You’ve probably been to your fair share of midnight launches and spent long nights replaying previous titles in preparation for sequels. But dig down deep and share your more shameful stories. Did you steal a friend’s game? Fly to Japan? Mug an old lady for the cash for one? Sleep with a hooker and then beat her up to get (some of) your cash back? No, wait, that’s GTA.
And that got dark.
Me? I’ve had save files completely crash on me, toughen up and replay just to see the ending. I’ve levelled up characters just to get to the good bits so my oldest brother would be more inclined to experience games I knew he’d like but didn’t have the time for.
But probably most notably: I replayed all of Mass Effect 2 just to ensure the survival of a crewmate I had a crush on. I needed to pursue our romance in the third instalment of the series, and a few days’ worth of playing that game again was totally worth it.
I’m sure I’m not the only one to take her game-playing seriously. So what’ve you got? Shameful stories welcome.
Comments
107 responses to “What’s The Craziest Thing You’ve Done For A Video Game?”
I drove 2.5 hours to a JB that was putting out copies of Duke Nukem Forever the day before release, boy was that worth it.
Wish I could say I did not laugh excessively at your misfortune, but that’d be a lie.
It was a dark few days that followed 😛
But when you’ve been looking forward to something for 14 years you tend to do stuff like that. DNF was announced when I was 8 years old and I remember even having the official wallpaper on my Windows 95 not-even-a-Pentium PC at the time.
“not-even-a-Pentium PC” – Best description for a steaming heap of crap toaster I have ever read. Thank you.
Hey, my first PC was a 486 DX4-100 and it was brilliant. Until my pet rat turned it into a home about 3 years later.
Mine was a 286 haha. It didn’t even have Windows 3.1. It had something called Geoworks Ensemble. It was like a second rate Windows. It was terrible.
I played through Fallout New Vegas, on PS3, from launch, to completion – before any patches came out. That was the most buggy game I have ever played, and in a standard session – maybe, three or four hours – it would freeze or crash at least 20 times. I had to develop crazy saving tactics to ensure I didn’t lose progress – the first eight hours I had to play twice, I think. It was a testament to how much I loved that game that I tolerated how goddamn broken it was.
I also did this.
While NV is up there for piss-poor releases, you clearly have never played a Total War game on release day.
Hahah, oh god, no, but I’ve heard those sad tales.
I took time off to do the same thing. Rabid Fallout fan here. Spent three days saving multiple times to separate files, restarting my PS3 regularly, even when it wasn’t freezing and just swearing profusely at Obsidian. I remember it got patched two or three times in the first couple of days. Finished it on hardcore mode, then traded it in immediately out of disgust.
Should go back to GOTY edition and play it again, on PC or something not crap. Just to take the edge off that sore, sore memory.
So much this. I think all up I lost at least 15 hours progress through crashes. To top it off, it froze during the ending while it was running through the consequences of your choices.
I’ve been back to the Capital Wasteland, but I still can’t go back to New Vegas.
Not sure whether to be impressed or wary.
BEHOLD MY MIGHTY HOURS OF NEGOTIATING BROWN WASTELANDS.
Also, I put like, 300+ hours into (initially buggy) Skyrim, never finished the campaign B) – that’s a cool person with sunglasses emoticon, in case you weren’t aware B)
Had similar issues with Skyrim as I did with Fallout NV. Pretty sure it was the PS3 Cell Broadband CPU. It was just so different to other x86 consoles that ports often went…. funny. Was particularly evident with Bethesda engined titles like Fallout NV and Skyrim.
I put 50 odd hours into Skyrim, and the game slowed down more and more over time to the point I’d dip into single frames after playing for about 30-45 minutes and would have to reboot my PS3. 30-45 minutes, reboot again. Ragequit. Was an issue a lot of people encountered apparently, and I’ve heard they since fixed. Never been back to find out, was too sad after giving up on 50 hours of playtime.
Yes. There’s nothing like crawling around everywhere carrying your max carryweight in shovels and bandit armour, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of all the various ‘container’-flagged objects you can store at fast-travel waypoints to undertake numerous trips, ferrying in so-called ‘garbage’ for caps/gold.
Also… -.-
> this < close to posting immature and vulgar emoticons to show off my l33t uber pro net-savvy hax0r knowledge.
