10 Video Games That Secretly Punish You For Playing Well

[@DRCEQ]

One of the WWE Smackdown vs. Raw games on the PS2 did a similar punishment-- if you *never* lost a single match across your entire career mode (and holding your titles multiple times over), you will eventually be put into a special title match where Vince McMahon himself is the referee. He ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT count the pin for you. You cannot win by opponent forfeit, ring out, or any other way except a three count pin, and Vince is there to make sure to only count the pin for your opponent. You can pin all you want, and he just stands there and does nothing.

[@theunknownstuntman4010]

Is this match in Montreal by any chance 😂😂😂

[@tubensalat1453]

I wouldn't expect Vince to treat anyone fairly/nicely.

[@jackal874]

Oh wow, what a great troll. Haha. even makes sense and makes it more realistic considering the real wwe is all scripted 😂

[@TheProblemChannel]

This isn't that same match that your allowed to win but with Vince counting to 3 but it takes him 8 frickin years!!!??

[@DissociatedWomenIncorporated]

Harsh. I’d have thought being an employee of Vince McMahon was punishment enough.

[@nispelsm]

Oblivion: Leveling up your class skills causes you to level up too fast, and you end up with weaker stats overall compared to enemies. In addition, if you leveled up too much before completing the main story, the enemies level up with you, but the NPC's you are required to protect in later missions do not, making it so they get 1-shot by everything.

[@Daftanemone]

God the level scaling of enemies was infuriating in that. It was so goofy to go from random bandits on the roads to scorpion men

[@theirishviking9278]

​@@Daftanemone couldn't you accidentally break the story if you leveled up to much and have daedra as random encounters before ever having gone to Kavtch

[@etherraichu]

we call it "The Leveling Problem" and everyone has their own solution. My solution was that I would only ever gain a level after I got my five points of training per level...And I would only train either Mercantile or Armorer. This way I'd be sufficiently powerful to handle things on my level no matter what else I did. I also usually do the entire Arena faction first thing, so my combat skills are very high.

[@IDESTROYER236]

Local breton is sleep deprived, kicked a daedric god's cojones.

[@KillerRedVine]

Also, in Shivering Isles, you have a mini boss fight with a clone of yourself and can definitely be challenging if you are high level and have good equipment equipped.

[@superbaas8822]

The community for Sonic games as a whole did thankfully recognize the issue with the score timer, so games that use linear progression (such as the original trilogy), your time is adding up your level complete times for each stage. Thus, the time bonus becomes a reward again so you can rest your hands, and runners can try to save every second.

[@MizunoKetsuban]

But then people realized pause buffering is extremely beneficial and runs turned glacial until they introduced real time back into it.

[@machoshowman1621]

Lost World: Jurassic Park on the PS1. If you collect all the DNA strands throughout the game You unlock a secret video where Jeff goldblum roast you for wasting your time with this video game challenge and implores you get a life

[@therunawaykid6523]

Yeah I’ve seen that one absolute genius

[@molybdaen11]

„Playboy - the mansion” had a similar video. You had to win the trust of all celebrities and inlook a video where High Heffner tell you to use that willpower in real life 😅.

[@brianm.4243]

I need to find that. Sounds hilarious

[@IDESTROYER236]

God Hand: If you play too well, the dynamic difficulty will rise to "Die". Yes, literally.

[@molybdaen11]

I saw that video. You had to bow down and beg for forgiveness for them to chill down again😅.

[@elivcdxv1852]

erm, ackshually! Iiii don't think that ones too much of a secret, that's active malicious intent, but god does it feel good when you can stay on that for the entire stage

[@apostateCourier]

Game gets harder, score goes up, ability to buy more moves goes up. It's mostly reward for good play.

[@etherraichu]

They would use a variant of that system in a different game later - Resident Evil 4. Only it was hidden. If you do well enough you get more enemies showing up. Lose enough and you get less.

[@WalkThrough_101]

In Ocarina of Time, the Dark Link miniboss in the Water Temple will scale with how many hearts you have at that point in the game, meaning that if you took the time to seek out all the possible heart pieces beforehand, you will be in for a much longer fight than you would if you had just rushed through the game.

[@xirey1014]

Megaton hammer isn't in the scripting for shadow :p

[@Raheel_Ishaq]

Not using Navi also works. It's like the fight against Ganondorf.

[@estfatuo]

This true but he can only use sword and shield. If you get the giant's knife you can cheese him with thrust attack spam.

[@19TheFallen]

Some tips for him that counter that programming: Go in there with so much damage that you're down to one hit, meaning HE'LL be down to one hit when you start the fight, heal yourself, then lay into him with your Megaton Hammer or Biggoron Sword. The guy swiftly goes from swearing inducing to "Pff!" in seconds......

[@joesjoeys]

I had a job where we had 3 months of training, starting with a "typing test". I've always been an excellent typer, and so during training we were forced to learn how to type. At the end of the course, we had ANOTHER "typing test" and the metrics were we had to beat our original time by a percentage. Fortunately, the first time I took the test I was rather relaxed and took my time. It was such a stupid move to make you have to beat your original time by a percentage!!

[@Kyle-nm1kh]

I'm in the same scenario with college keyboarding

[@ReikerForge]

This is why you never give 100% just starting a job or doing a test related to work, as they'll expect you to perform like this as your baseline, and _then_ improve over time.

