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You mean I could have done that this whole time?!
emnmnme
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Videogames are so complicated these days. Every button on the controller has a function, sometimes two and if the player blinks during a tutorial, they might miss some vital scrap of information that could have made their gaming more complete. This thread is dedicated to all the times you glanced over info either from the manual or in-game but discovered on your own hours later. For all the times you pulled your hair in frustration because some important clue or gameplay feature or level detail remained hidden. For all the times when you finally figured out what the designer intended for you to do and you experience a grand Eureka! moment.
Alice: Madness Returns
Seeing as how I'm so pro at videogames, I decided to play this game on the most challenging setting when I rented it. I enjoy a good challenge but, man, this one was extremely tough. One errant attack by a standard enemy took off a quarter of Alice's life and the game frequently sent groups of three or more enemies at a time to surround her. Killing an enemy sometimes netted you a restorative rose petal but it was never enough and I was under the impression that life was only restored by collecting these petals or beating the Chapter. I slogged through it and made it to the final Chapter when I noticed that resting inside a Lilly flower slowly restores your life completely. WTF. These Lilly flowers are all over the game and I just assumed their presence meant an invisible secret was nearby. But, no, these covert carnations had TWO purposes and I missed out the whole game.
Hitman: Contracts
The third Hitman game. One level starts you off in the back of a refrigerated meat wagon that Agent 47 has commandeered. Agent 47 has knocked the butcher out cold and taken his clothes as a disguise to get into an exclusive night club. The catch is this butcher will wake up from unconsciousness after five or so minutes and start running around naked and screaming and blowing your cover entirely. Since killing the butcher seemed unprofessional, I always figured you were supposed to either kill your target inside the club in less than five minutes (very hard) or find a new disguise from some other staff member after you get inside (inconvenient). I played through and completed the level a dozen times because for fun but I eventually noticed a button on the outside of the meat wagon. No way. How did I not see this bright glowing button before? Pushing the button closed the mechanized doors on the back of the truck, sealing the unconscious butcher inside. No more time limit!
Fallout 3
Did you know your wrist-mounted Pip-Boy had a built-ion flashlight? I SURE DIDN'T! While the game was perfectly visible during the day, when night settled across the wasteland, it was far too dark to see. I had to either fiddle with the TV's contrast and brightness or find a safe place to rest. It wasn't until I was reading a FAQ for my second playthrough that I noticed the blurb, "If you're sneaking, be sure to turn your Pip-Boy's flashlight off or else enemies can see you." Flashlight? It turns out if you hold down the button that opens the Pip-Boy menu, you turn on a little flashlight instead. Now they tell me!
Alice: Madness Returns
Seeing as how I'm so pro at videogames, I decided to play this game on the most challenging setting when I rented it. I enjoy a good challenge but, man, this one was extremely tough. One errant attack by a standard enemy took off a quarter of Alice's life and the game frequently sent groups of three or more enemies at a time to surround her. Killing an enemy sometimes netted you a restorative rose petal but it was never enough and I was under the impression that life was only restored by collecting these petals or beating the Chapter. I slogged through it and made it to the final Chapter when I noticed that resting inside a Lilly flower slowly restores your life completely. WTF. These Lilly flowers are all over the game and I just assumed their presence meant an invisible secret was nearby. But, no, these covert carnations had TWO purposes and I missed out the whole game.
Hitman: Contracts
The third Hitman game. One level starts you off in the back of a refrigerated meat wagon that Agent 47 has commandeered. Agent 47 has knocked the butcher out cold and taken his clothes as a disguise to get into an exclusive night club. The catch is this butcher will wake up from unconsciousness after five or so minutes and start running around naked and screaming and blowing your cover entirely. Since killing the butcher seemed unprofessional, I always figured you were supposed to either kill your target inside the club in less than five minutes (very hard) or find a new disguise from some other staff member after you get inside (inconvenient). I played through and completed the level a dozen times because for fun but I eventually noticed a button on the outside of the meat wagon. No way. How did I not see this bright glowing button before? Pushing the button closed the mechanized doors on the back of the truck, sealing the unconscious butcher inside. No more time limit!
