Chasing objectives in video games is how you get points, potions, energy, gold or any other currency of the realm. But some objectives can be seemingly normal and others can just be downright strange. There have been a wide array of games produced for the general public in several countries for a global audience. Some games are difficult to translate, some are culturally obscure, and some are bizarre by any standards, in any language.
That doesn’t stop hundreds, thousands, even millions of people from trying very, VERY hard to achieve these… questionable goals. But all jokes aside, this will be a deep dive into some games that you probably aren’t aware exist.
Some games have these objectives because either their premise or the setting creates a feeling of disconnect from reality. One example of this is in the 2010 PSN game Tokyo Jungle. This game has you play as the wildlife of Japan who is attempting to retake the world. This is long after humans were wiped out in an apocalypse of unknown origin.
This is already pretty disconnected from reality, but when the game mechanics have you act on animal instincts, it’s weird. By doing things like hunting prey and hiding from predators it doesn’t seem all that strange. But then you have to attract a mate by marking your territory and showing alpha male dominance. That’s where it gets a little on the strange side compared to most titles.
Japan is Known for Being… Unique Though
It’s not just Japan however, all countries make weird games. Another game that always gets the side-eye from uninitiated gamers is Goat Simulator. If not for the comical premise then almost certainly for the title of the game itself. It’s presented mostly as a joke, both by fans as well as the developers themselves in most cases. But this game keeps selling and people seem to love it.
As far as specifically weird things the game asks you to do, there aren’t really objectives… or levels even. The only real objective is to cause as much mayhem as possible. You have horns for ramming, and an oddly Spiderman-like sticky tongue, not to mention some serious jumping skills. The purpose is simply to cause damage to humans, human-related buildings or vehicles, and even yourself. This is, by a wide margin, the weirdest case of doing damage to yourself giving you points.
Don’t Want to Be a Goat? How ’bout a Mosquito…
Moving right along with weird games that have you controlling animals, to the Playstation 2 game Mr. Mosquito. This game had you play as, you guessed it, a mosquito. The objective overall was to find opportunities to drink the blood of a Japanese family whose home you’ve gotten into. Yeah, you read that correctly, the objective is to drink blood, but not JUST to drink blood.
In this game, you actually are expected to work for it. There are opportunities to distract the family by doing things like flying into a light switch to turn it off. Sometimes, you are even tasked to enter combat with one of the members of the family trying to crush you. There are more than a few objectives in this game that make it a little outside of the norm.
In general, there are a LOT of things that people do in games that seem a little strange. Especially when looked at from the outside world. Most of these at least seem to possess some sort of purpose. If you’re a mosquito you need to drink blood, that has a sort of logic to it. It might produce a weird game but it makes a certain kind of sense.
But then there are games that take any real sense of what’s going to happen and sort of throw it out the window. If you take a premise that doesn’t truly have a satisfying explanation and doesn’t offer any context, maybe just a hint of a storyline, then you can do WONDERS with it in some cases.
Sometimes These Weird Games are Popular
That was the case for cult classic Katamari Damacy, a Japanese game that calls upon the player to suspend their questions, disbelief, and curiosity… so you can make a bigger ball. There really isn’t any more to the objective, you start out as a small ball, rolling around on the ground and picking up everything you roll over as it sticks to you.
You keep doing this and the process grows, snowballing from picking up office supplies and garbage all the way to buildings and skyscrapers. There is a definite amount of fun to be had in this title despite the sheer randomness of the game mechanics. But it’s become a cult favorite for a reason, regardless of how much or how little sense it makes.
One way or the other, it’s nice to have a game that asks you to do something unique as it breaks up the monotony of ‘go get this key’ and ‘go beat up that villain’. Though some objectives might be a little more quirky than others, there’s something to be said for the creativity behind these weird games. There will always be a group of gamers trying to play these titles that challenge social norms and there, of course, will come several diamonds in the rough out of that batch of originality.
But there’s little chance of these games challenging the mainstream of gaming as most of them are a flash in the pan, surviving mostly on their novelty. There are definitely some gems hidden here and there, but overall the opinions are split down the middle as to whether or not these odd games add to the genre or just serve to confuse casual gamers.
- Veritas Keeps You Hostage… and That’s Just to Start - February 13, 2020
- Rage Against the Machine Rides Again in 2020 - February 13, 2020
- Game Developers Band Together to Help Charities in Need - January 18, 2020