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Tuesday’s Trope: Nice Job Breaking It Hero

[Tuesday's Trope is a weekly department highlighting an amusing video game trope from TVTropes. Aggrogate is not affiliated with TVTropes.org in any way. All trope examples come from TVTropes and are shared via the Creative Commons license.]

Congratulations, you just destroyed the world. You spent hours looking for the pieces of a crystal you thought would help fight the evil emperor, but it turns out that crystal has a dark god inside that's the real threat! The path to hell is paved with good intentions, and when you step down that road during a video game, you're likely to hear "Nice job breaking it, hero."

Examples of Nice Job Breaking It Hero include:

Tuesday’s Trope: Bilingual Bonus

[Tuesday's Trope is a weekly department highlighting an amusing video game trope from TVTropes. Aggrogate is not affiliated with TVTropes.org in any way. All trope examples come from TVTropes and are shared via the Creative Commons license.]

Most of us American gamers only understand English, and that means developers can have a bit of fun while keeping their jokes hidden. Many games use different languages for dialogue, narration, and even names, and if you understand those other languages, you can get a lot of great information that will fly over English-only gamers' heads. Sometimes the language isn't even real, and the game counts on the player to decipher it himself. Either way, this is the Bilingual Bonus.

Examples of the Bilingual Bonus include:

Tuesday’s Trope: Zerg Rush

[Tuesday's Trope is a weekly department highlighting an amusing video game trope from TVTropes. Aggrogate is not affiliated with TVTropes.org in any way. All trope examples come from TVTropes and are shared via the Creative Commons license.]

You don't need big guns to take down the enemy. Sometimes you just need to swarm them with your weakest, cheapest units to erode their defenses and crush them in a spectacularly humiliating manner. This is called the Zerg Rush, and it's been a common trope in video games since before it got its name from the original Starcraft. Sometimes it's another player rushing, sometimes it's the computer, sometimes it's the underlying mechanic of the game. Just keep throwing guys at your target until it goes down.

It's interesting to note that the Zerg Rush in Starcraft is actually a slightly different and much more specific technique than the trope. The Starcraft Zerg Rush is the rapid building of zergling units with intent to quickly overcome the enemy before any defenses can be built. The broader Zerg Rush trope includes any sort of swarming tactic using cheap, disposable units.

Examples of the Zerg Rush include:

Tuesday’s Trope: Collection Sidequest

[Tuesday's Trope is a weekly department highlighting an amusing video game trope from TVTropes. Aggrogate is not affiliated with TVTropes.org in any way. All trope examples come from TVTropes and are shared via the Creative Commons license.]

It's not enough to save the world. You have to collect tons of crap while you do it. Gems, coins, medals, weird shiny things. They're everywhere. It might not be vital to your mission, but if you bring in enough odds and ends you'll probably get a nice reward. This is one of the most common kinds of sidequests in video games: the Collection Sidequest.

There are X number of doodad in the world. The more you collect, the more items you get. When you collect all X, you get a really sweet reward and bragging rights (or sometimes just bragging rights). It's necessary for a 100% run of the game, and it sends you out to the farthest reaches of the world.

Examples of Collection Sidequests include:

Tuesday’s Trope: Schroedinger’s Gun

[Tuesday's Trope is a weekly department highlighting an amusing video game trope from TVTropes. Aggrogate is not affiliated with TVTropes.org in any way. All trope examples come from TVTropes and are shared via the Creative Commons license.]

Chekov's Gun is a narrative tool in which an object is displayed early in a story and then used in an important event later in the story. When you have a completely controlled narrative, like a novel or a movie, it's very easy to do. When you put control of the story in the hands of a player in a video game, however, it can get tricky. Free will can really throw a wrench in a story, unless it simply doesn't matter. If you pull the trigger, the chamber is empty. If you don't fire, there was a bullet in the gun. Whether you choose the right door or the left door, that's the one with the ambush. Until the choice is made, the outcome is in a state of flux.

This is Schroedinger's Gun, a tool that keeps the story of a game on-track, regardless of the player's choices. Not only does the direct outcome change due to a choice, but the very nature of the world changes. You don't know what's going to happen until you make the choice, and neither does the game. In a way, this is a much more subtle, powerful version of But Thou Must.

Examples of Schroedinger's Gun include:

Tuesday’s Trope: Tech Demo Game

[Tuesday's Trope is a weekly department highlighting an amusing video game trope from TVTropes. Aggrogate is not affiliated with TVTropes.org in any way. All trope examples come from TVTropes and are shared via the Creative Commons license.]

It's almost a forgotten art these days, but there's still a certain cachet to having the biggest, fastest, most expensive, most powerful computer around. However, raw numbers and benchmark results can only get you so far. To really impress your friends, you need a computer that can run games others can't, and run them smooth as silk. That's what Tech Demo Games are for.

Tech Demo Games can be good or bad, but what matters is that on PCs, they require a ridiculous amount of processing power to run. When they're released, generally only top-tier hardware can display the games a decent framerate. Of course, a year or two later, both the games and the hardware necessary to run them seem downright quaint. Technology is a harsh and fickle mistress.

Console Tech Demo Games are a bit different; since consoles generally have the same capabilities besides minor variations, console tech demos simply focus on showing off every new trick the platform can offer. Remember how much the Super Nintendo hyped Mode 7? Welcome to the world of console Tech Demo Games.

Examples of Tech Demo Games include:

Tuesday’s Trope: Limited Special Collector’s Ultimate Edition

[Tuesday's Trope is a weekly department highlighting an amusing video game trope from TVTropes. Aggrogate is not affiliated with TVTropes.org in any way. All trope examples come from TVTropes and are shared via the Creative Commons license.]

Sometimes the game isn't enough for real fans of a series. Sometimes you want something more, something tangible, something you're willing to spend even more cash on to get closer to the franchise you love. Fortunately, publishers are often eager to oblige you, offering collector's editions, limited editions, special editions, and other editions that can tack anything from $10 to $100 onto the price of the game. These are the Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Editions.

These editions can be either amazingly awesome or heart-breakingly disappointing. At their best, they'll include replicas of items from the game, additional content in the game, a soundtrack, and a handful of other knick-knacks. At their worst, they'll include an art book and a making-of DVD and call it a day.

Examples of the Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition include: