on “Gameranx”, 10 times video games broke their own rules

All video games are based on sets of rules, you’re just running through a loop of code, right? Certain conditions appear, you had to fulfill them and then you move on, right? What about when the game starts to get a little bit cheeky? Hi folks, it’s Falcon, and today on “Gameranx”, 10 times video games broke their own rules.

Starting off with number 10, the very, very secret room in “Batman: Arkham Asylum”.

Many of the best kept secrets in video games come from when a game intentionally decides to break its own rules, and one of the most famous examples of that is the Wharton’s room in “Batman: Arkham Asylum”.

By this time everybody’s heard of this, right? It’s a secret room that contains a teaser for the next game, “Arkham City”, and it was so hard to find that Rocksteady, the developers had to just come out and tell people that the secret existed, because actually finding it was incredibly counterintuitive.

The thing about this room is, it doesn’t just break one rule it breaks two.

Normally Batman can use explosive gel to break through walls and it always only takes one to get through the wall.

Also, those walls are always highlighted when you switch to detective vision, so zero other walls that you can blow up with explosives work differently, except this one.

So the wall’s completely normal looking, there are no signs of damage and you have to use three charges of explosive gel in the same spot to open it.

So I don’t think anybody actually expected a secret buried that deep in the game, and that’s the reason it went undiscovered for so long, people didn’t think “Arkham Asylum” would break the rules.

Of course, it did.

Like, that’s why this is one of the more legendary secrets of all time, actually.

At number nine is jumping off the world trees branches in the “God of War Reboot” from 2018.

So with this list, I didn’t really intend to talk about story related rule breaking, but this one kinda combines the more core idea of the list with something that kinda breaks the story.

So when traveling to other realms you have to cross through the branches of the world tree, you can actually fall off of them anytime, if you want, and of course it leads to death.

The game makes a really big deal about this, it makes sure to hammer into your brain you can’t jump off the world tree’s branches, like, “Don’t do it, it’s just gonna kill ‘ya.

” So, of course, near the end of the game that’s what you have to do, the ultimate goal of the game is to reach the realm of the giants, and jumping off the world tree’s branches is the only way to do it.

Normally, it wouldn’t be that surprising of a twist but the fact that the world tree is basically a glorified loading screen makes it seem like it’s a place where basically nothing can actually happen.

It’s like if “Grand Theft Auto V” wanted you to do something while the helicopter thing, the top down view, was switching between characters, like it’d be bizarre.

So obviously this isn’t quite as strange as that, but it’s an accurate comparison, I think.

I mean, you’re still controlling Credos when you’re on the world tree so it’s a little different, but it’s still kind of a glorified loading screen, and a cool little twist that I was actually pretty surprised by.

At number eight is getting attacked in the one place’s supposed to be safe in “Elden Ring”.

In the dangerous world of souls games, there’s not really a lot of safe places.

The Roundtable Hold is one of ’em.

It’s a place where you can’t even normally swing a weapon and all the NPCs there are friendly, as long as you stay upstairs.

The tricky devs at From love to surprise the player in new and increasingly cruel ways, but I assumed the hold would be safe, right? Nobody ever attacks in the hunter’s dream in “Bloodborne”, for example.

No, the last boss doesn’t count.

That’s the end of the game, you kinda are waiting for, you know, the end of the game.

So when you randomly return to upgrade your gear but suddenly everything’s dark and you’re completely under attack, it’s shocking to say the least.

It feels wrong to get into a fight in this place, and while the guy who’s ambushing you (indistinct) isn’t too difficult to deal with, the fact he got jumped here, it feels wrong.

Seriously, it’s the one and only place you don’t have to worry about getting attacked, and now that sense of safety is, it’s gone.

He only attacks you after getting one piece of the secret medallion, and thankfully he’s the only guy who attacks you the Roundtable Hold but, man, the first time I saw that ambush it scared the hell out of me.

At number seven, Mitch Connor plays by his own rules in “South Park: The Fractured but Whole”.

I love saying the name of that game.

Basic premise of the South Park games is that with all the chaos that’s going on in the Kichler town, at the end of the day, everything that’s happening is just a bunch of kids playing pretend.

The idea is taken to its logical extreme in the final boss in the second South Park RPG, where you take on the diabolical Mitch Connor.

Yeah, it’s just the world’s most pathetic hand puppet, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous in a final battle.

Unlike every other enemy you face who plays by the rules of the game, Mitch just makes things up as they go along, gives itself extra turns, gives you party negative status effects, but just saying you have them or claiming that you actually didn’t hit them.

He’s the kid who says gun when you’re playing rock, paper, scissors.

And it’s a pretty brilliant idea for the last boss of a turn based RPG.

Most literal gods you beat up who technically should have the ability to subvert the rules in every other RPG, they aren’t as powerful as this guy ’cause they play by the rules of the game, Mitch doesn’t.

At number six is hiding a secret on the save screen in “Tunic”.

If there’s one spot that’s usually off limits in games, it’s the save screen, right? Other than potentially hiding cheat codes, what other game can you think of that actually hides some kind of in game puzzle on the save screen? “Tunic” is pretty much the only one I can think of, and it’s pretty mind blowing when you find it.

I’m gonna try and explain this without sounding like a crazy person.

It may not work, but here.

So what happens is you select your save, but instead of picking load like a normal person you cancel out, which generates this bizarre maxed out save in the third save slot.

When you load it up, your little fox is gray and for some reason it’s just a bunch of hallways.

Seems like nonsense, but there’s actually a reason for this.

It’s just another part of an even greater puzzle called “The Golden Path”.

There’s a lot more to talk about here, but the important takeaway is just how bizarre of a secret this is.

Video games just don’t do this kind of thing on the same screen, but “Tunic” is a game that surprises you.

