Top 10 Most Bizarre Ways to Die in a Video Game

09. Death by Glitch (Too Many Games to Say)

If you have played video games for any length of time at all you will have encountered what gamers refer to as glitches - unintentional errors inside the game world that can have a range of effects from the funny to disastrous...

We are not talking about Kill Screens mind you - though those are also glitch-based deaths that are very very frustrating. What we are talking about are Random Glitches that either kill you or may as well have without actually breaking the game. Here are just two examples of glitch deaths:

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King 'Death Grip' Spell.

Wrath of the Lich King was the second expansion to WoW, and in it the players got to experience the then all new Death Knight class - which was sort of a dark warrior-mage type character class. Among the powers that DKs had was the spell Death Grip.

The spell was supposed to allow the DK to “pull” an opponent towards them - like Scorpion did in Mortal Kombat, you know?

The thing is when the code wizards that made the game created - and we can safely presume play-tested - that spell in that expansion, it seems that it just never occurred to them to play-test it while riding in a boat...

Yeah, that's a problem because unlike pretty much everywhere else in the game, boats are not actually part of the main lands, they are instances. And it turned out that if you cast Death Grip on another player while you were in a boat, what happened was the spell caused the targeted player to quite literally rocket through the world - through mind you the world - until they eventually ended up in this empty space beneath the mountain at the center of the map.

That's a problem because the only way out of that null zone is basically death. It's also a problem because once the players discovered the glitch, they felt compelled to use it. A lot. So much so that any time a DK invited you to go on a boat ride you could only blame yourself if you ended up under a mountain. Just saying...

Grand Theft Auto IV: Swing Set of Death

Note that this is not always automatically fatal - though when you do it in a car and you get good air, it usually is... But anyway, in GTA IV when you approach a swing set at the right angle instead of walking into the swings, it literally turns into a catapult and launches you hundreds of feet into the air and thousands of feet away.

If your character is walking, this usually results in a spectacular and bone smashing flying fall. But when you do it in a car - depending on the car - you can end up first launched into the air inside your car and, when the car hits an object (like a building) you get ejected through the wind screen, to a bloody bone crushing glass slicing death. Sweet right?

That's almost as bizarre as the Sudden Heart Attack Glitch apresent in GTA V in which you can just suddenly drop dead in the street by exiting your car on the edge of the curb. Once second, full health, the next second? Wasted!

There are lots of other examples of this bizarre death glitch thingy - YouTube is full of them - because if a game presents a death glitch, gamers are going to do it. That's just the way it is.

Posted: 1st Oct 2014 by CMBF
Tags:
Xbox 360, PlayStation 3,