Saturday, December 6, 2008

Double Dragon NES - Stage 2 - The Choice

In many videogames there is more than one way to achieve victory. The choice is left up to you, the player, on how to complete the task you are given. In some cases, your choices might be clear, in others, its paifully obvious, such as with Gears Of War 2's horde mode. We recently discovered an glitch/exploit that allows shields to be placed backwards in such as way that they are impossible to knock down by any enemy.

The implications are obvious - you can easily lock yourself in an impenetrable fortress and blind fire your way to victory. Sadly, it appears that this is the path many people atop the horde leaderboard have taken - the Pathetic Cowards Path. Using shields to defend yourself isnt cowardly, but placing them in such as way that they cannot be kicked in ruins the challenge of the mode - Wave 50 can be completed by a single person on the highest difficulty, surely this cannot be intentional on the part of Epic games.

Whether a patch and leaderboard swipe is forthcoming remains to be seen, however, the reality is if we want to play Horde, we are going to play it the only way we know how - The Heroic Path. Victory is never guaranteed, and the only things that can ensure our survival are tactics, skill and pure luck. Its the only way I would have it.

5 comments:

Chronic said...

The music in that video is so tight.

Chronic said...

Bond, it reminds me of the flatshot glitches and standby glitches in Virtua Tennis. It totally ruins the leaderboards. Horde will still be fun to play, but the ranking are meaningless, which begs the question why they even bothered to add them. Now we have to just try to beat our own high score, which is what champions do anyway.

md galaxy said...

At least we know how WE got there. Plus, how fun is it really if you know you can't die? That couldn't be exciting at all.

Anonymous said...

There've always been ways to cheat/boost your way to the top of the leaderboards in most games.

Thankfully with Horde you don't have to be disrupted by other people doing it. They can go to their 'Phil Cool' zone and have fun, I generally only look out for friends on leaderboards now for a bit of competition.

Chronic said...

I know Bender, but it still breaks my heart that it had to happen in Gears 2, but I should know better by now.

All of my favorite games have corrupted leaderboards, its my curse I guess.

Like you said Bender, we'll just play the game our way and not worry about anyone else. I really do think a patch is forthcoming at some point soon anyway. And if it never happens, like you said, the exploit doesnt affect how we choose play the game. It just makes you winder what Epic was thinking. Its either a major design flaw or a huge oversight in beta-testing, either way it looks bad for them.