[@Kyle-nm1kh]

@@ReikerForge yeah never give 100% on a job that will wear you down over time anyway

[@zantheros4927]

It's an intentional feature in WWE 2K15 because the real-life WWE follows a set storyline for all of its wrestlers. By winning everything, you're "going off script", which is a big no-no in that business. Cutting your career off early is a surprisingly realistic thing to do, in that situation.

[@nuckelaveez5029]

Funny, thats kinda what happened to Daniel Bryan irl. He won the title, had to retire due to injury, and wwe wouldnt let him out of retirement for a loooong time, even though he was medically able

[@dizzyheads]

The moment I heard it on the list and explained everything I immediately thought it made sense since it's WWE

[@mashudagurasu]

None of that crap happened on the ps1 you could do realistic careers, I remember having the rock as the world, intercontinental, European, hardcore tag team and woman's champion... Just realised they did a Simpsons and guessed the future haha😂, think I did the opposite with lita/Trish/chyna.

[@LolLol-fj6nz]

You're remembering the details a little bit differently, but the concept described was correct. It was a weirdly good but lacking game with many previous features missing since that was a console generation transition year from the PS3/360 era to the PS4/XBone era. That year still annoys me and showed how horribly game devs are being treated. For some reason, you could win every single title as many times as you wanted except for the WWE Championship (aka the major title on the RAW show) and that's because in that game, it is considered the greatest accomplishment possible Your career is timeskipped forward into the future to the very last Wrestlemania you could have competed in. You were given the choice of who to wrestle in your retirement match. A choice between two IRL guys who were active on the WWE roster at the time, a random CAW meant to represent the guy you hand the proverbial torch to, and the guy who becomes your rival when you graduate from NXT (I forgot how many years that career mode allows you to play. For some reason, limiting that was a feature.) Funny thing about the retirement match is that the game won't stop you from winning it/completely decimating your opponent 😅

[@andrewdesalvatore7262]

3:35 the snail catching on fire is mooooost likely a nod to SpongeBob's snail race, where Gary crashes & catches fire after SpongeBob overworks'm to death~.

[@DarkAngelBluejay]

Left 4 Dead and its sequel. The AI director will punish you for having ammo, holding on to bombs, having health packs, not taking damage. Even on Easy, you will see ridiculous spikes in difficulty. Multiple special infected spawn near constantly, endless hoards, and Tanks in just the worst places.

[@mutedonkey8361]

Reminds me of ammo drops on the Last of Us 😂

[@Bocchi-the-Rock_]

But if you have nothing it can be nicer to you too, and you can have near "boring" runs where you're going through the level and oh, two tanks in the level didn't spawn, the witch is in a corner a mile away from the objective, and there are not even any hunters or smokers to worry about - and next thing you realize, you made it to the safe room. Also, some stages are inherently going to be very different based on the map It's not so much a one way street with those games as it is a grid network, with one path causing you to die but another right next to it is almost worry free

[@Cinderpelt2036]

You forgot the tank Ai once he hit you you are the main focus even you are incapacitated and revive by defib

[@HobkinBoi]

​@Cinderpelt2036 I assume this is the first game The second, the tank will switch targets when it wants to. Usually to someone meleeing or doing a lot of damage in a short period. Also focuses down anyone on a mounted gun, but it will focus you to your very death if you get boomed on.

[@jamesoakes4842]

Having Sonic the Hedgehog punish players who attempt to speedrun the game is peak comedy.

[@exukvera]

Because of it, official Sonic speedruns take into account the sum of the times to complete each stage instead of how many time had passed since you pressed Start.

[@planguy9575]

For the Kotor swoop race I think that the swoop bike would accelerate after each race. So, for example, if you raced perfectly once and then perfectly again then the second time you would still be faster then the first time. So essentially you don't have do better every time, you just need to do around the same. Although that might just have been a story thing rather then an actual game mechanic. But I never had trouble beating each race whenever I played.

[@MrAvenger1975]

Exactly. I don't recall it being all that difficult to win races.

[@vladalterax9840]

@@MrAvenger1975 You were probably playing the patched version.

[@HollowedKnight66]

KOTOR is one of my favourite Star Wars games, actually did so well on the race that the other guy couldn’t beat it

[@jtrevor99]

The Ravenskull oversight's very similar to that in the original Harvest Moon (SNES). Harvest Moon used 9 bits (???) to store how many of each crop you sold. If you sold 511 corn ears, you got a great score...but 512 reset the score back to 0. So the best ending requires you limit your crops.

[@doomspud6302]

Wing Commander 1 and 2 have a somewhat similar problem. Those games are surprisingly nonlinear for the time. There are alternate mission paths depending on whether you win or lose the objective in the previous mission. Typically, winning a mission leads to harder missions, and losing leads to easier ones. Enemy pilots also become more skilled the better you do in combat. This seems fine at first. But it seems like they didn't take into account that failing the mission objective isn't the same as dying. If you die, the game is over, and the only option is to load your last save. So if all you ever do is lose by dying instead of failing objectives, you will end up on the hardest mission path, and enemy pilots will become incredibly tough. Since every failure you ever had was erased by loading your save each time, the game basically sees you as a perfect ace pilot, and throws everything it has to try and stop you. By doing this, the final missions can become nearly impossible for most players.

