How was I meant to know THAT?!

Nouw

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Mar 18, 2009
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In Half-Life there are times you have to use your crowbar to bust down something to advance the game and some of them are really hard to notice. The vents aren't too bad because you eventually learn that their textures are a little different but in one section where you have to destroy part of an elevator top it looks no different from the rest of the elevator. I had to use a walkthrough to figure out what the hell to do >.>.
 

DJ_DEnM

My brother answers too!
Dec 22, 2010
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Lizardon said:
Guffe said:
WHY WON'T MY PIKACHU EVOLVEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!?????
seriously, I had a level 80 Pikachu in Red and it didn't evolve! My brother got so frustrated when his reached level 90 he thought it had bugged and restarted teh game, only to 2 weeks later find out it has to be done with the stone. Oh the tears!!
I would be incredibly surprised if there wasn't some random NPC hidden somewhere that told you how to evolve Pikachu.

Anyway, sounds like you needed one of these.



Everyone I knew who played Red and Blue had a copy of this book. It was pretty much required.

Although, I'm fairly certain the whole point of the Pokemon anime was to teach kids how to play the games. They showed where certain Pokemon were found, how they evolved, what moves they could learn and the different type match ups. Of course they got a lot of that wrong so it wasn't always helpful.
I remember that book. That book was the shit.

How am I supposed to know what is easy to kill in Fallout? A huge fucking roach seems pretty hard. Could never finish Fallout 3/New Vegas for that reason.
 

thejackyl

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Apr 16, 2008
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squid5580 said:
Snip -Shadows of the Damned-
The last boss? There's a goat head above him. Depending on what phase you're on it might be moving (I never beat him due to aiming issues with it. I hate having to lead shots, especially on a controller)

I usually don't run into moments like the "How am I supposed to know that?!", but more moments like "Why didn't I think of that sooner?"

MMOs can be forgiven a little bit, because most have a LARGE player-base, and a big draw of them is learning new encounters. The guild I was in when I played WoW actually wouldn't look up boss fights until the 2nd or 3rd week, if we couldn't make any progress. Usually the raid leader would come up with some basic strategy and as for input from the experienced raiders. While we were FAR from the top guild on the server, we managed to beat all content in the last 2 expansions.

Oh wait...
Random Argument Man said:
METAL GEAR!
I bought the Gamecube version from Gamestop after hearing good things about it. Only copy they had was one of their "We only traded in the disc" boxes so I couldn't look up the code (No internet at the time. And when I got a chance to go online the only thing in the FAQs said was "Enter the code on the back of the case" No numbers, no screenshots, nothing. Finally asked a friend who owned it (He recommended it to me) and gave me the number. Than Psycho Mantis happened.

And...
OLD games from back in the shareware days. Before DRM games had copy protection things in the form of "What is Word X, on page Y, Sentence Z" Or have some decoder ring deal. We bought most of our games second hand back than. How was I supposed to know that?
 

squid5580

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Feb 20, 2008
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thejackyl said:
squid5580 said:
Snip -Shadows of the Damned-
The last boss? There's a goat head above him. Depending on what phase you're on it might be moving (I never beat him due to aiming issues with it. I hate having to lead shots, especially on a controller)

I usually don't run into moments like the "How am I supposed to know that?!", but more moments like "Why didn't I think of that sooner?"

MMOs can be forgiven a little bit, because most have a LARGE player-base, and a big draw of them is learning new encounters. The guild I was in when I played WoW actually wouldn't look up boss fights until the 2nd or 3rd week, if we couldn't make any progress. Usually the raid leader would come up with some basic strategy and as for input from the experienced raiders. While we were FAR from the top guild on the server, we managed to beat all content in the last 2 expansions.

Oh wait...
Random Argument Man said:
METAL GEAR!
I bought the Gamecube version from Gamestop after hearing good things about it. Only copy they had was one of their "We only traded in the disc" boxes so I couldn't look up the code (No internet at the time. And when I got a chance to go online the only thing in the FAQs said was "Enter the code on the back of the case" No numbers, no screenshots, nothing. Finally asked a friend who owned it (He recommended it to me) and gave me the number. Than Psycho Mantis happened.

And...
OLD games from back in the shareware days. Before DRM games had copy protection things in the form of "What is Word X, on page Y, Sentence Z" Or have some decoder ring deal. We bought most of our games second hand back than. How was I supposed to know that?
No it was George's final form with the intestines and the worms ;) Flemming was pretty easy once I figured out not to do headshots (again wtf don't shoot the glowing red part???)
 

octafish

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Apr 23, 2010
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Gabriel Knight 3, how to rent a moped puzzle. I'll just refer you to Old Man Murray's Death of Adventure Games article for the full walkthrough. Nonsense. (Old Man Murray were wrong about one thing though, this puzzle was created by the game's producer when the original sequence had to be cut due to engine limitations, not the game's writer.)