Fallout 3
Did you know your wrist-mounted Pip-Boy had a built-ion flashlight? I SURE DIDN'T! While the game was perfectly visible during the day, when night settled across the wasteland, it was far too dark to see. I had to either fiddle with the TV's contrast and brightness or find a safe place to rest. It wasn't until I was reading a FAQ for my second playthrough that I noticed the blurb, "If you're sneaking, be sure to turn your Pip-Boy's flashlight off or else enemies can see you." Flashlight? It turns out if you hold down the button that opens the Pip-Boy menu, you turn on a little flashlight instead. Now they tell me!
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I've playing through Dark Souls on the PC, which is filled with "oh, I could do that?" moments, but almost entirely due to its intention to obfuscate most things it can. I spent 20 tries to beat the second boss until I raged and looked up what's what, and found out the requirements to do summons (which the game, of course, never explains, or if it does I certainly wouldn't know where). First try after summoning an NPC, I beat that section without even healing. After that, looking up random bullshit in that game is something I no longer castigate myself for because I honestly don't care to stumble around and trial-and-error everything in that game anymore. I guess I'm just getting too old.
Design flaws like the Fallout example can be chalked up to, at least, oversight. When the game goes out of its way to confuse or leave you out of the dark, whether you enjoy it or call bullshit depends on your mindset, I think. In the case of DS, I'm about half-and-half.
When I hear about things like the people who didn't know you could run in Resident Evil 4 I just don't know what to say.
People like you are the reason why so many games have ridiculous MEGAMAN! MEGAMAN! tutorials, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
He had already completed about half the game by then.
Afterwards he said, "No wonder everything was so damn hard, it's easy as pie now" and he proceeded to breeze through the rest of the game and Angry Birds Space in the next couple of weeks.
Like running up Moblin shields in Skyward Sword.
I got a little excited when I saw your ship.
... what's the point of putting grenades on chains? Your design choice confused me, Epic!
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
Now, I did know how to Skyward Slash, but I missread one of the hints Fi gave in that fight and thought you couldn't for the final battle.
Instead, I shield parried through the final baddie's entire attack sequence for the 1-2 hit vulnerabity the boss happens to have at the end. I had to do this many, many times.
It was only until I saw a video of it later that I realised it was just that it's animation/effects changed.
So I got the game on the PS3 and tried it out, got through the tutorial. Loved it. Was spawned into the main game and I'm confronted with the ruins of a cathedral or some such building. I figure this is the way to go, since I'm facing that direction already. So I head off into the cathderal looking thing and find a bunch of loot but its a dead end. Then I realise there's a path to the left too, that must be it!
I head down the stairs and I'm in a cemetery and all of a sudden skeletons are rising. Undead, giant sword waving skeletons. I try fighitng the two that get up and the first kills me. I try again two more times and still I die. I was stumped. I put the game on hold and then sold it a week later when the PC version was given a release date.
Fast forward to last week and it releases on PC. I restart and get to the same point and I'm STILL getting my ass kicked. After dying for the 10th time I decided to just run straight past the fuckers. I manage to make a full circle of the cemetary and then all of a sudden a GIANT FUCKING GOLIATH skeleton dude just kills me i na single hit. But I got a glimpse of a weapon! So I zoom straight back there, this time dodgin his attack and pick the weapon up and make a bee line for the starting fire. I have no idea what the heck is going on, i'm not making any progress at all.
And then @corpekata tells me there's a path that leads up from the starting area, behind the player when he/she spawns. *facepalm*
I even looked behind me and searched for an alternate way but didn't find it. Hell, even after corpe told me about it I struggled to find it, stupid gamma messing up my fun.
Did not realize weapon damage affected spell damage and passed up numerous swords, axes, and hammers in search of a wand because I didn't know the wizard could still use them at range.
