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Friday, October 4, 2013

Laughter inducing Abilities/Powers

These are dark times: Breaking Bad is over, the US government is shut down, and no one seems to be able to see why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch. So I think it's time for a post with a little more levity in it! Every game has one or two abilities that make me laugh, they're the abilities/weapons/powers/whatever that somehow managed to get from a whiteboard and into the game and yet something about them makes me laugh hysterically when used appropriately (or inappropriately). Maybe they are meant to be taken completely seriously but something about them just lends itself to situational humor.

Take for example the Nekros warframe (class) in Warframe. One of his abilities...well I'll let the quote do the talking:
A blow so powerful, it turns the enemy's very soul into a deadly projectile, damaging all in its path.
 In action, your character appears to punch, then sends the enemy it hits flying. If it kills the enemy they ragdoll backwards in a manner reminiscent of releasing an inflated, but unsealed, balloon. Sometimes they'll even hit a piece of geometry on the level and end up flying off in random angles. It's a powerful and useful ability, and yet I find myself laughing at half the results it produces.

He hit the wall and bounced....I hit the floor and laughed
There are always others, Leap of Faith in WoW was always one of those abilities that became less about "Saving your ally from bad stuff" to "How to more effectively herd your 9-24 cats" it makes me think of Priests as day-care supervisors, yanking the "children" away from danger before they can hurt themselves. The Paladin's Blessing of Protection had a similar "You're on timeout!" effect when used on overzealous physical DPS; lots of Rogues raged over being suddenly unable to attack.

Hunters were graced with Misdirection, the official ability of RaidRage (tm) and "Btw, you just pulled." Which, aside from its utility, also became both a useful tool for messing with the obnoxious rogue who thinks he is safe in stealth, and helping your group out. This one might be a more trollish use, but admittedly the capability is kind of amusing.

Firefall had Evacuate, which is described as launching you back and leaving a cloud of poison. Sounds nice enough; in reality, it makes a somewhat flatulent deflating sound and flings the character sharply back. At risk of being called crude and uncultured, it became known in my group as the "Death fart" or something equally silly at the time. In the end it became more of a novelty, and was often used to create humorous green-blue clouds in the air more than it was used to defeat enemies.

So what have you found? Any abilities in a game that you can't help but chuckle at when it's used?

2 comments:

  1. Hehehe. I still use BoP to put my melee raiders on timeout. Occasionally just for giggles, because hilarious. Thanks Clemency for giving me 2 charges of it!

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  2. I'm glad it's still around! I haven't checked my paladin since I came back.

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