[@TorchicNidoran1994]

Midnight Club Los Angeles (a notoriously difficult racing game as is) has time trials required to progress. You have to do them three times. So setting an exceptionally fast time the first time will only make subsequent runs even more difficult because you have to beat an already fast time. Sometimes twice

[@wieldylattice3015]

1:22 that’s a weirdly meta way to say wrestling is rigged by okay

[@michaelmurphy2112]

What? Are you saying wrestling isn't real?

[@wieldylattice3015]

@@michaelmurphy2112 Depends on what wrestling you're talking about

[@kyleoconnor5944]

How is wrestling "rigged"? It's acting, not competition. Do you also think TV shows, movies and theatre are rigged?

[@wieldylattice3015]

@@kyleoconnor5944 Well it doesn't exactly advertise its events a fictional

[@Ytinasniiable]

​@@wieldylattice3015 several wrestlers have been quoted saying things along the lines of "we know how it plays out but you're still being hit by a chair" Everyone knows entertainment wrestling is just a sensational sports drama, and the game mechanic is to show that "more drama" doesn't always come from a chain of victories, there needs to be struggle and failure for it to be dramatic

[@MasterMewtwo239]

I so relate to the KOTOR entry. HOWEVER, you can post a time so good that no one can beat it.

[@whitewolf3051]

Actually for the swoop race in SW KOTOR, at least the first one, depending on how fast you finish the race, the other racer *might* not beat your time. *Can’t* be sure, but you *may* need to be faster than twenty five seconds, definitely faster than thirty seconds, even twenty seven means the appearance of the other racer.

[@demonic_myst4503]

Nope thats a glutch the cutscene dtill happens but they have lower score than u its not intended

[@alexanderrahl7034]

I think i got a different cutscene the last time i played 🤔 it was a while back though. Where the other racer couldnt beat my time and the announcer declared me the winner. But then they cheated or something. Or maybe thats how its meant to go. Idk, i remember being surprised lol

[@warrmalaski8570]

Final Fantasy 10. The more you power up your summoned creatures, by going out of your way to grind out the items needed. The harder the last boss fights became.

[@ChrisBreederveld]

Or FF8 where the entire battle system is made such that enemies and bosses alike get harder the more levels you have, only they progress faster relatively... so choosing to go enc-none all the way is the best way to beat the game... until you hit the final boss area

[@TragGaming]

That's actually not true. The final fights are fixed

[@alexanderrahl7034]

​@@ChrisBreederveld ive beaten ff8 many times, as its my favorite, and i literally havent had that problem since i was a child who didnt understand video games. Ive grinded my characters to 100 and still beaten the game no problem. Its far from something like Oblivion where you could easily screw yourself for leveling too much. I routinely hit level ~40 on most characters before the end of disc 1

[@ChrisBreederveld]

@@alexanderrahl7034 well, that's actually proving my point. Ending the game on a high level is making it easier on yourself, try beating the game on a low level. The main game is easier on low levels, but the ending is just the opposite

[@reven0699]

KotOR is so broken that theres a chance the opposing driver will only beat your score because it's a scripted scene, but posts a slower time than you did

[@michaelmurphy2112]

I don;t remember in the original release (I'm old, I've played a lot of video games), but that seems correct in the version available on Steam

[@jonathanschubert9052]

Last time I played Kotor, the game glitched out after the big reveal and wouldn't let me progress the conversation with Malak. I vowed to never play again.

[@1D991]

​@@jonathanschubert9052You're missing out

[@OchoChino]

​@@jonathanschubert9052kotor is one of my favorite games.. played it like 6 different ways multiple times never gets old

[@josephwilliams1915]

Yeah, the OG release was pretty buggy. Had it glitch out where calo nord kept showing up even when he wasn't supposed to. Ended up hardlocking the game for me because it wouldn't load the proper sequence for bastila to get taken and stuff haha. To be fair. I think its because i used a lot of glitches and things like that to sort of exploit the game and get me stuff i shouldn't have. Like i accidentally discovered the glitch of keeping the sith armor. I had carth wear it, and then forgot to bring party members with me after going back to uograde my equipment. I didn't realize fast travel existed at the time. So i didnt feel like walking all the way back just to get him, haha

[@MidnightWonko]

Funny you should mention Sonic the Hedgehog: while it's technically true that beating a level at 31 seconds instead of 30 seconds is faster in real time, leader boards use game time instead of real time because of the very reason listed here. Otherwise, multiple levels would consist of the player intentionally waiting around until the 31-second mark.