Shit got real tough to kill real quick and it was gettin' pretty frustrating until I finally just switched weapons and started bowling everything over.
Knights of the Old Republic:
Was hell-bent on creating the best solo melee Jedi Knight I could, so I kept stacking dexterity because I knew it would contribute to both defense and +hit once I became a Jedi and I thought it would make a much better choice than strength. Turns out I failed to account for the fact that strength provides a bonus to both +hit and +damage, so while my dexterity build was super-durable, he couldn't hit for shit and enemies would eventually wear him down. Strength build didn't need near as much defense because my damage was so ridiculous everything died in 1-2 hits anyway. Neglecting that damage bonus made fights so much more of a pain in the ass.
Civ V:
Set units to auto-explore.
I played through SC1 (and the first DLC level) not knowing you could hold your breath to snipe.
I was a patient, patient man trying to line up weapon bob with guard-on-patrol's head.
Even one of my friends was like "dude... Really? You didn't know?"
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
I'm ashamed to admit, I did this too. I definitely didn't make it halfway through the game, but I had a couple of different birds before I accidentally tapped the screen.
I got to the Psycho Mantis fight. I quickly figured out that he could dodge everything I threw at him except for the occasional kick & punch. I beat him on my first try, using melee attacks that were partially effective, and successfully dodging nearly every attack. I think it took me 40 minutes, and I was blown away by just how long and stupid of a fight it was.
Sometime later, after having picked up the game guide, I discovered that I was supposed to get my ass kicked, which would have prompted the in-game characters to start dropping strong hints about plugging the controller into port 2 in order to confound his ability to read my attacks.
So yeah. Punished for being too damn good.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
not that I'm ever going to play it again
Also I'm pretty sure I didn't know about scope on the Mako in Mass Effect 1, or at least not until I was well into the game.
One thing I did know and liked telling my friends, was that in Halo 1, on the Assault on the Control Room level, you could rush one of the banshee's and use it skip a large portion of the level.
Multiple playthroughs.
Not that it was game breaking or made everything worlds difficult. The Mako is still the Mako.
I didn't know about the manual detonation, so for about 15 minutes here's me thinking, Wow, this is hard to time out! Sion sure seems like a week and gimmicky character!
Similarly though not a gameplay issue, people are blown away the first time they pass near a certain wall in your cabin on the Normandy in ME2/3 and discover your private bathroom.
I find this hilarious. There's a popup when you first start the game that blatantly tells you. And I totally ran into a dude who thought the same thing. I was like "uh, it's b. Just hold b".
WHAT
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
You basically get 5 'life pots' that can only be refilled at a save point (bonfire). But using the save point respawns everything except bosses, so whenever you need to go back for pots the world rearms to kick your ass again. I played this game for over 15 hours before I realised you could upgrade a bonfire to give you more pots.
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
Eventually I learned that I could just crawl up the damn thing and jump off from the top.
You have to both not pay attention to the game-stopping instructional they throw on the screen with several pages to scroll through, and somehow never have played a Resident Evil before
What the fuck
Now if someone said, for example, they didn't know you could kick open doors in RE4, yeah, that I get. They don't tell you and it's not really vital.
The fact that you get a CD in game immediately before this is the worst.
I got stuck in Portal 2 for a solid hour, messing around with falls and flinging before realizing there was a tiny patch of portalable wall on the other side of the area.
I'd totally blame that one on the game. There is no reason for the game to have tooltips besides the advanced ones you have to enable in the options. Did you also play it without elective mode on?
The one I've heard was people not realizing it had a cannon at all and only using the machine gun.
My first encounter with the portal goo, the white one. That room where you have to use portals to direct a stream of white goo onto alternating adjacent columns so that you can portal all the way up to the top.
Well, I didn't do that. I found a tiny patch of ceiling big enough for one portal, put goo on it, put goo directly underneath it, and used the Portal 2 acceleration physics mechanic to drop endlessly through a portal on the floor and ceiling and then quickly reportal on a ramp to fly high into the air and completely bypass it.