Yes, being mean or trolling someone isn’t exactly recommendable or even particularly empathetic, but that doesn’t mean both are completely off the table all the time. Not if you’re playing a game, anyway.
Sometimes, being a jerk can be a playful thing. That’s why we like banter and teasing. It’s also why games are often perfect safe spaces for us to be jerks to one another; we can be jerks without necessarily being malicious. Many of the mean things we can do in games are either intentional mechanics meant to make things more interesting or chaotic, or they’re genuinely innocent things we can do that keep things fun.
Here are some of my favourite mean (but cool!) things we can do to one another in games.
Slapping In LittleBigPlanet
Nothing like finishing a level and smacking the crap out of your co-op partners, particularly whoever came in first! That’ll show em.
(Video via pwncesas)
Stealing Stars In Mario Party
What’s that? You worked hard for that star by winning mini-games and saving up coins? Well, too bad. For a price, your opponents can steal that star…but that’s ok, everyone might get screwed over at the end, when the game awards stars to everyone for random bullshit reasons, too.
(Video via SlashersElite)
Using The Blue Shell In Mario Kart
On this note, man, Mario games sure make it easy for us to be jerks to each other. Heh.
Anything In Spelunky
Playing Spelunky with a friend might mean you can go farther than you would normally — if someone dies, they can be revived by players in later levels — but it’s also one of the most chaotic experiences in multiplayer gaming, if you’re not careful. You can pick each other up and throw each other into danger. You can whip each other. Various items have friendly fire, making even the most powerful items (like shotguns) a huge danger to use, too.
These are just a few of my favourite jerk-things to do in games, but they’re far from all the mean (but playful!) things we can do to each other in games. Do you have any favourites? Let us know in the comments.
Comments
17 responses to “Our Favourite Jerk Moves In Games”
Grabbing onto people and dragging them everywhere in LittleBigPlanet was also fun.
I could never get the slap to be 100% haha.
good to be a dead weight as they try to do the jumping puzzles too. I’m just going to hold R1 why you do everything? Kthanxbi
Battletoads. My younger brother and I rarely got past the first stage when we played together because the moment one of us accidentally attacked the other instead of an enemy it was game on until someone ran out of continues.
Haha this sounds really familiar
How about the entirety of the fighting-game genre (at competitive levels)? That just revolves around not letting your opponent be able to do anything, ever.
Another thing is getting your friends into a vehicle with you then driving it off a cliff =D (or crashing your gunship into the side of a star destroyer)
not really cool but ramming your plane into someone else in warthunder
My god I hate that and those players who do that…
juggling in SSBM
Sheik chain-grabs and Ice Climbers Wobbling too.
And just picking Metaknight in Brawl.
In Battlefield 3 I like to slide a couple of mines underneath unoccupied tanks / jeeps etc then just walk away. Later on somebody comes along, jumps in and *boom* 😀
Low level invading in Dark Souls D:
Being the driver of the Warthog in Halo with your mates on board and going off a cliff or something. So much nostalgia
Freelancer. If I ever came across another player and they were heading in the same or similar direction to me, even just for shits and giggles, I’d drop a high yield mine at the instant I’d hit the star lane. I’d get shot through at great speed, the mine would knock out the star lane, forcing the player to wait, or to travel to the next star lane ring to fast travel.
I’d also do the same thing upon exiting the space lane, drop a mine and bugger off. This would force any following players to exit the lane much earlier and much further away from me, giving me a huge break. Oh the abuse I took… 🙂
Playing starcraft at lans with my mates back in the day I always played as Terran but my mates would always win. So before thier last push I would fly buildings and run units to random spots all over the map so if they wanted to win they would have to hunt them all down.
Donkey Kong piggy back suicides in smash bros.
This, lol. Good times.