As if I wouldn’t be aware of the ‘cool person’ thing…
*surreptitiously scribbles notes*
(Edit: Mental note… must actually get around to finishing FO3/NV/Skyrim/Oblivion campaigns at some point.)
I did the same thing with the original Fallout 3 on xbox. It randomly crashed every 30min-1hour, so I had to save constantly and basically avoided doing anything outside of the main story because of it.
It was way worse than New Vegas was at release, but then again I heard the ps3 had some massive save file issues that wernt on the 360.
Besides numerous Annual Leave/Sick days taken for game releases and alike.. not a lot.
I have spent far more money than I care to admit on Horror style games only to quit playing them within the hour. I could not even finish Doom 3 back in the day, as hard as I was trying to do so. It usually goes:
Intense buildup, grit teeth, know jump scare is coming. still freak out over jump scare when it happens, alt+F4 and get under my doona.
Maybe the last step is false, but for someone who enjoys Horror movies and desperately wants to enjoy Horror video games, I am a big ol’ pansy.
I’m the other way around- horror games are fine, it’s the movies that I can’t handle. It’s probably because I’m a typical man and have to be in control or something!
I can’t handle either.
Well i spent $149 on a Duke Nukem Forever: Balls of Steel edition, spent $130 on Aliens: Colonial Marines collectors edition and spent $159 on Watch Dogs ded_sec edition and went to the midnight launch to pick it up. Thats right… I spent $438 on the most disappointing last gen games.
It is very true what they say, a fool and his money soon part. 🙁
Hahah oh holy shit, dude, that is… I’m sorry.
Have you ever bought a special edition that didn’t suck?
*stares blankly*
Huh. Wow.
You know, I’m trying really hard and…
Huh.
What did you realize?
I can’t think of a single collector’s edition bonus that was actually worth it. And I’ve bought a few. Seems every single one I’ve bought came with an unlisted bonus: regret.
I remember the decent Call of Duty ones back in the day, just as the series was turning to shit. I got a set of night vision goggles with MW2.
That sucks. I’m the opposite, I haven’t regretted any of my CE purchases. Darth Malgus is sitting next to Gollum on the shelf behind me right now, and the WoW expansion CEs look great sitting together. The art books alone were worth picking those up.
Max Payne 3 and Gran Turismo 5, fun fact is that i still use the leather wallet from the GT5, don’t know how many times i’ve had to glue it up.
Although the Max Payne statue is looking a little worse for wear because of a heat wave he now leans to one side.
This happened to me. I put him on a book shelf and stacked up books on either side so he’d stand tall again.
At least Brink is not among those titles, that was a goddamn dissapointment
I walked to JB HiFi after work and then home the day Watch Dogs came out. Took me two hours all up and I was in work boots. Now, I’m not fit in any way, so I nearly passed out when I got home. Pity the game wasn’t worth it.
I also replayed 10 hours of Mass Effect after I got stuck in an elevator. I was determined to play the whole trilogy with a carried over Shepard.
I never took Tenchu (PS1) back to Videoezy. This was the second time after I told them I had also returned GTA but never did (it was destroyed accidentally at a party) and they wrote it off. After Tenchu though they sent the Police around to knock on the door, my dad spoke to them and I lied straight to his face and the police and told him I had taken it back. Then I got my dad to drive me to Videoezy where I abused the manager for calling the police and gave a reenactment of returning the game weeks earlier and leaving it on the counter. Videoezy never followed it through further but my card had a fine on it and I couldn’t rent from them, luckily my sister also had a card. I had to keep the copy of Tenchu hidden from my parents for the next couple years. Thankfully due to statute of limitations I can breathe easily now (also the Videoezy is now a vacuum shop).
You’re the sole reason that Videoezy and Blockbuster don’t exist anymore.
If you’re australian, there is no such thing as “statute of limitations”.
Some old white guys invented it in the US to get away with criminal acts.
I actually think there us because it gets mentioned on the news quite a bit
We do have it.
Where would one find such information?
Depends what law really, I think each state has their own, like NSW has the Limitations Act (NSW) and then there are some federal acts, then there are some Acts which state within them how long the limitations are for the same crimes they are in relation to.
We do have a similar act, it is not referred to as a statute though.
Laughed pretty hard at this because a mate did pretty much the same thing with Mario Kart 64.
As someone who worked at Video Ezy in college, I am glad you did that. They treat their employees like shit, worst job I ever had.
