming

[ThatDarnCoyote]

My mate played through Prototype trying not to kill any civilians. All in all, he did pretty well, but did do some collateral damage.

Nice! Back in the day I did a "surgical" run on the original Syndicate. No civilians or cops killed, except in cases where they were the specific target of the mission. If an explosion cooked off and a bystander went down, I had to restart the mission.

Did a similar thing in GTA3, and was able to pull it off more or less, by skipping some optional missions, saving like an obsessive, and rationalizing that one character was technically an ex-cop.

Tried it again in Vice City - did okay with the civilians, but lost a couple cops in the mall explosion.

Then came San Andreas, and...there's just no way. One of many reasons I didn't much like that game.

 

[neversleep]

a multiplayer challenge, sort of. I get together with some friends and we try to nail the streaking minigame in saints row 2 while we use the evil cars,infinite health and riot cheat. Meaning everyone wants to kill you and the cars try to hit you. It might not be that extreme, it is fucking hilarious

 

[hatseflats]

No-item, no-skills, no-augs run in both Deus Ex and Deus Ex Invisible War. All I had was crates to throw at enemies, running and sneaking.

 

[mirror's edgy]

No-item, no-skills, no-augs run in both Deus Ex and Deus Ex Invisible War. All I had was crates to throw at enemies, running and sneaking.

At least you can light people on fire with burning barrels in Invisible War. Efficient AND hilarious.

"AAAAAH, I'M COOKED!!11!1" Best voice acting in that game.

 

[Gabanuka]

Me and my friend did a play-through of Oblivion using only what items we could get n the first hour of play. The trick is to run to Chorrol and join the fighters guild, the stuff they have there is actually pretty good, we agreed that you were allowed to keep and use any money from Items you go in the first hour so I just looted everything on the way.

 

[teebeeohh]

i did a harcore run of dark messiah using only magic and my boots. surprisingly hard

 

[mirror's edgy]

i did a harcore run of dark messiah using only magic and my boots. surprisingly hard

Haven't played DM, but isn't kicking crazy useful? Like, it requires no point investment, has no cooldown, and the levels are chock full of spiky instant death walls and bottomless pits? Because that sounds like Looney Tunes made an efficient combat strategy.

 

[teebeeohh]

i did a harcore run of dark messiah using only magic and my boots. surprisingly hard

Haven't played DM, but isn't kicking crazy useful? Like, it requires no point investment, has no cooldown, and the levels are chock full of spiky instant death walls and bottomless pits? Because that sounds like Looney Tunes made an efficient combat strategy.

yeah but kicks sap your stamina (which you also need for running) and unless you attack the opponent with something else first it does almost nothing, so you either have to maneuver an enemy directly in front of spikes or kick him a lot and your stamina if only good for like 4 kick and after that you need to run because his buddies showed up. it's a really useful addition to normal melee but without kicks are not that good.
the main challenge was that magic is utterly useless, except in addition to normal fighting by providing healing and a shield spell. the best offensive magic is a tiny fireball that instakills enemies after you throw a jar of oil at them

 

[Finbark]

Well I accidentally played through Shadow of the Colossus without health or stamina upgrades. Mostly because it was my first play through and I wasn't aware of the fruits or lizards...
In Dragon's Dogma I limit myself to just the Pawn you make yourself.
While playing Skyrim as my stealth character I only wear 0 armor equipment and set the difficulty to master so I pretty much instantly die if I get into combat. Makes killing dragons kind of a ***** considering stealthers have a hard time killing dragons as it is (unless you can get the "100 Sneak Perk exploit" to work before you get one-shot).
I suppose using some joke builds in League of Legends could be considered a "self-imposed challenge".

 

[peruvianskys]

I would always do a no-save run of every Thief 2 level, trying my hardest to finish no matter what happened. It made the game a lot more tense, and some of my favorite experiences involved me with one sliver of health left, sneaking through a castle where all the guards were alerted. It was always more fun without quicksaving.

 

[DkLnBr]

to make a pyramid in minecraft from the ceiling to sea level, and then possibly building an underground, inverted pyramid below that down to bedrock

 

[kingthrall]

Myth 2- select a unit trade with no Trow, or pus ghols. Perhaps only thrall instead of faster melle. Really any trade can be winnable its a matter of when you deploy your move in this game.
However the trow really does make a game decidable when he kicks in half your warlocks or dwarf mortars.

 

[Battleaxx90]

Dragon Quest IX. Solo character run. Only time I ever used an NPC ally is when this one sidequest that rewarded a zetta important item required it. It's actually been more fun than I originally thought it would be; there's a huge focus on picking the right equipment for the job, since this game is absolutely MERCILESS when you're soloing. I'm stuck on Goresby-Purrvis, though. F^(# him and f^(# his upward strike.

 

[Da Orky Man]

I tried playing through Splinter Cell: Conviction on the highest difficulty setting using only pistols in the whole game. And it was still piss-easy.

 

[Realitycrash]

Played the old Close Combat 3: Russian Front, as the Russians. Used only infantry the entire campaign, on harder difficulty.
This gets incredible annoying when sometimes a German tank spots you from literary across the map and annihilates an entire squad with one shot, while said squad was hidden inside a building.

 

[Uratoh]

Beating Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia on Hard Mode with a Death Ring equiped for the entire ordeal (it raises stats better than any other accessory, but a single hit from an enemy causes you to die). It's amazing how much more challenging the game got when even one of those little medusa heads spells a loaded save...

 

[RJ 17]

One thing I always liked to do to nerf myself in the original FFT was to never use any of the "main" characters. That is, only use Ramza and up to 4 generic slap-dicks, never use Mustidio, Agrias, TG Cid, etc.