We’ve all experienced it. We’re happily mooching about in our favorite game when suddenly an asset starts behaving weirdly, stretching uncontrollably, bouncing around the screen. Worse, the game just stops dead, frozen with no chance of retrieving the last 2 hours of meticulous grinding.
Nestled among millions of lines of code, bugs are bound to pop up and we’ve come to accept them as part and parcel of the gaming experience, within limits. In many ways, they’ve become the stuff of gaming legend and though bothersome at times, bugs hold a special place in our hearts. Here are seven seriously bizarre video game glitches.
Red Dead Redemption Manimals
Red Dead Redemption is a phenomenal game, that much we can agree on, yet it is littered with its fair share of odd bugs. Among these, is the strange occurrence of humans going through a computer generated identity crisis where they believe they are animals and vice versa. In reality, a coding error causes certain animals to render as one of the many NPC assets in the game, leading to hilarious situations. An NPC crucial to completing a mission turns into a dog
Assassin’s Creed Unity – Eyes, Hair, and Teeth
This one is the stuff of nightmares. Assassin’s Creed games are known for their bugs, but none was quite as terrifying as a character model glitch during cut scenes in Assassin’s Creed Unity. Character faces would fail to render completely with only the eyes, teeth, and hair showing up on screen. The result, a loathsome skinless monstrosity, which still sends shivers down the backs of many a gamer. Let that be a lesson to Ubisoft about not releasing a game every year.
The Sims 2 – Copulating Heads
The Sims 2 has a firm place in gaming history as a game sporting a rather unusual number of bugs, which due to the subject matter of reenacting everyday life has particularly comic value. From deformed babies to Sims’ faces being replaced by glowing blue lights, the infamous copulating heads win hands down. The Sims 2 recreation of the most intimate of acts was at best funny, but always uncomfortable. It reached new heights when Sims somehow lost their bodies with only their heads remaining, only for them to re-sprout when their business was all done and dusted.
Heavy Rain – Shaun! Shaun! Shaun!
Heavy Rain’s Shaun! Glitch is classic and really needs no introduction.
Fallout: New Vegas – Spinning Head
Somehow a Bethesda game isn’t really a Bethesda game without bugs. In Fallout: New Vegas a certain Doc Mitchell appeared to be endowed with superhuman flexibility, especially when it came to his neck muscles with the ability to spin his head on itself. Creepy for sure, yet suited to the Fallout universe in a strange way. Radioactivity does crazy things to a man.
Grand Theft Auto IV – Beware The Swings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-BvIfm3G9Q
Visit a particular park located in the Southeast corner of Liberty City, approach the swings, and you’ll be catapulted hundreds of yards into the air for a unique bird’s eye view of the teeming metropolis. If you’re feeling adventurous, rock up in a car, or other vehicle of your choice. Be warned chances are you’ll be hurled out of the vehicle in midair plummeting to a certain death. The swing glitch was probably intentional knowing what a trickster Rockstar is.
Madden 15 – Minuscule Player
Madden 15 developers accidentally coded in a tiny football player model that would jaunt around the field with the other full size players and match their stats. Bizarrely the bug only manifested when one particular football player, who in the real world goes by the name of Christian Kirksey, was selected. In a parallel universe Honey I Shrunk The Kids kind of way, tiny titan, as he came to be known, can be seen taking down guys dozen of times his size and moving about the field unperturbed by his diminutive stature. Not game breaking, simply funny, especially when players went to great length to create teams made up entirely of tiny titans.