I get this all the time because either the game is a half arsed port (Assassin's Creed 2) or because the control was mentioned in a tutorial that was boring me senseless and I missed it (most other games). At least in the tutorial example I can just check the controls scheme for what button I need.
 

Magicite Spring

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Apr 15, 2012
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When I was playing Kingdom Hearts, I was trying to find the Curaga spell. I knew it had to exist since all the other spells had -ga levels, but I couldn't find it anywhere. I finished the game without it, and years later i decided to look it up and found you had to talk to one of the princesses 5 times, and then she gave it to you. Maybe its a lesson to always listen to what NPCs have to say, but none of the princesses were interesting so I never talked to them.
 

Shadow flame master

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Jul 1, 2011
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Final Fantasy XIII. I'm back to playing it after a hiatus with school, and I'm kicking ass left and right?.until I get out of the Nutriculture Complex at Palumpolum. After one of the most amazing cutscenes I've seen, I'm put in control of Snow and put into a fight with some mooks and an Orion droid/robot/whatever.

I use his eidolon, the Shiva sisters, to wipe out all of the mooks, but the Orion was left alive but weak. With Snow's guage to use the Shiva sisters too low, I proceed to fight the orion believing that I could take it. I died five times. After raging, I check the internet for help, but it appears that I have to use the sisters again to kill orion.

How the fuck do I do that if Snow's guage can't use the sisters twice in a row?! Thanks alot game.
 

Dfskelleton

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Apr 6, 2010
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90's Adventure games were loaded with things like these.
Do I need to mention the infamous "Gabriel Knight Cat-hair Moustache" puzzle?
 

Kenkurogue

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Mar 19, 2012
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Seriously. Psycho Mantis. How the hell were you supposed to figure out to switch your controller to port 2 so he "can't read your mind" anymore. Along the same lines, X-Men for the Sega Genisis. You get to the end of the stage and there is this huge computer and it says you need to reset the computer. You search everywhere but cannot find a button to push ( Because to beat the game you need to push the reset button on the Genisis.) Who would think to do that when we all KNOW pushing that button reboots the system and you would end up back on the title screen...
 

Et3rnalLegend64

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Jan 9, 2009
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Moonlight Butterfly said:
Aerosteam 1908 said:
That one thing in LoZ: Phantom Hourglass, you know the map puzzle where the solution was to close your DS?

In my opinion, best puzzle ever yet the worst.
Yeah that was hilarious.

I think learning dragon shouts in Skyrim. I think at least five friends asked me how you use them/activate them.

Dark Souls just kind of dumps you into the game and then wanders off saying 'Have fun!' It doesn't even tell you how to equip items. In a way it's nice that it doesn't hold your hand but it's incredibly vague at points.
Dark Souls is incredibly vague and leaves you to guess at a load of things, but it wasn't that bad in the tutorial. It does tell you how to equip items (the "Get your shield!" part). You were supposed to dodge inside the room where the shield was and the signs inside tell you how to equip it.

Honestly, a crapton of stuff regarding Dark Souls is vague, but that's where the hint system comes into play. It's almost like the old days where you would tell your friends that you discovered the Hadouken in Megaman X so they could try it for themselves or any other relevant secret you found.

A couple posters above are complaining about the game not explaining mechanics. It's true that they give you a message about something and don't explain what it does. They do give you the means to use that mechanic when they tell you about it. This is where experimentation comes into play. You do it and see the effect for yourself rather than being fed everything from a spoon. You get bits and pieces and learn the rest for yourself as you go. It feels entirely unhelpful when you start, but stuff just dawns on you later and you pat yourself on the back. It's like going back to old-school gaming where you didn't get tutorial boxes for everything and rewarding a player who's willing to take risks and experiment. It's not horrendously unintuitive like the Zodiac Spear example for Final Fantasy XII.

I apologize, but I have to give a fighting game analogue to this Dark Souls thing. I'm being a bit more passionate than I expected to be, but whatever. Arc System Works games have really good tutorials. They tell you a LOT of stuff. BlazBlue even adds character specific strategies for anybody so interested. Then they teach you combos in Challenge Mode to familiarize you with some attack properties. That's all well and good, but the way you truly get better is going to training mode after all of that and beat up the training dummy. You look at all of the moves in your arsenal and teach yourself exactly what your character can and cannot do. It's the difference between using canned combos forever and tweaking them yourself so they do the maximum amount of damage or that they're easier for you to execute. You get enough to get started, then learn the rest for yourself.
 