I wouldn’t exactly call this “crazy” but…
In late 2011 I destroyed the ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) in my right knee from an accident at training at judo one night. After surgery, I was told by the doctor (a specialist surgeon from interstate) that I had to be on crutches for five days, keep walking to a minimum, do my physiotherapy exercises and I was “house bound” for three days.
Well, Batman: Arkham City came out the next day and I had ordered a collector’s edition.
Since I couldn’t drive myself at the time, I made my older brother drive us to JB Hi-Fi. I made him wait in the car and I went into the store as fast as I could, hobbling on my crutches. Logic would say “make your brother do it” but the pre-order was under my name and I had no cash on me, plus I was in a bit of an irrational state.
Despite not using my recovering leg, it was actually really sore, and my arm pits were getting sore from the crutches as I was trying to move really quickly. I tried to move quickly because as silly as it sounds, I didn’t want anyone (especially from work) seeing me.
I got my collector’s edition of Batman: Arkham City but it was really hard to carry, so I ended up carrying the bag in my mouth with my teeth. When I left JB Hi-Fi, my brother saw my unfortunate but self inflicted predicament of how retarded I looked, so he turned the car off and got out to help me.
My knee was sore that night BUT I GOT TO PLAY BATMAN ON LAUNCH DAY.
I actually wrote an article, instead of asking my audience to write it for me.
You’re right. Discussion and funny stories have no place on the internet. We should band together and write a formal complaint to someone who cares.
Also, just to get ahead of the naysayers, you should post a link to said article that you wrote.
So you support this? Get people to post personal experiences, then collate it and post it as an article across gawker and buzzfeed? Thats what you look for on a gaming news site?
Kotaku isn’t a news site, it’s a blog.
http://imgur.com/gallery/Zij7253
They would disagree
What you posted has nothing to do with what I said.
It is not a blog. Its just a bad effort at news.
News isn’t mentioned anywhere in what you linked, they specifically say ‘content’. Kotaku and Gizmodo are both very clearly blogs, as seen in the conversational nature of some posts, including TAY and this one. One would think that the fact this article exists somewhat debunks your mistaken assertion that this is exclusively a news site.
@zombiejesus
Its clearly a media approach. They blur the lines. Present news in a chatty way. You are less inclined to question or disagree with a blog style site, because you think of them as relatable, like they are your friends. Look at the comments on posts. It is exceedingly rare that there is a dissenting opinion. Far more chatty shout outs to the authors by the poor sheeple who think they are anything other than advertising revenue. Look at the “Tell us…” “articles” that are clearly market research exercises. Look at the carefully calculated responses to any incidents that lead to a drop in clicks.
I like to point out when they cross that line too often and go too far. Surely you don’t deny that this does occur.
Or maybe you might try and post something constructive at some point.
Constructive criticism helps. For example, since you seem to be following my posts, when I reminded Luke Hopewell to put in the disclosure about ties to Stan in a recent article. Because when journalists are bad at their jobs, they need to be reminded. By the public. Because within the industry, they just gladhand each other.
Sweet burn – but in all fairness, this article is mainly for community engagement so that the readers of Kotaku can share their stories and experiences, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Lets call a forum a forum, and not half heartedly create a thread as an article.
The only person who is on your side also steals games from Video Ezy and lies to police …… :p
and steals handbags and downloads cars.
I also returned a VHS without rewinding it. More than once.
You monster!
There should be more lighthearted banter like this!
Gone into a physical shop and paid full price.
I decided against losing my virginity to play Enter the Matrix.
At least I was the only one disappointed.
You’ve told this story before to the point that I’m almost beginning to think it’s true.
You should’ve taken the blue pill
Hahaha, I feel you dogg. I decided against losing my virginity to stay home and watch a brand new episode of The Simpsons. Season 5, DAN! Season 5 was so good….
Smrt.
Installed Uplay.
You’re the kind of person who squashes spiders and chokes out snakes with your bare hands, aren’t you?
Same, I just so badly wanted to play Blood Dragon I installed that piece of crap so it would run
I’m pretty sure there was some fine print on that installation mentioning something about my eternal soul. Don’t remember what it was, but I’m fairly sure I’ve been dead inside and hellbound ever since.
I’ve been there man, it’s rough.
I’m kinda in the middle of something right now. Not sure if this is related, but I’m desperately trying to win a PS4 out of an arcade machine near where I live. Anyone know about that block stacker game? I’ve already spent like $30 and I’ve been on the top level like 10 times.
