Have you ever played through a game and completely missed a game play feature?

[RedmistSM]

In Castlevania Order of Ecclesia, you gain abilities from magic symbols called glyphs. Bosses usually drop them, and they float in the air waiting for you to absorb them. Also enemies sometimes give you abilities, but they go straight to you, I believe. What I didn't put together is that a lot of enemies have magic abilities that makes a glyph appear before the attack comes, and you can absorb that to both cancel it and get the ability yourself. I did not realize this until the final dungeon where one boss is unbeatable unless you absorb his ability to go through objects, thereby crushing him inside a wall. I missed so many great abilities! Especially the ones from certain attecks of bosses, that only appear once!

I also never knew you could run from battles in Chrono Trigger, only recently seeing it in the comments for a Let's Play.

You know those giant boulders you see all the time in Super Mario Galaxy? The ones with the big red gems in them? I didn't realize that you could destroy those by spinning into them until I fought Bowser for the last time. I kept running away from Bowser in his boulder form for like five minutes trying to hit him in a moment of weakness, but said moment never came. Finally, I started to wonder if I was supposed to punch his face while he rolled toward me. After that worked and I eventually beat Bowser, I went back to Honeyhive Galaxy and tried the same thing on the boulders when the red gem was close. Whoa! Look at all those Star Bits!

I had _no_ idea. Now I feel like going back just to test this.

 

[IrateDonnie]

You can apparently aim down ironsights in Bioshock, something which would have come handy during some of the earlier parts of the game.

Hahaha I've played through Bioshock at least 10 times on 360 & PC & didn't know that, at least I can't remember it. I never knew about squad commands in Gears of War until I did it by accident. I played through Deus Ex almost 3/4 of the way through before I realized you could upgrade your inventory & make it larger.

 

[Bobic]

You can apparently aim down ironsights in Bioshock, something which would have come handy during some of the earlier parts of the game.

Wow, I've played through that game 3 times and didn't realise that. So I suppose that's my response to this thread.

Edit: Wow, just went through the thread and realised you got quoted incessantly, so sorry for adding to the tidal wave. I guess it's just a really common lack of insight.

Do they not tell you at any point in the game or am I just ignorant of obvious prompts?

 

[FearTheSkorpion]

Played through all of Assassin's Creed 2. Twice. Then, five minutes into Brotherhood, I found out how to do a high-profile assassination. Because... you know... I'm a fucking genius.

My cousin showed me Brotherhood for the first time, and it took BOTH of us fifteen minutes to figure out how I'd chain-killed twenty guards in his midway-through save file (~8 health squares, middling armor and weapons). I'd played 1 and 2, but the massacre I'd just produced confused the heck out of us until we found the explanation in one of the dev pre-launch v-logs. Very sad, but we had TONS of fun while we figured out how to replicate it.

 

[FearTheSkorpion]

Did'nt know how to Quicksave in Stalker: Clear Sky, until I hit F5 on accident

I went through at least 5 games with a quicksave function before I figured out what it meant. /sigh

 

[Gennadios]

The really long getting killed by a grapple animation in ME3 singleplayer were apparently quicktime events. I had no idea until I beat the game and played multiplayer.

You didn't notice the box pop up in the middle of the screen that says, "Press B(or whatever button on your platform) to break free"

Thing is it never popped up (at least for me) in single player. I saw the box in multiplayer and went back to try it, but the prompt never actually appeared.

 

[Xirath]

Holding A in Fallout 3 & NV allows to drink continuously.

this... didnt figure it out till near the end of my second character of NV... and had 2 friends who played the games miss it too lol :/

 

[Dragonpit]

Did you know you can incapacitate a random inmate with a Sonic Shock Batarang in Arkham Asylum? I thought they were purely a diversion! I didn't use it until my THIRD playthrough.

And then there was the time I tried to get through Prince of Persia: Sands of Time with only basic combat skills. Why? Because I completely forgot about those special attack moves they tries to teach you early. The moment I realized they could make my life easier, not only could I not look them up, I was already so far into the story that I was on the verge of the end of the game. Stopped me cold.

 

[renegade7]

It took me 9 months into EVE Online to realize that you were supposed to active tank PVE ships.

"Oh, you mean I'm supposed to put a shield booster on that Loki?"

Additionally, I don't know if this counts, but I went YEARS in various Pokemon games thinking that moving the d-pad in the direction the ball moves when you try to catch something got you an automatic catch. It doesn't, but for some reason I still do that anyway :/

 

[Kyouhen]

I'm honestly shocked at the amount of people who have missed the sprint feature in games (why is Skyrim said so much?!). I usually figure out how to sprint the second I have control of the game.

Skyrim was a surprise because, to my recollection, the other four didn't have a sprint option.

Nope, but you could make your own spells, so you either made a runspeed spell, or (the much more comical, and useful) Jump spell, that let you traverse Morrowind in three big leaps.

And kinda befuddles me how you can miss the sprint-function? I played on PC, and all the loading-screens (and there are a lot of them) have tips, which bring up sprinting.

Is this an Xbox thing? Because the PC version of Morrowind definitely has a sprint function.