[@DJSAM3TUN3]

In Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2 you could set yourself up for a very tough final battle if you tried to level up as much as possible. While leveling up increases your stats and abilities, the base weapon damage is fixed to a certain amount and upgrades only give you so much. The final boss has TWICE the player's vitality stat NO MATTER WHAT, so by being a pure melee based character you can set yourself up for the scenario when the final boss has ludicurous amount of HP

[@OnyxDStone]

I don't agree with the MGS judgement as if you give up that event.. they Kill the girl ( I don't remember how to spell her name), that's how you get the stealth camo... you end up leaving with Hal... who was able to get around the base with the Camo and he gives it to you for leaving with him. If you survive and escape without giving up... you spare her and Hal find his way out on his own as he does still have the Camo and you leave with the girl. she gives Snake her bandana and that's how you get it... it's a just a moment of choice for you to get one reward or another when you beat the game and not only that.... you could have both if you beat it a second time and make the other choice. this isn't getting punished for being good.... it's making a choice and dealing with the fallout

[@nicholasbinversie4343]

and of course you're only going to get the tuxedo by doing both anyway

[@bobson3014]

Failing a minigame isn't a choice unless you know you'd be punished for succeeding.

[@Pyrazahn]

In "Seraph" there is a multiplier that goes up as long as you don't take damage. It gives you higher score, but also causes the difficulty level to increase much faster. The developers intention is that if you're so good that you steamroll the first levels, the dynamic difficulty will soon match your skill level and the points multiplier gives you the same score as if you had played with low multiplier, but in a faster time. Unfortunately the score and difficulty multipliers are unbalanced. So if you're going for the weekly leaderboard run, you can get much higher total score by intentionally taking more damage to prevent the multiplier from reaching the two highest levels.

[@EchosTackyTiki]

8:46 Things like this are exactly why I pay through campaigns with my primary goal being to experience the story, and beating the game being secondary. You have to choose the story from the outset.

[@theREALfearsKLOWNs]

No Inscryption?!? Grizzly rushes are terrifying...

[@squizzlor]

Feels awesome to clear them though

[@theREALfearsKLOWNs]

@@squizzlor Never anything like your first... 😝

[@WackoMcGoose]

*"TOO FAST. TOO SOON."* _tears through them anyway_ *"...what."*

[@christopherrogers532]

@@WackoMcGoose lol me too. First time, "Oh I'm so Dead. lol". Second time, "Burn! Burn it all, hahahahahaha!"

[@TheHumanNacho]

About the Ravenskull thing: I encountered that same bug in a placement test back in 2005. I took the test, then felt very confident that I had done really well, and thought me getting a fat zero was good, meaning zero mistakes. Dunno if they fixed the system, but I know they had to manually override my score.

[@uwu2u]

I'm surprised at the MGS1 stealth camo fact, but I think MGS5 is more worthy of a mention with how the enemy factions adapt to your gameplay by placing mines on your common approach routes, equipping more soldiers with helmets/heavy armor if you land plenty of headshots as well as providing them flashlights and night vision goggles if you choose to primarily operate during night time, etc.

[@Teksura]

That's less about punishing you for doing well, and more about adapting to your tactics and therefore forcing you to adapt right back and change it up.

[@kenpanderz]

that sonic one is similar to a Mario 1 speedrunning problem, where finishing a level at a specific time will cause fireworks to go off, so speedrunners have to time their level time to avoid triggering longer fire work displays.

[@TheXenochrist]

FF8 has enemies scale with you as you level. The optimal way to play FF8 is to avoid random encounters as much as humanly possible and gather magic stock via Triple Triad cards rather than manual drawing.

[@jacobstaten2366]

If difficulty scales, why inflate the numbers instead of just giving you new spells and skills? A 3000HP character taking 1000DG is the same as a 30HP character taking 10DG.

[@Anomaly188]

@@jacobstaten2366 Because the game is a mess of poorly implemented features being tried for the very first time. Since difficulty scales the optimal strategy is to keep your levels low and use the junction system to artificially inflate your stats by junctioning spells. Works with weapons too by using card-refine abilities to gain components for weapon upgrades. If you know who to challenge to card games you can get everyone's ultimate weapon by midway through the very first disc.

[@jacobstaten2366]

@@Anomaly188 kind of like how the goal of golf is to play as little golf as possible, or how if you lose a few games in the softball league, you can get a better seed in the playoffs.

[@lpfan4491]

Enemies scaling with you is not even that crazy. But that the scaling is essencially 1:1 in that game is. Like, why even have a levelsystem at that point? Other games has using cheats to stay on level 1 being done by players as a challenge run, FF8 being played that way would just produce regular gameplay.

[@Anomaly188]

@@jacobstaten2366 Except the rules of golf have been established for decades. FF8 flipped the series' standard formula on its head by discouraging grinding for experience and money. The game gives you money via regular salary payments and the junction system renders experience levels useless. Boss fights don't even give experience. Everything instead revolves around GF abilities, spell stocks, junctioning, and cards.

[@jaybradford1023]

Is it just me, or did these videos used to have outros? I feel like now they're just ending abruptly.

[@Wolfkin1983]

You could add sooooo many racing games to this list. The non player cars literally get a speed boost and target you specifically if you're winning.

[@ShadwSonic]

#9 actually isn't "up in the air" any more. When the remake of the first game came out, it was accompanied by an official comic describing such.

[@vaporsnake7]

FF7: Each character at level 99 adds 30,000 HP plus increases various stats for the final fight with Sephiroth. Also, using the best summon materia (Knights of the Round) on the Jenova Synthesis fight increases the HP by another 80,000.

[@monsterno.definablenever.3484]

6:37 I actually discovered this one in the sequel game; IIRC, there's A swoop bike racer champ that gets faster times when you try to catch up to his, endlessly.