I think for me, it was the discovery of Civilization 2. That game was very bad for my health and sleeping habits for way too long.
I flew to the US to purchase a copy of Star Wars: The Old Republic on launch day in December 2011…..
Ok, I guess I was also in the US to visit my girlfriend [now wife] for christmas. But man, the look on the guys faces in gamestop when I told them that was priceless :p
I replayed the entirety of Mass Effect 2, just to save the life of a squadmate that I’d only known for about an hour in-game, because I didn’t know that I could upgrade the Normandy’s shields. I only realised that I could during my second playthrough.
I pre-ordered and paid top $ for Brink… 🙁
EDIT: Oh and same goes for SimCity. The regret.
Shit I regret paying $4 for it!
I came here to post the same thing. Fucking BRINK! Every time I see the box I get angry, should really just throw it away.
Haha! I’m glad I’m not the only one that is still bitter about this.
@ted I feel the same way when I see it in my Steam library. Want to delete it so bad.. Fuck it.I’m going to delete it. Need to let go.
I’ve bought games I didn’t like before, but for some reason it’s Brink that I’m most bitter about. It just got hyped way too much I think.
Played through Max Payne 2, only to be devastated by the death of Mona Sax at the end.
Immediately played it on the hardest setting, once I found out she survived on that difficulty. Took me two weeks of teeth gnashing frustration, but she didn’t die this time.
Totally worth it.
In 2010 I was working a job I hated for an employer that actively promoted a toxic environment. They apparently had as much disdain for me as I did for them, as they were actively mining through my workload to diminish my KPIs from the past year and find a reason to put me on performance management.
The morning that Halo Reach launched I had a job interview at a suburb slightly out of the way of my usual journey to work so I was going to be quite late. My employer knew I was looking and with their trademark casual indifference said “fine, come in whenever”.
On my way back into the city following the interview (which I nailed, btw) I thought “the JB where I have Halo Reach pre-ordered is on the way to work, I could pick it up on my way in since I’ll probably be working through lunch to make up lost time”.
That thought was swiftly followed by “I could just pick up the game and go home”.
So that’s what I did. At the end of that week I had a second job interview. The following Monday (which I coincidentally called in “sick” for) I got offered a new job. The day after that, I tendered my resignation and was given two weeks in lieu of my notice period, which I spent playing Halo.
I guess if it wasn’t Halo Reach it would have been another game, but in a small way, Halo Reach was part of my successful transition to my current job.
Thanks Bungie.
Damn, Reach was brilliant. That and ODST were always my favourite Halo titles.
I bought an Xbox One just to play the Master Chief Collection… yeah.
I wouldn’t say that’s crazy at all…. but maybe that’s because I’m a little biased since I did the exact same thing
used to live in mt gambier (SA, 20km from the victorian border) and the local EB games wasn’t opening for a midnight launch of starcraft 2. So after making some phonecalls we drove with a full car on a 500km round trip to warnabool in victoria becuase it was the closest EB doing a midnight launch.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004. Flew from Melbourne to Hong Kong real time(sped time up a little over central Australia), 7ish hours only to land and bounce the runway and crash at the end.
A couple of years later, played Halo Reach for about 9 hours nonstop with my head tilted on the chair. Self induced vertigo after. Couldn’t walk straight and if i got up from lying position really quickly i would black out and find myself on the bed face down again. I stopped playing FPS for a bit after that.
Lastly, seeing Altered Beast in the arcade for the first time and going home and forcing my brother to pretend being the machine(acting out the monsters), while i yelled commands at him for making my character jump and punch. lol.
I wanted to play Monster Monpiece so badly (partly to stick it to the Classification Board) that I:
1. Ordered the Japanese import copy;
2. Bought a third PS Vita so that I could create a US account;
3. Bought a 16GB Vita memory card;
4. Purchased and downloaded the US version of Monpiece;
5. Played both versions of Monpiece side by side so I could get the full, uncensored, Japanese experience, as well as the English story translation.
All in all, I probably spent almost $500 just to play that game. It ended up being pretty good but nothing special.
On the plus side, I now have a US account Vita that I can give to my kids when they want to play Vita Pets or Minecraft 🙂
I got Halo 2 about 8 hours early because I was friends with the guys at EB.
I didn’t play it at all that day, and then went to the midnight launch with my friends for no particular reason.
