I might be biased because Jonathan Lethem is one of my favorite writers but here's a great piece of writing centering around Konami classic Time Pilot and playing games in unorthodox ways.
I still vividly remember one my friends using the godmode cheat and trying to go through Doom without firing even once. He had named this Doom: Peace Mission. At first I thought it was the dumbest idea ever but after the first few stages it became quite challenging, there were so many enemies and bullets on the screen that it became harder and harder to just navigate the map, it was like a throng simulator, and actually a completely different game.