Your Best Self- Imposed Challenges in Gaming

[mirror's edgy]

Unlocking achievements can be satisfying, but some of the most amazing feats I've seen are when gamers decide to put some twist on the game's mechanics to give it some more challenge and entertainment value. Speedruns are probably the classic example, but I find those really nerve wracking and perfectionist to do myself. I recently finished a run of Fallout: New Vegas (which I love and find perfectly enjoyable even without going over the top and crazy) eating people as a food source. And nothing else. Never came close to starving or had any bouts of the shakes, for that matter. And that made for a unique (read: genocidally batty) character and lots of interesting moments. On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, I did a pacifist run of Deus Ex, which made for a new type of character and challenge.

But many, many people on the Internet are more skilled, creative, and have more free time than I do. So what have you tried to make a game interesting, hard, or just for the lulz?

 

[Zeriphor]

I was trying to do a solo character playthrough of Baldur's Gate + Baldur's Gate 2 where I accept all actions. As in, no reloading to deal with mistakes or bad luck.

Unfortunately, after dying and having to restart several times, I gave up. Some day I'll do it but with a party so getting charmed once doesn't mean I have to restart the game.

captcha: make haste. Not in that game captcha, not in that game.

 

[EscapeGoat_v1legacy]

I don't go in for that many self-imposed challenges, but I've enjoyed the ones I have done. My most common is doing the Nuzlocke Run in Pokemon, the basic gist of which is you can only catch the first Pokemon in each route, and if a Pokemon faints, you have to release it.

I've also done a speed run of Kingdom Hearts II, which I guess was a sort of challenge. Very few battles bar boss fights, which meant next to no leveling was the main issue. Managed to beat it in around 8 hours though, which I thought wasn't bad.

 

[Lilani]

I tried to do the Little Rocket Man achievement in HL2: E2--the one where you have to pick up the little garden gnome at the start of the game, carry him throughout most of the game with you all the way to White Forest, and then put him in the rocket once you get there. I got to the helicopter chase just after the combine ambush on the way to White Forest, and I just couldn't keep the stupid guy in the car while I was running from the helicopter (though I forgot to look and see if I could finish the chase then go get him later). And now I can't find the save file anymore, I think I accidentally saved over it :S

Though I am only 4 antlion grubs short in getting the achievement for killing all of the grubs in the game One more run through should do it.

 

[CAPTCHA]

I nearly got through a play of FF9 with a level one party, but I was defeted by Meltigemini who spams an attack that would kill my entire party in one hit. Furthest I could get was three rounds into the fight, landing one hit for 9999 damage (he has around 25000 HP).

Spoiler

 

[Tallim]

I went through System Shock 2 using only psionics as weapons. A lot harder than a wrench only run surprisingly, you also find that a lot of the abilities you wouldn't look twice at normally become a lot more useful.

Fallout New Vegas in under 4 hours.

And many many moons ago when it was first out I did an Iron Man run of the original Tomb Raider. Whole game in one sitting without dying or I had to start again.

 

[GamingAwesome1]

Touhou Bunkachou ~ Double Spoiler, fully completed with the game set to 90FPS via fan patch (read: the game runs 1.5x the speed). This is one of those nutty bullet hell games for the record.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrs2vQcVksk

Why yes, I do sort of lack a life. Why do you ask?

 

[Black Arrow Officer]

Playing ridiculous classes in TF2, like Soldier with Gunboats, Rocket Jumper, and Disciplinary Action, or Sniper with Machina (no scoping), Razorback, and Tribalman's Shiv.

 

[II2]

My mate played through Prototype trying not to kill any civilians. All in all, he did pretty well, but did do some collateral damage.

 

[PPB]

I tried playing Morrowind and Oblivion with "realistic" restrictions like having to eat, drink, etc. I never last too long since I end up annoyed and just give up.

I also remember playing Warcraft 3 on battle.net and limiting myself with specific unit types. My favourite was to go all dwarf when playing as Human, it made a surprisingly good army.

There there's the silly little things like playing Diablo 2 without spending skill points (got boring) or playing Icewind Dale solo.

 

[Vault101]

gaming on a SNES....WHILE UPSIDE DOWN

.....yeah its not as fun as it sounds

 

[scorptatious]

For me that would probably be when I went through MGS3 on Solid Normal with 0 alerts, 0 kills, and using 0 rations. Highest rank I've ever got I think was the FOX rank. Never did get any higher than that.

Another self imposed challenge I gave myself was playing through FFVII with only one of the enemy skill materia. Why? Because personally, I feel that having more than one of those makes my characters overpowered, and I would like to use some of the other materia there are in the game.

Let me tell you, Safer Sephiroth was a much more difficult and challenging boss without everyone spamming stuff from the enemy skill materia.

 

[mirror's edgy]

I went through System Shock 2 using only psionics as weapons. A lot harder than a wrench only run surprisingly, you also find that a lot of the abilities you wouldn't look twice at normally become a lot more useful.

Fallout New Vegas in under 4 hours.

And many many moons ago when it was first out I did an Iron Man run of the original Tomb Raider. Whole game in one sitting without dying or I had to start again.

I have to ask, what kind of crazy sequence breaking did you do to pull off New Vegas that quickly? Must have been a pretty stark ending you got...

 

[God of Path]

The pokemon games and other turn-based rpg's like finalfantasy, dragon quest, etc. lead themselves to one of my favorites, no items, no healing except for save spots(in pokemon it's the pokecenters). I recently beat a chrono trigger run like that.

 

[SomeLameStuff]

Playing through a game in Heroes of Newerth with nothing but Steamboots, a Power Supply and homecoming stones. Used Riftwalker for it, did better than I expected too.

Another one was for me to backdoor the meatball with Pollywog the moment I got a portal key. As a bonus, I managed to kill the enemy courier (which was carrying a Nullstone, yay!)

 

[Fluffythepoo]

Heroic firelands in 1st person during firelands patch

 

[Alternative]

Trying to reach as high a round as possible on Black OP: Zombies while blindfolded, relieing on only sound and a mental image of the map.

 

[eternal-chaplain]

I hated the main quest of Skyrim. Honestly, it was crap, and completely optional as per doing the other quests. So instead I took all the best side quests in the game and loosely strung them together into my own 20 hour quest! Very hard to do, but very fun.

 

[Harkonnen64]

Playing on an almost-anything-goes apocalypse-survival Minecraft multiplayer server for 2 weeks and not permanently quitting from frustration and setbacks.