Self imposed challenges

[GabeZhul]

I just got reminded of this one in another thread and I am curious about other people's experiences. The question at hand is this: once you have played a game that you love enough times, do you ever impose any handicaps or special conditions on yourself to keep it fresh even on the n-th playthrough?

I have two examples here. The first one is my fourth character in Fallout New Vegas. I love that game, but once you get used to the system and know where to find some good loot, it can become incredibly easy (save for a very few annoying critters). So, on this character, once I reached level forty and finished Old World Blues, I went ahead and dumped all his unique and powerful gear and money into the safe in the Sink and then returned to the Mojave with just a 10mm pistol, a jumpsuit and a handful of meds, and it really made the game more fun and tense instead of having an arsenal of high-powered unique weapons and power armors that the average bandit can't even scratch.

The other, more extreme example would be something I didn't really go through with, but my friend did: Playing the Prince of Persia series without getting hit even once. I finished the first game like that (it wasn't that hard), but Warrior Within was a chore when I had to reload a save every time anything hit me. My friend on the other hand managed to actually finish the game without getting hit once, including both possible final bosses, and he did the same for Two Thrones as well (there were even some footage of him marathoning both games)...

So yeah, here's the question again: Did you have your own version of such challenges, more or less reasonable than my examples, and if you do, what were they?

 

[TehCookie]

One challenge I do in almost every game is a no items. Items make games so much easier, but they're also limited/cost money so I wouldn't use them and that turned into a self challenge to not use them.

I'll do that in action games like DMC to RPG games like FF, Disgaea and Skyrim. Items are for the weak! Or smart people with strategy besides whaling on things.

 

[The_Lost_King]

Installing Skyre and Duel Combat Realism in skyrim and starting a new character. Any of you who have done this know how hellishly difficult it is if you are facing either a. a two handed guy(God damn you kill cams) or b. fighting more than one person at once. Seriously Skre makes Skyrim ridiculously hard(unless you play a stealthy archer, still as broken as before) and yet, for some reason, I love it. What I don't love is the constant crashing.

If you don't know what I am talking about just watch Jingles1215's Skyrim lp. Specifically the part where he spends an hour and some to kill one bandit camp.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

I do it all the time in Skyrim. No stealing run(at all, even non thieves can nab a lot of good stuff) No blacksmithing/enchanting(that shits broken as fuck) or purposefully bad characters like a light armour guy wielding a two hander. It makes expert difficulty a lot more fun to play, and turning it up to master just makes fights stupidly long anyways.

 

[GabeZhul]

I do the Skyrim things as well, though I don't really consider them self-imposed challenges but roleplaying.

Though if we are at Skyrim: Playing as a Stupid Evil character could be one. Getting top bounties in every hold, doing all the more ruthless daedric quests and being a genocidal asshole, while arguably a "viable" playstyle, would be pretty problematic for low-to-mid level characters. Also, I would totally want to see a let's play of such a character with the guy doing a Freeman's Mind style narration to the events. Hmmm... There's an idea I might try later.

 

[Ickorus]

When playing Dark Souls I like to try different builds, I actually found a new favourite that way with a rapier mage, focus being on the rapier though since magic is a bit cack (I have high hopes for the magic in DkS2, however).

The most ridiculous build I've played so far is dual-shielding, the two-handed heavy attack for the shield is surprisingly good, it both blocks and deals damage at the same time; too bad about it all being very low damage.

In multiplayer games if I find I'm doing really well I purposefully restrict myself to things I'm not so good with as a way to improve myself further and give other players a better chance, for instance if I'm playing Hidden: Source I'll try for physics kills and tricking players into shooting one another and I never use the shotgun.

 

[The Eupho Guy_v1legacy]

I recently finished a no grind, no bills of Disgaea 3. I didn't replay any maps and only used the item world when I had to (You need a level 10 weapon to advance past a certain point in the story). I also didn't pass any bills, which meant starting items only, apart from the ones I could scavenge from bonus chests and the end of stage bonus board. It didn't go too badly, as I focused on Mao and a Red Mage as my damage dealers and everyone else was on throwing duty. Being able to focus on two characters meant they were still able to get enough mana and experience to get through to the postgame.

 

[OneCatch]

I just got reminded of this one in another thread and I am curious about other people's experiences. The question at hand is this: once you have played a game that you love enough times, do you ever impose any handicaps or special conditions on yourself to keep it fresh even on the n-th playthrough?

So yeah, here's the question again: Did you have your own version of such challenges, more or less reasonable than my examples, and if you do, what were they?

I find myself doing this an awful lot, especially for re-playthroughs.

Like my current Farcry 3 game is on the hardest difficulty, and I'm only allowing myself to carry a 'reasonable' quantity of weapons. So for example, if I'm taking a machine gun or a huge anti-material sniper rifle, I can only take smaller weapons in the other three slots (bow, flaregun, pistols, small SMGs, etc).
Or instead I could take an assault rifle, and a wider selection of lighter weapons.

And I remember playing through the older CODs (MW 1 and 2, WaW) using only the default mission loadout, which seemed a bit more sensible given how soldiers don't actually throw away their weapons on a whim because they fancy having a go with the dragunov. And it made things surprisingly more difficult as well.

Lastly, I remember playing through all the early Splinter Cell games 'Silent Assassin' style - no alarms, not allowed to get seen by anyone (or have anyone suspicious enough to think there was actually an intruder), only allowed to kill mandatory characters in an accidental manner (drowning, falls, explosions, fires), allowed to knock out enemies, but only very sparsely (maximum of one or two a mission) , and in a way that would be 'explainable' with the environment (knocking them out at the foot of some stairs, using a tazer in a sparking generator room, that kind of thing).

Those runthroughs were difficult, especially in the earlier games.

 

[KarmaTheAlligator]

I tried (and failed) a Critical Mode Level 1 run on Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix. Other challenges I do in this game include beating the Cavern of Remembrance as soon as I get Glide (so usually no Reflega, no Magnega, very limited options of abilities, that sort of thing) and beating the Absent Silhouettes as soon as I can.

Most of the time, though, I do the opposite of challenging myself, I either cheat to get the good stuff early or, in games where this is possible, break the game by abusing some mechanics. I like having it easy.

 

[captainballsack]

Pacifist runs always go down well.

 

[Iron Criterion]

In Fallout NV I created a character who didn't like killing, and did his best to avoid combat (stealth, suppression attacks, running away); usually aiming for a either a one or two digit kill-count by the end of the game, as opposed to the usual triple or even quadruple.

I tried to do a conjuring only run in Skyrim (I could only use summoned creatures or weapons to fight). It was hard.

 

[Leemaster777]

I'm in the middle of doing something like this right now.

I've already beaten Persona 3 Portable on easy mode with the male protagonist, so for my second playthrough, I'm played on medium, as the female.

But the self-imposed challenge is that I CANNOT issue direct commands to my teammates. Since the original P3 only let you give vague commands to your team, I'm playing using those rules. Definitely amps up the challenge a bit.

 

[Denamic]

I almost never use consumables.
Potions are for pussies!

 

[rob_simple]

Whenever I replay Ratchet & Clank games I always see how long I can go without getting hit. The challenge generally doesn't last far past the second or third world.

 

[Teoes]

I probably should do challenge runs in Call of Pripyat and put some difficulty back into the game..
No buying/upgrading/repairing items or equipment would be a start.

 

[MorphingDragon]

Doing honours year without actually doing a lot of work.

It's a very difficult self imposed challenge. ;P

 

[RJ 17]

My first few playthroughs of Final Fantasy Tactics, I used the crap out of TG Cid...I mean why wouldn't I? The guy is fucking AMAZING! His sword powers are just obscenely overpowered...he literally breaks the game just by existing. So now when I play through the game I just don't use him at all. A lot of people say the difficulty curve of the game drops off a cliff once you beat Riovanes Castle (because you get Cid shortly after), but without using him it actually makes some of the final battles more challenging.

But still, a lot of the "Main Characters" of the game are pretty sweet themselves. Agrias is pretty good, Mustadio's snipe abilities can come in handy quite often, and Beowulf's magic sword abilities make him pretty strong to. But they're all optional characters, so instead I amped up the challenge and now play it with no Main characters other than the main character - Ramza - himself. That means it's always Ramza and 4 generic characters. This has the added bonus of making it fun to watch the six generic cadets you start the game with grow and evolve into being badass heroes in their own right.

Also, in Tenchu Z, I refuse to accept anything less than absolute perfection. If I get spotted, I have to restart the level, even if I've already killed 17 guys and there's only 2 left. Gotta start from the beginning. A NINJA SHOULD NEVER BE SPOTTED, DAMNIT!

 

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

I play Skyrim with quite a few gameplay mods installed, most notably SkyRe, Frostfall and Realistic Needs and Diseases. Good sweet Christ can it be difficult! A prime example being the multiple tries it took to get through one of the first dungeons you come across because I kept getting killed by bandits. Just bandits. Not Bandit Highwaymen or Bandit Marauders, no. Bog-standard bandits. It was mainly in melee combat though because of a weird half second delay I get before the game registers that I've started blocking, which makes timed blocks nigh-impossible. Still really fun though. Must better than the vanilla game.

 

[Xisin]

The other, more extreme example would be something I didn't really go through with, but my friend did: Playing the Prince of Persia series without getting hit even once. I finished the first game like that (it wasn't that hard), but Warrior Within was a chore when I had to reload a save every time anything hit me. My friend on the other hand managed to actually finish the game without getting hit once, including both possible final bosses, and he did the same for Two Thrones as well (there were even some footage of him marathoning both games)...

Yeah, I could never do that. You know in the very beginning of Sands of Time, when you have to wall jump a few times up the side of a statue in order to get to the dagger...that took me 3 hours to do. Just the wall jump part. I love platformers, I'm just absolutely terrible at them.

My household plays Hardcore Lan Party Minecraft. If just one person dies everyone loses everything. Makes everything really tense, but it's oodles of fun.