Typically, when you play just about any game, you have a pretty good idea of what you're in for. You've seen the gameplay trailers, read the back of the box, you did the tutorial♏, and you have a basic idea of the core gameplay loop. But the interesting thing about video games is that, unlike some other forms of media, they can throw you off the loop.

There are instances in some games where the whole genre turns on its head, completely out of left field. An action hack-n-slash suddenly becomes a puzzle text adventure,ꦡ a stealth platformer suddenly becomes a rhythm game, or a large-scale adventure suddenly becomes an air combat game. It's pretty much guaranteed you're going to get thro🤡wn for a loop when these games jump the rails.

Updated October 3rd, 2024 by Hilton Webster: Every game needs a strong marketing hook to drag you, though it has to be careful not to spoil everything the game has to offer, too. Enough to drag you in and keep some surprises. Some games like to take it a step further, hiding just how much they change during the course of play. We've taken a renewed look at games that suddenly change genre in ways you never expected.

13 The Defluxor - Stray ꧋

We all love a cat every now and thenꩵ. They can be very demanding creatures, acting like the world is theirs to play with. In Stray, it basically i𓆏s. You run around a future dystopian city pulling heavily from the Kowloon Walled City. Yet cute cat game it might have seemed, this city is packing some extreme heat.

In a UV lamp, anyways. ಞThe majority of Stray is spent running around the city, avoiding pursuers and solving puzzles. Equipped with the Defluxor, it has suddenly become a third person shooter, with all the tactical avoidance replaced with gunfire. It's a far cry from earlier platformers, even if it's only for a brief while.

12 Every Act - Inscryption 🥃

From the moment Inscryption was first revealed, it was clear it was going to be an experience. With trippy visuals and a rather unsettling host to a deathly card game, Inscryption promised a deck-builder with a twist. Except that🎀 twist was much more subversive than advertised.

Inscryption is split into acts, and every act following is a massive divergence from the first. You may be deck-building to your hearts content in Act 1, Act 2 puts you in a pixel-art overworld where you have to go battling other𒁃s to collect even more cards. The final ac๊t returns to more of the deck-building of Act 1, except this time you have have to do a bit of dungeon crawling. It's a lot.

11 ꧙ The Caribbean - Kingdom Hearts 3 🐭

Kingdom Hearts𒀰 has always been known for being consistently inconsistent. It's the series' mantra seeing as each of the worlds you explore in each game is entirely dependent upon the qualities of the Disney property it pulls from. Alice in Wonderland has you shifting in size, while Olympus has you battling in the coliseum.

Kingdom Hearts 3 dedicates to becoming a new game entirely with the Pirates of the Cari🌟bbean world. In a land of stylised realism, Sora is given a pirate ship of his own and a vast ocean to explore packed with islands. Just a random literal open world thrown into the middle of a much larger game. Get ready f✱or plunder.

10 🃏 The Deathdream - NieR Replicant ♈

It says a lot about legendary game director Yoko Taro that, despite the fact that we all expect curveballs in his game design, he still manages to surprise us with them. Over the course of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:NieR Replicant, the gameplay style slightly shifts a few times. The whole way through, it's sti🍒ll basically a hack-and-slash game, but with occasional wrink꧅les, like battle challenges or changing camera angles.

The big exception to this occurs in the Forest of Myth, where the residents are afflicted with a disease🅘 known as the Deathdream. To save them, Nier and company have to enter their dreams, which manifest as an old-school text adventures with a handful of puzzles. Interestingly, they can apparently hear the narrator of these dreams and don't much care for their tone.

9 Space Harrier - Bayonetta 𓆉𒁏

Leave it to a game as unapologetically off-the-wall as 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Bayonetta to hit us with💜 a sudden throwback to a Sega arcade classic. As༺ Bayonetta, Cereza, and Luka make their way to the HQ of the Lumen Sages, their helicopter is suddenly bombarded with giant missiles. Being the creative sort, Bayonetta immediately commandeers one of these missiles and uses it as personal transport.