I beat Shadow of the Colossus without ever knowing I could stand on my horse and aim backwards. Or half the other fancy things you can do with that horse. That would have made the fight with the sand worm SO MUCH EASIER. Stupid horse...

 

[Blaze the Dragon]

I think there was something in a Mass Effect game that I didn't realize until the very end but I don't remember what.

In Bioshock I had only just realized you could aim down sights only shortly before the big twist, and I only found it on accident, and I remapped quite a few keys and still didn't notice it there. Lets just say I had finally found a use for the crossbow.

For some reason I just know I've done this more times, but I can't remember most of them right now for some reason. I think there was something in Super Mario RPG that a friend told me at least after the half-way point of the game. I think it had to do with the quick-time events in battles you can do. Maybe it was the defensive ones, but I don't even remember if they did that in SMRPG. I know I at least knew about the offensive ones.

I guess I could count Micromanagement in any RTS I've played, considering that I didn't even know what that meant for the longest time. (I'm not good at RTS games)

 

[The Pinray]

Yadda yadda yadda

Tip for Fable 3: make as much money as humanly possible prior to even trying to start the rebellion. Then it won't matter what decision you make. Prior to the revolt, you have all the time in the world. Just keep in mind how much money you actually need. Your brother isn't going anywhere.

EDIT: this is what I came on to post, having waited until after the rebellion to raise gold, but I figured this would be useful.

I was like two missions before the finale when I finally remembered that I could rent out property... Grahhh I ragequit until I got a friend to gift me all the money I needed to get out of debt AND get the the top threshold. Cheesy, I know, but I wasn't going to grind forever. If only it had the Fable II system of paying even when the game was off.

But on subsequent playthroughs I did indeed make mountains of money before overthrowing old Logan.

If only you were there to give me this advice back during my first playthrough. D': Would've saved me many hours of heart ache.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

I'm struggling to find something that I missed, but I can't recall (at least for any of the games I've played).

I do recall one guy who didn't know you could charge the plasma pistol in Halo 1.

Other than that I play close attention to the tutorials every time.

Is this an Xbox thing? Because the PC version of Morrowind definitely has a sprint function.

Well it has a run function, not a sprint function. For PC you can toggle, for Xbox it's just pushing the stick forward.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I've never used squad commands in a single game that allows you to issue squad commands, mostly because I always assume teammate AI will be too stupid to follow my orders anyway.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

A buddy of mine once played through all of Fear without realising you could slow down time.

 

[Dr Bodom]

I found out that in FEAR 2 you can use the bullet time thing on my second playthrough. Didn't really help me much though.

 

[traineesword]

I'm struggling to find something that I missed, but I can't recall (at least for any of the games I've played).

I do recall one guy who didn't know you could charge the plasma pistol in Halo 1.

Other than that I play close attention to the tutorials every time.

Is this an Xbox thing? Because the PC version of Morrowind definitely has a sprint function.

Well it has a run function, not a sprint function. For PC you can toggle, for Xbox it's just pushing the stick forward.

hahahahahaha! this is a brilliant post! made me laugh a lot.

I didn't realise in Halo that you could stop charging that lazer cannon thing until my brother told me. I always assumed it would just continue to charge anyway, not realising if i merely took my finger off the right trigger it would power-down.

 

[traineesword]

In Kingdom Hearts I never knew that you could switch weapons. I beat the game using all defaults. I even beat Lance Bass.

In Final Fantasy X I didn't know about the sphere grid or until near the end of the game.

I went through most of Dragon Age: Origins without choosing any specializations.

I never knew you could taunt in Devil May Cry 3. Didn't know about swapping weapons and styles either.

In Fable III I completely forgot about buying property until I was about ten million gold in debt. Needless to say I was ever so slightly pissed.

I beat InFamous without knowing that you could switch which arm you shoot with by hitting an analogue stick. Not too useful, sure, but still a feature I missed.

I didn't know I could issue orders in Mass Effect.

And I didn't know about upgrading in the first few Ratchet titles.

There are more, but my memory isn't what it used to be.

In Kingdom hearts i purposefully use the default weapon until i get a worse one (such as "Sweet Memories" in KH2)

and someone else made a similar comment about Finak Fantasy 10 and i still can't understand how you actually managed to get that far through the game. I can understand missing out on the sphere grid, its got a stupidly long and boring tutorial 20 minutes in that i remember blindly pressing 'x' to skip through. But i had difficulty with some of the bosses and I did use the sphere grid. I can't see how someone can get through the game with level 1 characters... Unless they were purposefully trying to? (http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps2/197344-final-fantasy-x/faqs/16203). I suppose I am more congratulating you though for such persistence! some of those bosses must have been a right ***** and you'd have never realised why until you discovered the sphere grid.

Speaking of Ratchet and Clank, I've never actually gotten the RHINO weapons... -_- the shame

 

[Skoldpadda]

Oh, I had a friend who also had no idea about the critical strikes in Super Mario RPG...somehow. He had a really hard time with the game.

Ohhh... somebody skipped Toad's tutorial. The silly sausage.

Guess he didn't know about timed hits!