[@frag2k12]

EDF 4.1 did a similar thing to guitar hero, you have 5 difficulties and while EDF5 gave you the completion icons for lower difficulties 4.1 didn't, so you had to play a mission 5 times to get all those check marks, add to that, that there were 89 missions and you had to play 445 times to 100%.....a single class. Yes the game also has 4 classes that were independant of each other, so you had to play 1780 times to 100% the missions, that doesn't include the grind needed to unlock every weapon in the game which was RNG and getting enough armour to survive inferno. Of course higher difficulties did give better weapons which in turn made easier difficulties trivial but some missions were long or tedious even with OP firepower.

[@jeepercreepers9]

Not sure if this counts, but in the game Celeste there are some collectibles called golden strawberries. They'll spawn at the beginning of each chapter, and if you take it, it disables all checkpoints and it's only officially collected when you reach the end of the chapter, meaning you have to complete it without dying. Doing this for the bonus chapter 9 is insanely difficult, even among other self-imposed video game challenges. But if you make it to the end and the game sees that you've collected the golden strawberry, it throws in 1 more room that you have to traverse before actually beating the chapter and collecting the strawberry. It's not quite as difficult of a room as others in the chapter, but the fact that it only appears if you have the golden strawberry means that you can't practice it and you only get one chance before it sends you back to the beginning

[@SilverSpectre266]

Recent nomination, but at the same time I dont think it technically qualifies because the game is still Early Access and this doesnt affect the overall game for now at least: Throne of Bones Its a autobattler, deckbuilding, roguelike, and when you get lucky enough to beat the run, your current character, deck, abilities, everything, become a sort of secret optional boss after beating the games original boss. The next time you beat a run, you get the option of either leaving, or facing your previous character and deck, who are now the optional boss. If you choose not to face them or dont beat them, then you leave, and the next time you win a run again, you will get the option to face them again. If you manage to beat them, then now this character and deck will become the new optional boss. And basically you are making them stronger with each successful time you actually overcome them.

[@darkestmonkey4457]

Typing games when you where leaning how to type at first you had to type as fast as possible but then it got harder to type that fast with accuracy. So you just did it slowly so you didn’t have to try so hard

[@Syurtpiutha]

BG3 basically has it as essential to have a lot more long rests than one would realistically need unless one completely empties ones spell slots every encounter. Which impacts non-casters and warlocks the most as short rests are somewhat obsolete in the start. Quite a change if you're used to PnP and being a bit more frugal with your spells (as written an adventuring day is assumed to be like 10+ encounters IIRC, though please correct me on that, been a while since I read the DMG). Not to mention it makes the pacing odd (Hey, we have to hurry to get these things out of our head. Whelp, best sleep for a week because otherwise we could lock ourselves out of content). Excellent game, mind you. This was just a bit weird.

[@thegrillagorilla1]

God Hand was the first game that I'm aware of that had adaptive difficulty, the better you are the harder it gets. Here's what the wiki says. Level 1 (Green Skull) - Enemies will not attack in groups and rarely block attacks, as well as only attacking when they are in view of the camera or are being attacked themselves. Level 2 (Blue Skull) - Enemies start attacking in groups and can now counter-attack. Level 3 (Red Skull) - Enemies gain new moves and counter attack more often, and more enemies will start to spawn, and they will now attack regardless of them being in view of the camera. Level Die, or, Level 4 (Metal Skull with Crown) - Enemies attack with faster animations and more frequently, and also gain a resistance to most techniques with a Launch Property as well (Unless they are dizzied, stunned, recoiling from a guard break or if the launch technique was used as a counter). More enemies spawn in certain places while on this difficulty level. It's a really fun game with customisable fighting moves, some combos suck so t takes a lot of experimenting until you find something that fits your style best.

[@nerdyneo21]

Guitar Hero 3’s difficulty achievements WERE NOT STACKABLE. You had to beat each difficulty individually just like the 1st two games.

[@aaronpaul9188]

Also in KOTOR 1: You switch classes about a quarter of the way through thr game, but your max level is capped at 20. So it behooves you to not level up until you become a jedi. That way instead of 8 levels in your starter class and 12 as a jedi, you can do 4 as a starter and 16 as a jedi. Which makes you much much stronger.

[@sjtabler]

I remember that race in KOTOR. After my first play through I would deliberately go slow enough to win the first race, but during the second one would go all out.

[@drfiggles]

System Shock that if you don’t already know you have to write down the numbers after each boss, by the time you reach the end game you have to go back to every floor and get said numbers.

[@tazman2253]

the other issue with Knights of the Old Republic was the half way point. you had 3 classes at the start of the game that each had a specific stat build for them. However none of the jedi paths we you forced into at the half way point worked on those stats. So you had to build your character backwards think about the 3 jedi classes and then you had to build your base subpar based on that/.

