Dude, that’s how I’ve played every Franchise Mode since its inception. Then again, I start as the Lions, so I need those castoffs.
By the way, for this year’s Madden, trade your running back and stud receiver (unless you have a mega stud at those positions) for picks and pick up Shagg Makino from the running back pool and Joe Walsh at receiver. Sign them both to 7 year contracts. Makino has a 94 speed and a 94 trucking, so he’s a missile. Joe Walsh is a much better receiver than his stats indicate, and both their ratings go up pretty steadily as the years progress.
I’ve played through Resident Evil 4 once or twice using only the handgun with which you start the game. It’s definitely a challenge but it’s so satisfying to actually make it through the game (and especially the bosses) like that.
I haven’t tried it with Resident Evil 5 yet. Hmmm, maybe I should…
Letsee…the last “unorthodox” run-through of a video game was, I believe Final Fantasy Tactics - going from story battle to story battle, taking whatever random encounters come my way. While it isn’t necessary to level grind very high to beat the game, there’s still certain battles that are a massive PITA because I can’t just bulldoze through and kill everything.
I didn’t think of it at the time, and it’s not a video game, but this is also how some people go about building their fantasy teams. Especially with baseball because the season is so long, but I’ve read about managers putting together the “All Free Agent” team.
They start by drafting the most god awful players (minor leaguers, players who are out for the year, etc.), drop everyone after the draft and acquire players off the waiver wire and in the free agent pool. It sounds like a lot of fun, and I’ve wanted to try it for a while, but I have a personal streak going of never finishing last in any fantasy sport I’ve ever played. Don’t want to tempt fate.
This reminds me: I’ve played through Hexen using nothing but the mage’s wand. It’s actually a surprisingly good weapon in many circumstances, since it has infinite range, no latency, and it penetrates.
I did some sequence jumping in Ravenloft- Stone Prophet.
About halfway, to three quarters through the game you can give a special chalice to a sphinx and get a wish. The thing is, the starting characters all have movement rates higher than pretty much everything in the game. So on my second time through I just ran past the army of trolls to get the chalice. Then I ran past the monsters guarding the sphinx. One of the wishes you could make is to be invulnerable to heat and flame. I took that wish and preceded to the high level dungeons, where the monsters all had only flame attacks. You end up with some cool items and lots of levels and the rest of the game is simple.
I did a self-imposed challenge in a game called Heartlight. Heartlight is a very fun and challenging puzzle game requiring you to collect all the hearts and then exit by a door. Rocks slide down surfaces. Grenades explode when falling on hard surfaces. Grass is useful as a barrier and to prevent grenades from exploding. After beating the game, I went back through trying to eliminate as much grass as possible in each level. On some levels, it was easy. On others, it really increased the challenge.
Well, sometimes, on FPS’, I’ll turn on an “invincibility” cheat and fight my way through using nothing but dual-wielded pistols and pretend I’m Alucard. But that’s probably not what you had in mind.
One thing, though, that might count…there was an old Mac flight simulator, “Hellcats Over the Pacific,” that had an odd cheat/debug mode. You’d hit a key combination, and your aircraft would stop, hovering in space. The mouse would control your pitch and yaw, like you were mounted on a pintle, and other keys would actually control your forward/backward, side to side, up/down movements. You could get up to game crashingly high speed, clip through the terrain, etc. You also got infinite ammo. IIRC, enemy aircraft would still try and attack you, though you were invulnerable.
Somehow, I got the idea to do this on an actual mission…and plopped myself on the edge of a carrier deck (I think I had to make continual adjustments to keep up with the travel of the ship), and played it as an anti-aircraft turret. The enemies still attacked me and the carrier, but since the sim wasn’t actually designed as a turret-manning game, their behavior was a lot different than what you would have gotten in a “balanced” level, designed around that kind of gameplay. Very interesting, and very fun.
Apparently the player in question also heals in battlegrounds (for the daily xp at the time this interview was done, but now you’d get xp all the way along):
Believe it or not, there’s actually a surefire way to get a strike by dropping the remote a certain way, I never quite figured it out, but my friend can do it.
All Cherry Tapping, All the Time - only upgrade your character’s weapon if it’s to a joke weapon. (Which would, of course, be a downgrade.) Only use the weakest attacks you have (if you have a variety).
