I enjoy having friends over to play some Rainbow Six Vegas 2 in Terrorist Hunt. I headed over to this sites game page, and noticed there were some cheats. Gabu did a great blog about cheats, and this is kind of an extension of the ideas he presented. Because most of RSV2's cheats aren't 'cheats'. There is no invincibility, or unlimited ammo, grenades or the like. You get a Big Head mode (though I couldn't seem to get this to work). You get Super Rag Doll Physics, guys do backflips when you shoot them in the head, and in GI Joe mode tracers become lasers.

Much as I like cheats in games, I think I like Easter Eggs more. Not stuff that just modifies some numbers I can't see; lives, ammo, clipping etc. Stuff that developers took a little effort to put in the game to make it more fun. I remember finding the corpses of Indiana Jones and Luke Skywalker while playing Duke Nukem 3D, and it brought a smile to my dial. I remember playing a cracked version of a Star Wars game on the Amiga 500 way back when, which had modified audio, full of swearing and hilarious takes on lines from the Star Wars universe.

I guess Easter Eggs can fit into two categories; homage and wacky. The homage is putting something non-essential into a game that fits, but is reference to something outside the game, or a previous entry in the series. I can't think of anything particular, but perhaps I just don't pay enough attention. These are what I would call 'a nice touch', but I can't say I'm significantly impressed by them.

The wacky stuff is what I love. Stuff that doesn't fit into the game world, or really changes things that don't fit into the usual tone of the game. Some games take themselves pretty seriously these days in regards to both their gameplay and story (and I don't have a problem with this) which makes wacky inclusions all the more contrasting and hilarious. A case in point would be the Super Rag Doll physics in RSV2. It's funny when the semi-realistic military shooter you were playing sends guys halfway across a room to bounce off a wall from a shotgun blast. Here are a few types of Easter Eggs I'd like to see more often.

Stupidfunny dialogue. This would be great to unlock after your first play through a campaign. These days obviously plenty of work goes into voice acting, and ensuring character development, story and overall tone remain cohesive throughout is a big task. Stupidfunny dialogue would take up much smaller time, and doesn't need to make sense; it's funny because it doesn't. It doesn't need to be something that the voice actors need to do. It could be the developers phoning it in over a night or two. Change the story to something completely ridiculous. Maybe the justification for shooting up a bunch of guys is because their friend killed your pet ladybug or something. You've likely seen clips on youtube where people take footage from games and movies and dub silly stuff over the top. That's what I'm thinking about here. How funny would it be to play Call of Duty 4 with all of the in-game voices speaking like polite English gentry? "Well I say, you shot me in my leg, old chap!"

Silly graphics. This has been done before, but more would be good. What if you could unlock a Flintstones car in your favourite racing game (even if it is just a skin rather than a full model)? Or Kitt? The Aliens modification for Doom was a great example of a full conversion. Recently Ghost Squad had a couple of modes you could unlock after completing the game; everyone either turned into ninjas, or everyone wore bikinis and fired with squirt guns shaped like dolphins. Imagine mowing down clowns in WW2 instead of Nazi's. Or mimes. Everyone hates mimes more than Nazi's. The downside is that graphics are likely to take a lot longer to include than some hackneyed dialogue.

Silly game modes or modifications. The Super Rag Doll physics in RSV2 is an example of this. Funny changes to the physics system or any of the gameplay elements that makes them fun or funny. Games that let you change gravity can be a lot of fun, adding this to some 'serious' games could make them extremely funny. Playing car games where your car bounces off obstacles like a pinball would be a blast. I remember a mod for Unreal Tournament that put "Pow!" "Whack!" etc balloons over peoples heads when they got hit by bullets.

AI doing completely random things. This is just me, but under the right conditions I'd like to see AI do something very silly. By 'right conditions' I mean something akin to a cheat code; you have to behave a certain way in the game that would be outside how the game is normally played to trigger it. Then the enemy break out in dance, sing a song, shoot each other simultaneously at point blank range, or your team mates tell you they want to snuggle. Those are pretty simple, I'm sure someone can come up with stuff that is much crazier and more entertaining.

These days we don't play games just for fun, sometimes games offer us legitimate scares, tension and drama. But even in those games, I wish the chance to change things up and turn a serious game into a hilarious one was explored more often. Are there any memorable Easter Eggs you've seen? Other funny stuff you would like see included in games?