[@FinalHopeTrio]

Fun fact: the speedrunning thing tied to how long the Time Bonus takes to tick down in Sonic games is the reason why most speedrunners will use the RTA-TBC (Real-Time Attack, excluding Time Bonuses and Continues) category or just stick with IGT (In-Game Time). The punishment only applies to the base RTA (Real-Time Attack) category. This was discussed when Sonic 2 shown that pausing while speedrunning is ABSOLUTELY BROKEN and the IGT rules had to be changed many times to be how it is today as RTA-TBC. RTA-TBC uses real-time, but subtracts the time spent on the bonuses and continues being earned at the end of each stage. It's essentially IGT, but pausing doesn't stop the counting timer (which is the RTA timer). Some games like Sonic 3 AIR or Sonic Robo Blast 2 had ways to speed up the bonus tallies, with S3 AIR having you press a jump button to speed it up and SRB2 having you press the Spin button (defaulted to left shift on keyboard) to outright finish the results early by having the bonuses just skip to the end of the tally. SRB2 also has its own gamemode for speedrunning known as Marathon Mode, which does prompt you to pick the character of choice, then pick if you're using Real-time or using the game's In-game timer. After that, blast through with Sonic Speed.

[@thenightrider-x]

my experience with competitive multiplayer games has resulted in me quitting most of them. the reason is because skill results in punishment. they add systems to placate unskilled players and call it "matchmaking". the skilled players end up being forced to only play against the other most skilled players. that results in too much extreme competition to be fun. "matchmaking" should be removed from all multiplayer competitive games that aren't meant for children. in the past there was no matchmaking in games and that was when games were fun. now i mostly just play coop or mmorpg/rpg games because they've ruined competitive gaming by making it too predictable and unfair to skilled players.

[@TraumaCenter13]

The Last Remnant - a jrpg that punishes you for grinding. 😢

[@jruler93]

On that last one, that's why most Genesis Sonic speedruns are timed using IGT (In-Game Time) rather than RTA (Real Time Attack).

[@McGeezle]

Max Payne with its stupid ass adaptive difficulty

[@SvviftDeath]

Burnout: There were some races if you drove extremely well and didn't crash, had full boost and finished your first lap in 1st place then the rubberbanding for the game would scale to impossible to beat difficulties. A single crash would result to you spawning back into 2nd - 4th place. No matter how perfectly you played afterwards it was impossible to catch up as the difficulty would be locked after that first lap. If you drove somewhat dumb the first lap only being in 3rd-5th at the end then you had a much easier difficulty set and even crashing multiple more times you could easily catch up and win the race. I had one race where I crashed after a perfect 1st lap and respawned 12 sec behind first place. After 2min of perfect driving to catch up I was 48sec behind at the start of the last lap.

[@Sorain1]

It's rubberband AI like that which taught me to only take first in the last half of the last lap in a racing game. Lest you anger the Rubberband Gods.

[@IIARROWS]

In Metroid: Zero Mission the final boss Mecha Ridley takes double the damage if you have collected all the items instead of 1 less.

[@Tounushi]

7:39 I remember doing 22.14 seconds on the Manaan course when playing on my friend's XBOX at 3AM.

[@roadkillz78]

I remember learning about the timer after many frustrating attempts in trying to beat my previous records (little to my knowledge at the time). After my other playthroughs, I did just enough to qualify, making my experiences much better than before. I didn't require mods, I just played smarter.

[@platinumhawke]

And then there's Battle Garegga, a 90s arcade shooter with an infamous dynamic difficulty. Pick up power ups? Game gets harder. Shoot things? Game gets harder. Just play the game? Gets harder. Earn an extra life? Gets harder FASTER.

[@Blackwolf83ad]

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter. The story of the game is unlocked via multiple playthoughs, where you get to a certain point, die to having to high a Dragon meter then restart with additional exp. If you somehow get to the end without increasing your dragon meter all that additional story will be missed.

[@neophyte8087]

Your forgot the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, leveling up in that game made it way harder instead of easier.

[@Tarc-Chus]

The KOTOR one explains....SO MUCH! I was stuck on that final race for like an hour and wondering why it was so much easier as a kid.

[@khandimahn9687]

The Last Remnant. In most respects it's a pretty standard Final Fantasy style JRPG. Your level determines, well, your level. But there is also a Battle Rank, which determines the difficulty of enemies. These level up separately. The better you do in combat, the more you BR raises. Do a lot of farming and kill things quickly, and you can actually raise your BR to a point where the game becomes more difficult than your level and gear can handle. It's crazy, but to avoid this it's actually better to drag combat out, and let some of your characters die.

[@_Sinduss]

Mario kart. Being behind will give you better items. In competitive online play a strategy called bagging where you purposely fall behind on the first 2 laps and then use the powerful you have aquired on the third lap to try to take the lead is a more consistent strat on most tracks than racing well for all the laps. Pokemon gen1. In speedruns runners will try to maintain their pokemon at low health so the low health warning plays. This causes certain sound effects not to play saving multiple seconds per battle. Re4. There is an adaptive difficulty system which makes enemies stronger and drop less ammo if you do well (don't get hit, don't miss, get headshots, do special melee attacks.) Dark souls 1. Hyper mode is where you remain at low health with the red tearstone ring and power within. This makes you do over double damage and can allow player to one shot many of the games bosses. Oblivion. Rather famously enemies scale to your level. You level up when you sleep so it is possible to avoid leveling up to keep enemies weak. Zelda oot. The dark link miniboss has health equal to twice the number of heart containers link has. Fire emblem. Playing well in fire emblem means beating the map in a few turns as possible. This will give your unit less exp so they will end up weaker and in extreme cases you can beat some maps before recruitable units show up missing out on them. LTC (low turn count(optimal runs trying to minise turns)) will sometimes waste turns on certain maps because the extra resources will save more turns later.

[@Th3GoldenNose]

I'm tales of zesteria, if you beat the final boss early instead of losing to him, you get a bad ending.

[@AerialEmber]

It seems throwing matches for manufactured drama is the most realistic thing about WWE! That's next-level self-awareness.

[@Soapromancer]

Honestly, I appreciate the ramped up difficulty when you are playing well. Sort of lik3 the further along a RoR2 run, the more enemies can one-shot you (if you spec too hard into offense)

[@cryofmankind350]

These sudden endings are still jarring mOnths down the path. I enjoyed the outros. Please bring them back

[@domhuckle]

Sonic was such a good game. Soundtrack alone was god tier

[@GabePuratekuta]

It's a Sonic game. Of course the soundtrack's amazing.

[@ASLTheatre]

Fruit Ninja VR’s “Are You Kidding Me” trophy nearly drove me crazy. The harder you play the better you get. The harder this achievement is to get. This was my second to last trophy before I got all the trophies in this PSVR game. Simple but a pain in the butt!

[@kevinchong5424]

Don't forget Baldur's Gate 3, where so much happen or are only triggered during a long rest. But all the game tells you is that long rests restore your characters. So the better you play, the less you need a long rest

[@ReikerForge]

This lmao I only long rested once in the entirety of act 2 and once I realized there were things attached to it beyond talking to your "spirit", I long rested like 10 times in a row to do all the other stuff (Dog + Owlbear cutscenes being a big example)

[@Beregorn88]

Yes, but quest timers are ALSO connected to long rest, so be aware...

[@molybdaen11]

It surely does not help to be taught that you only have a few days to survive😅.

[@kevinchong5424]

@@molybdaen11 Don't underestimate how many of us wants to see what happens those days are up

[@molybdaen11]

@@kevinchong5424 I was imagining a simple "Game Over scene".

[@moonshinetheleocat1235]

To answer the WWE question? The game is based on the real thing. It's not about winning. It's about putting on a show.

[@mariuszmoraw3571]

Most of NFS series, especially when we talk about old ones. If you were too good, rubberbanding came off in sometimes insane manner. Same didn't apply of course if all of sudden you were doing bad.

[@lssjvegeta7103]

*earl flashbacks intensify*

[@mariuszmoraw3571]

@@lssjvegeta7103 Gotta love that Lancer being formula one in his hands and when you drive it's utter garbage.

[@Aoki85]

The Sonic "Extra Life" jingle (rewarded with every 50,000 points) lives rent-free in my head to this day.

[@robertcain7630]

oh, I remember that pod race from KotOR so well! such an awesome game all round which I've completed many times on x-box as well as PC I figured this "don't do too well" after the first playthrough. After that on the first run I'd avoid all the speed boosts on the track and just scrape through before the set time. Second hit a few and again, just beat the new time. Final run, hit ALL the boots and crush their puny hopes and dreams with an awesome time no-one can beat!

[@liquidmark5081]

In final fantasy 7, if you max out cloud and use knights of the round on sephiroth’s forms before his final form, his final form is like ten times more powerful than it would be otherwise. If you show up at around level 60 and don’t use knights of the round, you can kill his final form with a single attack.

[@ThZuao]

Resident Evil 4 famously had this dynamic system where it would make things harder or easier for you depenfing how well you were doing. Get an S rank and it gives you less ammo on the next stage, enemies take less and give more damage and are more clever.

[@VioletMoonfox]

I actually really loved the swoop races.

[@armoredplacoderm]

For KotOR swoop racing do the first race avoiding both obstacles and speed boosts, but shift gears when you can. On the second race hit the speed boosts.

[@MrSC219]

In a similar vein to Medieval 2, Drakengard's endings get progressively worse the more you collect everything. The game essentially punishes you for causing more death. It's a fun little concept. Also, I remember that damn Kotor thing. I didn't understand it when I was a kid, but dang was I annoyed when I played it later. Wish I knew about that mod too.

[@gusty7153]

in all fairness though games made with speed running and arcade scoring in mind are suppose to be about doing your best and challenging yourself to keep improving. in the beginning the reward was to simply be at the top of the leaderboard with an unbeatable score

[@AngryNerdBird]

Hush from Binding of Isaac actually decides how much damage resistance he has in the second phase based on how much damage you do to him in Phase one. So the better you do, the more resistant he is.

[@TySama0]

Damn, Jess and I have the same favourite RPG of all time? Nice. I even have a tattoo of Revan's Sith symbol.

[@sawlens]

Resident Evil 4 has where if you play really well the enemies take more shots to take down, they do more damage, and I believe a few other variables change too.

[@TheNinjaPiglet]

Kingdom Hearts 1.5 PS3 Version: In these games you get to play Kingdom Hearts Final Mix and Kingdom Hearts: Re:Chain Memories. Unlike the PS4 and PS5 Versions, you had to do multiple playthroughs on each difficulty in order to get all the Trophies. Both of these games have three difficulties so that would be 3 playthroughs of each game? Right? Only half right in this case. In Kingdom Hearts Final Mix you only have to do 3 plays for the game. Now in Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories, you end up playing as both Riku and Sora. Sora and Riku have their own story in the game and you have to play each side 3 times for a total of 6 playthroughs. This was changed in Kingdom Hearts 2.5 PS3 Version but no update was ever released to make the Trophies in 1.5 stackable.

