I’ve never completed the main quest line in any Elder Scrolls game.

The majority of my playtime in Oblivion was spent breaking into NPC houses and stealing their shit. I’d stalk targets based on who had the most valuables in their pockets when I’d see them wandering in the cities. I basically played the game as a stealing simulator, only ever completing the Thieves guild quest line and the Dark Brotherhood line when I wanted to be add some murder to my thieving.

I don’t think this is uncommon with the Elder Scrolls games.

I used to just drive around in GTA: Vice City with an appropriate 80s soundtrack.

Not me but my friend. In any game that has a crafting component they will hone in, ignore the story, and just play the crafting. If it has a marketplace they will sell their creations and basically become an NPC shopkeeper for other people.

Sorta along the same lines, but, I love how differently my husband and I play Rust. He’s on his official server doing what the game is meant for, and I’m just on my pVE building a villa/farm.

We need the farm update on console. I need pies and chickens. With the jungle update, my Lenovo Go can no longer handle Rust at all, so I’m back on console. It’s missing some of my favorite features for farm build. I want to chase a chicken for that elusive egg fresh after wipe! And the flowers! Oh…

The Bongcloud chess story reminded me of the StarCraft 2 player printf. Theoretically it is intended play, but he will start every single game with a cannon rush.

A cannon rush is when you attack your enemy’s base with immobile cannons that are actually meant to be used defensively. When the enemy doesn’t know that they are being cannon rushed it can be devastating, especially for inexperienced players. But when you halfway know what you’re doing and spot it quickly enough it is easy to defend.

But printf plays at a level where he’s not likely to encounter inexperienced opponents. And anyone who has any interest in the game is very likely to know who printf is. And he never hides his identity and he always opens with a cannon rush. And he’s still super successful with it.

He’s played it so often with so many variations he can probably (maybe he does) teach the top players a few things about that strategy. And although it’s always the same it’s still interesting to watch him play.

In Battlezone II single player, there is a custom map called “Moon 2000” that I love. It is a huge, open lunar crater, with a big flat ledge around the outside. It is difficult to get your recycler up onto the ledge, but I will take the time to do it. Then, I build a huge, sprawling base up in a flat corner. Absolutely surrounded with defenses. To the computer, an impenetrable fortress. To me, an experimental playground.

I have an area that I take enemy ships i have sniped the pilots out of, where I perform weapons and explosives testing. I have a whole series of nav points set up where I can go out and hunt for more enemy ships, and I can direct my tugs to come pick them up and take them back to base entirely by keyboard (they are dumb and will get stuck if you send them directly to base). It’s not a matter of beating the computer. That could be done easily. It’s purely the joy of collecting samples for my research. I have taken my findings, and have deployed them against my brother.

We would typically play X-Mod 3.3. That adds nuclear silos. We, as gentlemen, have an agreement not to use them. Same with APCs. However, naquada bombs were still fair game. Those have a 30 second timer, and give you a notification that shows their exact location so you do have a chance to destroy them. One thing I found that I was only able to use once, was my discovery that the X-Mod probe Droid could have its forcefield replaced with a naquada bomb. So, I made 50. Had to make 50 naquada bombs, too. It took forever. But, finally it was time to attack. The probes are so small and fast, they didn’t show up on his radar until it was too late. Their small size and speed helped most slip through his defenses. Suddenly, upwards of 30 naquada bomb notifications flood his screen. I can imagine the confusion then shock he must have felt. The horror that even if he destroyed one per second, it still wouldn’t be enough. One was enough to take out his recycler. The bombs went off. Almost all of them. It was a good sized base, with healthy defenses. The bombs detonated in quick succession, leveling it entirely.

That tactic was immediately outlawed. But I discovered other deadly weapon combos to unleash on him. I still have and play the same save game of my test site, decades later. For what was intended to be like, a 30 minute battle against the computer.

Not sure if this counts, because I’m not sure if there is a wrong way to play Fallout. I am going through New Vegas again, but for the first time in years. Completely disregarding the main storyline. Just wandering the Mojave, helping people as I go. Like David Carradine in Kung Fu. Mostly trying to do things peacefully, and gain as much karma as I can. Completely opposite of how I normally play Falmouth game. I need all that karma to offset how many people I’ve eaten, which is tremendous. Don’t die around my character if you want an open casket. I gave myself lockpick and science skills via the command line, because this playthrough is about my interest in where the storyline take me, not about grinding to be able to open a lock.

New Super Mario Bros. (For the Nintendo DS), in the multiplayer battle mode.

There is a multiplayer mode where you fight over collecting stars in 6 different maps, using the main game’s mechanics and powerups.

In one of these maps, there are bullet bill launchers. One of the powerups is a mini mushroom that makes you tiny, and when you are tiny you just harmlessly bounce of enemies when you jump on them instead of killing them. That lets you ride the bullet bill, repeatedly bouncing off it. The multiplayer maps loop, so you do this indefinitely, and every time you get back to the launcher, it will add another bullet to your train.

My brother and I would deliberately avoid collecting stars, and instead try to make the longest bullet train and try to stay in the air as long as possible.

I like to look for secrets in Action Half-Life maps

When i was a kid, every RTS skirmish game was about building an empire and keeping in control the CPU opponent in a small space. At some point it was more like playing a city building game.

I was never a fan of how StarCraft 1 is supposed to be played.

It had a map editor that allowed scripting and people used it to make tons of other games inside of StarCraft like tower defense games, drawing party games like you would see decades later on mobile, and RPGs of every franchise imaginable. There’s literally thousands of unique games out there on archive websites.

Probably all of them… I mostly play single player games, which I either mod, and/or edit memory/save games to skip grindy parts. I am there for the story, exploration and puzzles.

By the most different way I play, would be Beyond All Reason, where I mostly just spectate public matches, since I am pretty sure I would be stomped, and to get good at it, might be out of my abilities. But watching is fun.

I doubt it. I can say I played a ridiculous amount of blitzball in final fantasy 10. Like I very well may have spent more time playing blitzball than the main game.

Picking up taxi passengers in GTA V is fun. Especially when I drive them off a cliff.

Not me, but there’s a great example of this in chess.

There’s an opening called the Bongcloud. You move the pawn in front of your king out for your first move, and then for your second move you move your king up a square. It’s memed as being the strongest opening possible, but it’s actually almost the worst 2 opening moves you can possibly make. Because modern chess does have a large online component and the current best players are young and like memes, it has been played in tournaments, which means that if you play it in an up to date chess programme the programme will name it as the Bongcloud.

A lot of people seem to think that it’s called the Bongcloud because you’d have to be stoned to play it. But almost all chess openings are named after one of three things: a person, a place, or an animal. In this case, the Bongcloud is named after a person - Lenny Bongcloud.

Lenny Bongcloud is a now-inactive user of chess.com. He would always open with the moves described above. That’s because, unbeknownst to them, Lenny wasn’t playing the same game as his opponents. They were trying to checkmate him. He was trying to walk his king to the opposite side of the board as quickly as possible. If he gets checkmated, he loses. If he gets his king to the other side of the board he counts it as a victory and resigns.

So, yeah. One of the oldest known games in the world has an opening the “official” name of which comes from a jokey alias adopted by someone who was deliberately playing the game wrong.