At number five is the trick QTE in “Resident Evil: Revelations 2”.

Remember this one? Before Resident Evil seven came out and kind of revitalized the franchise, Capcom was still kinda keeping the series alive with the Revelation games.

Second one was pretty great, other than this nasty trick they pull on you around the middle of the game.

We all know what QTEs are, quick time events.

Game flashes a button on screen, you press that button, works pretty much to same for every game out there, including most of Revelations too but for some reason, for a critical moment, they decided to throw out the rule book.

For this one situation the game expects something different.

It’s not small decision either, it’s the difference between a good ending and a bad one so about halfway through the game and they’re like, “Hey, you want the good ending or the bad one? Here’s a QTE.

” Like it’s so counterintuitive, a lot of people didn’t even realize there was a good ending.

So if you’re playing solo in the game you’re playing as Claire, she’s the one that can actually fight enemies while Moira is simply the more useful Ashley from Resident Evil four.

Most of the games doesn’t really matter who you play as, but in this one encounter you gotta switch to Moira for the QTE, and have her do something that she spends the entire game saying she won’t do, which is use a gun.

Resident Evil games don’t usually have branching paths, so it’s confusing and frustrating, like, how is anybody supposed to really figure this out and know that it’s how they get one of two different endings? At number four is the Sans boss fight in “Undertale”, all right, back on track with something a little more lighthearted, I guess.

“Undertale” is one of those games that’s always playing around with the RPG format, but by far the weirdest most fourth wall breaking battle in the game is Sans, the meme skeleton.

Only way to fight this guy is to play the genocide route, where you kill everything.

This mostly makes the game incredibly easy, but not Sans, he is by far the hardest fight in the game.

Normally in “Undertale” you get the first turn, The only character to break that is Sans, who just takes his turn first and hits you with his most powerful attack right off the bat.

Just surviving this is gonna take multiple tries, and that’s just the start of the battle.

Probably his most audacious trick he saves for last, at the end of the fight he just decides not to take his turn.

He doesn’t pass, he just doesn’t do anything.

So since it’s a turn based RPG you really can’t do anything until he does something, but his ultimate attack is to just not do anything.

I mean, in some ways he’s kind of playing by the rules but he’s also not playing by the rules.

It’s actually pretty brilliant, I don’t think I’ve seen any other RPG pull that trick before.

At number three is the secret that makes no sense from “Castlevania: Symphony of the Night”, a game with a lot of secrets, right? Like a ridiculous amount.

Most of them make sense, though, and, wow, does this one not.

There’s usually some kinda rules for how secrets are obtained, you break a wall, you hit a switch, but this one doesn’t even try to explain itself.

I’m telling you about the jewel sword secret.

Right at the start of the game you can find it behind a secret wall that’s revealed by, and I’m completely serious when I say this, breaking both walls of this rock and passing through it in human, wolf, and then bat form.

Like, you literally just have to go through this rock tunnel in every single form, other than mist.

I don’t know how, why, or any other aspects, I just don’t know, I don’t understand, I don’t know what the point- It seems arbitrary entirely, and it might be.

It made it seem like anything could be possible when the game hides secrets through stuff that just have no logical rules, whatsoever.

It kept kids awake at night, staring at the ceiling thinking, “Oh, what if I did this like this, and then this, and then this, and then that? It could do something, right? That’s what they told me when they said this did something.

” It’s interesting but also baffling, like, whose idea was this? At number two when “Nier Replicant” deletes your save file or maybe doesn’t, I don’t know.

The original “Nier” is famous for pulling one of the nastiest tricks in gaming, making it so the only way you can get the ultimate ending is deleting your save file.

Game’s not bluffing either, that’s really what happens.

I played it, I know, and it really is a hit to the ego.

As previously established, the sanctity of the save file process is kinda important when it comes to games.

I don’t want games playing tricks on me with save files, at least most of the time, but the updated re-release of “Nier” does something completely crazy, deletes the save just like the original version, but then also restores it.

That’s the crazy thing, the save file is gone when you complete ending D, just not there.

So you think to yourself the game’s playing a trick on you and you start up a new save, but, no, it’s a new save file and there’s nothing new in the updated version of the game.

If you didn’t look it up, there’s no way someone would even think that there’s a new secret ending E in the game, but it is there.

If you keep playing the game up to the point where you meet Kainé, then the actual for real ending this time actually starts.

So the game broke its rule, it goes back on the whole permanent save deletion.

But to do that it had to lie to you to get there, so asking players to play through a big chunk of the game for the fourth time is insane, so making it so there’s still an ending to see after a previous ending that literally deleted your save, is totally nuts.

And, finally, at number one, when the goal isn’t the end of the stage in “Super Mario World”.

This is one of those games that was kinda one of the first mainstream big games to really mess with players’ expectations, and this one’s still kind of surprising, even now.

One constant in platform games is at the end of the level is the goal, there’s a goal there at the end of the level.

In Super Mario World it’s like, I don’t know, there’s football guys in the game so maybe this is some kind of variation of a goal post, I don’t know.

But it’s there and, you know, that’s the end of the level, right? Well, not in “Super Mario World”.

In a few levels the secret exit isn’t hidden before the end of level goals like in past games, but actually beyond it.

You have to figure out a trick to get past the goal without triggering it, and even now it still feels like cheating to do.

Now that I think about it, actually, as influential as this game is it’s a trick you don’t really see very often, and that’s part of the reason it still kind of catches me off guard when I revisit the game every few years.

When you see the level goal that’s supposed to be it, but “Super Mario World” broke that rule in a big way.

And that’s all for today, leave us a comment, let us know what you think.

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I’m Falcon, you can follow me on Twitter @FalconTheHero, and we’ll see you next time right here on “Gameranx”.