As Bayonetta takes control of the missile, angels begin flying by in suspiciously familiar patterns. Yep, they're mimicking 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the classic Sega arcade game, Space Harrier - complete with a modern remix of the game's theme song. Bayonetta even prefaces this little dalliance with the quip "welcome to my Fantasy Zone!"

8 ဣ Cop Rock - Stubbs The🦹 Zombie In Rebel Without A Pulse

Not long into the story of Stubbs the Zombie, the titular shambler makes🤡 his way to the Punchbowl Police Station in sꦦearch of tasty brains to eat. He's captured by the police chief, who promises to dance on his grave, and when Stubbs confronts him after tearing the station apart, we learn he was being quite literal about that.

Out of nowhere, Stubbs and the police chief engage in a game of musical Simon Says, with the chief busting a few m𒉰oves and Stubbs copying them. As bizarre as this segment is, it is unquestionably awesome thanks to a mix tape of classic '50s tracks, like Mister Sandman, Earth Angel, and Lollipop.

7 🍬 A Deadly Dance - Sly Cooper And The Thievius Raccoonus

Spontaneous rhythm game segments were a weirdly common thing in the sixth generation of game consoles. Case in point, in the third world of the original 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Sly Cooper game, the daring thief confronts the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:wicked voodoo priestess, Mz. Ruby in the heart of her haunted swamp HQ. Being the sporting sort, Mz. Ruby offers to ferry Sly over to an arena for them t😼o fight, but makes him play a little game during his trip.

As Sly moves closer to Mz. Ruby, she launches blasts of magic corresponding to the PlayStation controller's face buttons, in time with the mꦅusic track. Sly needs to copy the sequence exactly to dodge eඣach blast, or else he'll get knocked into the swamp's wet and smelly depths. Amusingly, once he actually gets to Mz. Ruby, she's beaten with little difficulty, despite her apparent strength.

6 Zero Suit S𝓀tealth - Met🐭roid: Zero Mission

Samus is one of gaming's most competent adventurers, thanks in no small part to her hyper-advanced Chozo tech Power Suit. Her suit's weapons allow her to blast any foe and withstand any hazard. When the suit is stripped away from her in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Metroid: Zero Mission, though, things become a🐈 little more complicated.

This was the first time Samus had been left almost completely defenseless in hostile territory. Until she can find a means of restoring her suit, her only options are to briefly stun foes with her emergency Paralyzer, or otherwise avoid contact altogether. Metroid games have no shortage of running, but running away f♏rom things was definitely a new one at the time.

5 Andross In Space - Star Fox Adventures 🍸 ෴

While Fox pilots his Arwing for the sake of travel several times throughout 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Star Fox Adventures, it's n𝓰ot really a major gameplay mechanic. Since the game is primarily a puzzle-centric action-adventure, you'd probably expect its final boss to focus on thos𒈔e mechanics. Well, you'd expect wrong.

As the giant Krazoa spirit statue launches into space from the Krazoa temple, Fox follows it in his Arwing. Imagine his surprise when it turns around to reveal the gigantic face of his archenemy Andross, who had apparently been sleeping in the temple for some reason. Whatever the reason, the two engage in an old-school dogfight more in line with the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:classic Star Fox games.

4 ꦦ 🍃 Return Of The Mean Bean Machine - Sonic Mania

As a love letter to all things classic Sonic the Hedgehog, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Sonic Mania is absolutely jam-packed with references to Genesis-era Sonic games. Of course, one reference some players may not have been expecting was a nod to Doctor Robotnikꩲ's Mean Bean Machine, a 1993 Puyo Puyo spin-off.

As Son♛ic runs through the classic Che♋mical Plant Zone, he suddenly finds himself dumped into a control room right next to Robotnik. The two engage in an impromptu game of Puyo Puyo, with the loser being dumped into the vat of chemicals swirling below.