Bonus points if you keep your defence low, minimize use of healing items, and reduce your level to bare survival level (if you can).
This isn’t quite accurate—in Ultima III, your level is determined by your experience points, which in turn are determined by the monsters you kill. Once you reach a new level, you have the option of talking to the king, Lord British, who will raise your hit-point maximum (to a point). It’s not really possible to play the game without levelling up, though you’re of course free to delay getting your hit-point bonus from Lord British. The pirate ships will appear no matter what your hit-point maximum is.
Anyway, I resurrected this thread to refer you to this recently posted video of someone who made it all the way to the end of the game without talking to Lord British. He goes through the final castle (albeit very slowly!) with only the default 150 HP per character.
I used to play Lord of the Rings Online many years ago. I was in a great, fun guild. One time my guild held what they called a “Hobbit Death Run”. Everyone goes to a new server and makes a new character of any class but it has to be a hobbit. You level up to 5 (which is pretty much the level you are after getting out of the starting area) then don’t level any more.
We then all gathered in The Shire and had to run all the way to Rivendell. On foot for little newbies that’s a heck of a run. There were about a dozen of us. The goal was to be the first one to get to Elrond. We had all deposited some gold pieces as an “ante” and the winners shared the pot.
It wasn’t too bad until we got to the zone right by Rivendell, then the deaths started. Everything tried to eat us. At one point I was running up what was basically the last hill before getting to Rivendell, and my guild leader was right behind me. I saw a bear just ahead and so I stopped and backed up a little. My guild leader ran past me, into the bear, and as the bear was busy mauling him I ran past. He gave me crap for that for years.
Anyway I made it without dying and was the first there. In the end only two of us finished at all (and by coincidence or not, we were the two who played hobbits on our main server as our main characters). The reason why nobody else made it was that everyone else took so long that night fell. The area outside of Rivendell was full of trolls once the sun went down. At that point it was over. I admit it was fun just relaxing in Rivendell while I heard my guildmates screaming in voice chat over and over.
In several of the Resident Evil games, two classic challenges are to finish the game while only walking backwards, or only using the combat knife you start with. Or both at once; beat the game while walking backwards and only using the knife.
In Stelllaris, the One Planet Strategy/Challenge has recently arisen. In it you never colonize anything, but play the game using only your homeworld. It relies on Frontier Stations to increase your territory, and the fact that smaller empires get a bonus to Unity and research.
I just found this one, and it kinda REALLY changes how you can play the game. Science Nexus by 2300? Yes please. You just have to play enough of the diplomat game to find a sugar daddy to guarantee your independence.
In most roguelikes, I’ve tried to do at least one playthrough where you don’t kill anyone. Most recent versions actually have achievements for it, which is a good way to measure if you’re successful. There’s also the sadistic “kill everyone” playthrough. It makes things interesting in games like the Dishonored series, which actively punish you for murder sprees.
some of the FASA games had a quirk where the more side missions or gear upgrades you did the harder the game became but if you just followed the main story missions you could beat the game in a half hour with the lowest gear…
That might be true for the PC version, which is in the video you linked. But I only ever played the NES version, which worked as I described.
And I remembered another alternate play mode I’m fond of: The classic trajectory game Scorched Earth, without using any offensive weapons. It’s actually a lot easier than you’d think, at least against the AI, because even the highest-level AI doesn’t know how to deal with being buried under mountains of dirt, and often ends up killing itself in the process of blasting out of it (just make sure to buy a bunch of tracers so you have something to do while you’re waiting under a mountain). Once, I even beat a round without firing a single shot at all, not even of non-damaging weapons: I just drove over all the other tanks and squished them. But IIRC, that triggered some glitches.
Everquest also allowed for “Gnome Ball”. Get two teams of people to make new characters (easiest if it’s two distinct races) and have them set PVP flags at the Priest of Discord. Have a gnome die and then consent everyone involved to drag his corpse. Now everyone tries to drag the corpse over their goal line while getting beaten on with newbie weapons.
Ah, that also might be why you claimed that you couldn’t advance past level 10. In all the computer versions, the maximum level is 25, which gets you a hit-point maximum of 2550.