I also bought a copy of Radiant Silvergun on Saturn for like $200.
I convinced my ex to get her brother to pick her up at the station because it was a big hassle for me, even though he had friends over and it was an inconvenience to him.
In reality, I was playing PES5 for the first time.
Had to choose between Half Life 2 and Halo 2, had only the cash for one come launch day. I chose Halo 2…
I played through Mass Effect on Xbox 360 four times, not because I enjoyed the long elevator rides nor the poor loading visual technics, but to finish it and unlock all the achievements.
Why four times? Because my original Xbox 360 decided to give me a two red light error three years after initial purchase and of course my Mass Effect save file is on that Xbox 360 console which Microsoft won’t touch because it is a two red light problem, not three.
So, I buy a new Xbox 360 console. I play through Mass Effect again. I romanced, I keep my squad alive, I picked the speech options I needed, I unlock the other difficulty levels. After playing through Mass Effect four times, I was done. I didn’t want to play anything related to Mass Effect ever again.
Oh, one more thing. I also unlocked all the original achievements in Fallout New Vegas on Xbox 360 before the patches.
Honestly starting to question whether I like games at all given my complete lack of any interesting stories, these comments are fantastic.
Me, I’m the kind of guy who has never paid more than $20 for any game (except Nintendo titles, because they never seem to drop in value, if they did I would wait) and is willing to wait until the next steam sale, no matter the game (bar HL3 should that come out eventually).
I once bought from EB Games. True story.
Me too…but only because I was given a gift voucher as a present…
It’s all sort of a blur. I get bored really easily and don’t quite care about anything, so my life is full of situations where I’ve blown off school, family, responsibility, work, sex, love, money, power, etc for the sake of leveling up Materia in FFVII, completing a level I started the night before or getting a rare mount in World of Warcraft. Times I’ve blown my budget because for the special edition of a game I wasn’t particularly interested in. In theory I should have a lot more regrets, but I like doing things my way.
I imported a Japanese Xbox 360 primarily so that I could get the Asia release of Tales of Vesperia because it took Bandai Namco nearly a year to release it in PAL areas and for most of that time they wouldn’t even confirm it was coming out.
Back in the day I sold my N64 and 6 games to help get money to buy a PS2 for Gran Turismo 3.
I’ve always regretted it and only last year my wife got me an N64 again with some of the games I had, but it’s not quite the same as still having my original.
I broke my arm (wrist went completely floppy) when riding my bike to a friend’s and instead of going home to get to the hospital, I instead spent 12 hours playing Nintendo 64 with my friend.
Hahaha, that’s fantastic!
I bought Sonic ’06. There.
But in all seriousness, I’m pretty tame. Although I did call in sick the day the Xbox One launched, and that may have contributed to me losing my job.
I preordered Watch Dogs and Battlefield 4…
…in the same transaction
100 percenting FF7 and 8 are definitely up there – When I say 100 percenting I meant doing every f*cking thing I could in my power as a 12 -20 year old self me could do (Getting all the cards in 8 is a mean task that must be done over the course of the entire game with some cards entirely miss-able but others you can miss then obtain later from the card queen, getting all the materia – maxed out on FF7 is quite the challenge too).
I tried doing this with FF13 got a vast majority done but that game has a few minor things that take x100 the amount of time as others.
Did it with 13-2 (100% Platinumed)
Trying to platinum White Knight Chronicles has been a 1000 hour adventure too *shudders*
Also getting Blackops a full 24 hours prior to everyone else because the dude at harvey norman didn’t understand pre-orders (A Harvey Norman Rep later that day called me to advise some people got banned for this – I was lucky but there was definitely a few people online to enjoy it with).
I don’t really have a lot to compare when looking at a lot of these. I guess, in total spending… About $1000 upgrading my PC at the end of last year to play PC games a lot better and then realising that buying AMD products is basically a waste of money because nothing works smoothly. Ever. Spent a lot more time on my $390 PS4, while a matter of hours on new PC. Ooh, and spending like ~400 total getting my hands on any and everything Hotline Miami 2.
Memorised the “trade in inclusion” list in JB HiFi, buying 2nd hand games for as cheap as I could get and trading them straight back in for the “Free for 3 games” deal. Did that for years…
Against all the advice of the internet, my friends and family, I’ve pre ordered the collector’s edition AC Syndicate