Beat carny games

The game of fun tubs is totally rigged. The carny throws the ball in the tub from his comfortable vantage point. When the carney's ball is in the tub, it prevents your "practice" ball from bouncing out to create an illusion that the game is easy. When the basket is empty, the ball you throw will never stay in. Tubs are specially made of a plastic that causes extra bounce. The duck pond is a popular and easy game for small children.

When you get the plastic duck out with a fishing pole, your prize is indicated on its bottom. You're hoping to win the jackpot, but most prizes are nothing more than junk. The underinflated balloons are not that easy to hit in the carnival's dart game. Moreover, the darts themselves are not sharpened to ensure the extra bounce once they hit the balloon. The only possible way to win this game is to throw the darts really hard. Aim for the balloons on the sides if you want a better prize.

The game Whack-a-Mole is not as rigged as the others. There is actually a secret to getting the best score possible. Don't raise your hammer too high and make your movement as small and as sharp as possible to beat all those little creatures when they're popping in and out.

Howard, who's been investigating carnival games since and wrote Carnival Fraud , a guidebook for law enforcement officers on tricks of the trade. You're better off buying your grandkids something that's better quality at Walmart for a fraction of the money you'll lose to these guys. Here's how you're kept from winning — even that bear — in seven common " games of skill.

Knock them all over and win a prize, promises the barker. The reality: Bottom pins can be filled with lead, making them as heavy as 10 pounds each. The softballs you throw may be filled with cork to make them lighter than regulation balls. And the bottles may be stacked against a backdrop curtain that helps prevent them from falling.

Carnival rims may be smaller than normal and oval-shaped, not round, and may be positioned higher than regulation to prevent a score other than with a difficult high-arching swish.

Balls are overinflated to make them super-bouncy. He's got a book too, Carnival Cop. Balloons are underinflated to deflect even well-thrown carnival darts, which are often lighter than store-bought types. Their tips may be dulled or broken off. The rings are just a hair wider than the neck of the target bottle or spike, says Hester, and are made of hard plastic to facilitate extra bouncing.

If the carny shows it can be done, you should suspect he's using a larger ring than you're given or that he scores by dropping it from directly overhead, a move that, like the Basketball Shoot, is virtually impossible from the player's position.

The goal is to toss two softballs into a large tub. You may remember this as the Bushel Basket Toss. But farming baskets have been replaced with plastic "muck" buckets from home improvement stores so that the ball gets extra bounce. The real trick: "From inside the booth, the carny tosses a softball and from his vantage point, it stays inside the tub," says Howard.

The carny's first ball remains inside the tub to deaden it and prevent your toss from bouncing out. But once you hand over your money, he removes both balls and hands them to you. Without a deadening ball, guess what? Your first toss bounces out. In other words: jump scares. Slender is essentially a horror movie in video game form. It's a bit cheap, but boy does it work. Your mission is simple: Don't get killed, collect the eight pieces of a book, and run.

The 'thing' pursuing you — directly inspired by the popular Slender Man meme — is a faceless, eerily lanky man in a pinstriped suit. The game relies heavily around the player having virtually no resources beyond a flashlight and the ability to jog. Naturally, both of which are limited for obvious reasons, making escape all the more difficult. Overall, Slender is a fun, not-so-clever horror game that is guaranteed to scare you senseless nevertheless.

Of the countless games to use this precious creative license over the years, developer Creative Assembly is the first to actually create a game that lives up to it.

The game takes place 15 years following the events of the Ridley Scott film, putting players into the space boots of Ellen Ripley's daughter, Amanda Ripley. Taking on a first-person perspective and squaring you off with a single xenomorph hunting you across a vast space station in darkness, Isolation nails what it felt like watching the film for the first time. The vibe is so much of what makes an amazing horror game, and Isolation feels as if you're playing through the movie.

Throw in the excruciatingly-clever artificial intelligence afforded to the alien, along with an absolutely gripping virtual reality experiment, and you have the trappings of a modern horror classic. Outlast and Outlast 2, developed by Red Barrels Studio, are now must-plays in the horror genre. Both games put players in control of investigative journalists but while the first is set in an asylum for the insane, the sequel takes place in the much more open location of a dilapidated rural part of Northern Arizona.

What helps make the Outlast games, well, last is that they follow a cardinal rule of horror games: don't empower your players too much, otherwise it's no longer a horror game. Offering a refreshing break from zombies and aliens, Outlast and its sequel are fine games to play if you want a longer — and arguably scarier — break from your average gun-toting jump scare-fest. While Left 4 Dead came first, the second version saw Valve nail the vision of its original creators, Turtle Rock Studios.

Set in a world overrun by zombies, the game follows four characters in their mission to survive through several cooperative and competitive online modes, which — in conjunction with mods on PC — makes for a veritable ton of replayability. We're pretty certain that most PC players would agree with that.

The game was originally banned in Australia due to its graphic content: a de facto seal of approval, if you will. The ban has since been lifted, and so lovers of hardcore horror games are sure to rejoice in its gross, lengthy scenes of devastation and destruction worldwide.

Five Nights at Freddy's is — undoubtedly — a different kind of horror game. However, it's a surprisingly fun game to play, once you can get past the terrifying visage of an animatronic teddy bear guitarist come to life in the dead of night. Generally, players combat these twisted, possessed figures with security cameras — what?

Poltergeists don't like leaving evidence. The game is the work of Scott Cawthon, an independent developer, who released it in Since then, there have been three more direct sequels, all of which have received positive reviews. Talk about staying power. SOMA, released in by Amnesia developer Frictional Games, is a thoughtful — and thought-provoking — game that could easily be considered an interactive film.

Are you sensing a theme here at all? The game contains neither zombies nor aliens, but instead a shift between and , when humans have been wiped out by a comet and what's left of humanity must fight to survive underwater in an abandoned research facility gone rogue.

While SOMA may not be as outright scary as, say, Amnesia, it is still a fantastic game, thanks to its brooding atmosphere, surprisingly fresh subject matter for horror games and incredible audio design. Amnesia is one of the best survival horror series of all time, with the first game in the series, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, proving to be one of the most terrifying games we've ever played.

All you can do is run for your life, and at best, slam a few doors in its face to slow it down. Although the original game, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, first released for PC back in - you can pick up the whole collection for current-gen consoles. Resident Evil 2 Remake is exactly what it says on the tin: it's a remake of the classic '90s horror Resident Evil 2. If you played the original, and didn't think it could get any better, then get ready to be proved wrong.

Resident Evil 2 Remake elevates the grandeur of the original game into a masterful modern survival horror experience.