[@TehDarkOn3]

In sonic speed running, in many cases, the time is counted by the amount of time to beat each level and not the part with the added score. To quote a sonic speed runner, it doesn't make sense to have to go slow to go fast.

[@davidpumpkinsjr.5108]

If you kil too many enemies via headshot in "The Last of Us Part II", enemies in the last area will be hearing riot helmets. The KOTOR racing game reminds me of the Gunner's Gauntlet from FFX-2, which carried over high scores to New Game+, making it more difficult to win in subsequent playthroughs.

[@illyahrthebard3303]

It's a good thing Gunner's Gauntlet is kinda fun. You can theoretically make it impossible to beat on subsequent playthroughs by hitting max score, though

[@jeffzebert4982]

A sudden career change did happen to at least one of my Sims in the original "The Sims"! That Sim, who had been a Mad Scientist in the Science Career Track, suddenly became a Medical Researcher in the Medicine Career Track.

[@Na0uta]

On kotor, I figured out that the race time you had to beat would always be just a little faster then you just ran. So I always did barely anything to make the last race super easy.

[@jtrevor99]

#1's also true in Super Mario and The Lost Levels speedruns. It's sometimes better to slow down a frame or two just to avoid the fireworks at the end.

[@whitewolf3051]

Actually for the swoop race in SW KOTOR, at least the first one, depending on how fast you finish the race, the other racer *might* not beat your time. *Can’t* be sure, but you *may* need to be faster than twenty five seconds, definitely faster than thirty seconds, even twenty seven means the appearance of the other racer.

[@ryanrowe1975]

Guitar hero is a difficult game to unlock the achievement of completing every task in the game.

[@ShadwSonic]

#1 That is actually why the official speedrunning metrics don't use RTA, and instead go by IGT... unless the race is a live event, at which point some people can get sneaky.

[@DrippleDragon]

XCOM 2 I feel like should be on this list, XCOM 2 is a great and one of my personal favorite strategy games, it’s notoriously difficult but the game can be made easier by managing your resources and building the proper assets, however the game itself increases in difficulty spike the more assets you have to stop and kill the ADVENT, keep completing and killing too many ADVENT soldiers having no casualties and completing every mission and mission difficulty will soon stay out the range of Moderate and Difficult and go to Very Difficult or Hard and the game will give the ADVENT assets such as toxic ammo, increased troops, heavily artillery and even boost the Game Timer, this definitely gets harder by mid game when you’ve built Proving Grounds and use the Skull Jack, then you’ll have to deal with the Data Alien and Orb almost every single mission It gets to a point where you either have to choose between losing Soliders or failing the mission next to an ADVENT ship tailing your base and if they catch you it’s a automatic game over especially if your on a Hardcore Run where Autosaves and Loading are disabled And in XCOM loss is tolerated failure is not

[@Beregorn88]

..,.,,;:.;;,,:..!?;:,,.;::,,., Here, you dropped these: please, put them back in the text...

[@Nikolai_The_Crazed]

I hate these systems that fudge things for you based on how well you’re doing. Battlefield 1 had an issue where the NPCs would randomly fall over and die if you shot at them but didn’t hit them too many times. You’d hit them the first time, shoot at them three more times with no shots connecting, and the NPC would just fall over dead despite fighting you two seconds before. Stop fudging things to make things easier or harder for people, it’s annoying as hell.

[@johngonon1507]

The Talos principle: if you manage to collect all the stars, you have special ending where you basically become trapped in the world.

[@MrDestro0000]

6:31 the third go around being how you get the tuxedo

[@LeetHaxington]

That kotor pod race made me paranoid in every race now. Similarly, There’s some other games where you get a reward for every high score you set so you have to make due to go over by only 1. I can’t remember any specific examples or it might just be paranoia from kotor. I think mario RPG had one and maybe like FF6 or final fantasy tactics. There’s been a few games that word it like this will happen but it turns out you can only get 1 reward anyway

[@dantefreeman1312]

8:50 a warning for anyone "taking there time" with this game, don't make the losing too obvious. This mght have just been me, but when I threw a Fight with Meg to get more dialog, I don't know how, but she somehow knew I let her win and I didn't see her again, for like, six runs. I still don't know how that happened.

[@garronn]

I am genuinely surprised FFX was not on this list, the final boss was all of your summons that you spent the entire game leveling up and making stronger.

[@smugs7921]

Will say for sonic runs the time is based on level time not including the time from score count

[@jamesnewcomer4939]

Homeworld. At the end of each level the difficulty scales based on how much you bring along: so people like me that captured EVERY heavy cruiser along the way reach the end and find a fleet several times your strength waiting for you!

[@blueblaze7312]

Dude. Inscryption did this, where if you OTK the guy, the entire field changes! He'll say "Too fast. Too soon." As you're being forced to learn the game at ITS pace. And then proceeds to send your ass on a one way trip to the Shadow Realm