EHKOS

Madness to my Methods
Feb 28, 2010
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Heavy Rain has a lot of these. Plus it was hard to see your choices when they flew around your head.
 

Alcamonic

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Jan 6, 2010
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Holding down E will allow for continuous drinking in Fallout 3/NW. Sure would've sped up that radioactive quest in Fallout 3.

You can hotkey spells (or items) in Skyrim. After 30 hours playing a fire/resto mage a friend told me. I was shocked.
 

AceTrilby

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Dec 24, 2008
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I think most recently for me was during inFamous.

So you have to destroy poison injectors on water towers. The only detail you are given is to 'destroy' them. Each injector has a control panel on it that you've spent the last few hours zapping with lighning bolts. However, this time if you do, it overloads and dumps all its poison into the water tower before exploding.

It's only when you get to the second water tower, or by reloading and careful experimentation, that it's explained you have to climb up on top of the tower and blast the injector with your knockback move.

CONVEYANCE, game. Conveyance.
 

default

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Apr 25, 2009
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I've been playing Marathon Infinity and there is a level where you have to fucking look through a crevice into a room to satisfy the objectives. Every other level before now has had you perform some difinitive action such as pressing a button or destroying something, but this was completely fucking out of the blue and incredible unintuitive. The level objectives at the start don't even indicate in any way that this is what you are meant to do. Made me rage slightly.
 

Tallim

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Mar 16, 2010
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The only one I've remotely recently come across is digging through rock in PixelJunk Shooter by spinning your ship. It's required to progress and it's not mentioned anywhere that the spin move can do that.
 

Frybird

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Jan 7, 2008
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In Search of Username said:
Most of the mechanics of Dark Souls. Seriously, they say 'At this bonfire you can perfom the rite of unhollowing' and give ZERO EXPLANATION OF WHAT THAT MEANS. I love the game's difficulty in general, but difficulty created by simply not explaining the basic concepts of the game at any point is just bad game design.
I'm right there with you. I recently bought the game and DO enjoy it....but i'm sick of people saying the game is hard but SUPER TOTALLY FAIR.

Just because the combat system works and the game being apperantly bug free, it has nothing to do with fair if information about the game is largely dependent on user created content (wikis and soapstones) and punishes you hard for going somewhere you are not supposed to (in an open world that happens to be mostly linear unless you are stunningly awesome at this game)

For example i love how when i got though the graveyard (with skeleton-enemies) near the starting area without problems, that i was immediately punished for trying to go further by getting stuck with the next area...wich also has skeletons, but apperantly you cant kill them with regular weapons


I played that for the first time the other day, and I asked my (experienced) friend what it meant to be Hollowed. He said it meant I had no Humanity, which also meant fuck-all to me. I just kind of asked, "Oh, so should I unHollow myself?" And he said no, not when you're entering an area you'll probably die in, or else you'll lose it. Okay, so, apparently Humanity is important enough that I shouldn't lose it, but I still don't know what the fuck it does. I didn't really play it past the tutorial (I don't own it, so I was playing it at a friend's house to get a feel for it) and I figured I'd have learned its use eventually, but like what.
FYI, Unhollowing gives you SOMETIMES different dialogue options with certain NPCs (they are generally nicer if you don't look like a Zombie), heightens the quantity and quality of weapon drops from enemies, MAYBE increases your resistance slightly and gives you the ability to summon other players or NPCs to fight with you.
On the other hand, it also gives other players the ability to invade your game and kill you in an ambush.
Its useful alright, but given how fast you can lose it by dying i rarely unhollow.

Most importantly IMO, with the use of an additional "humanity" you can kindle bonfires, wich doubles your estus flask refill.
 

snagli

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Jan 21, 2011
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Being able to run in Pokemon. I just skipped through all that dialogue in FireRed because I thought I had already done it in Red and didn't need the tutorials. I know this is more of a case of me being incredibly stupid, but still. Come on, man, I grew up with walking and riding bikes, how was I supposed to know you could run in later games.
 

Ymbirtt

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May 3, 2009
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Anyone here ever played Omega? In the grand history of stats-driven Role Playing Games, Omega was one of the earliest ever, back when permadeath was entirely the done thing; if you die in Omega, your save file is deleted and you may never play that character again. Like every good dungeon-crawler, Omega also has traps. The entire game takes place on a series of large grids, and you may search any adjacent squares to you for traps and secret doors and the like, but there's no guarantee that you'll find everything or even anything each time you search, so of course these traps shouldn't be too deadly or punishing, just things like poison darts and blades coming out of walls.

HAHA! No.

There is a trap called the disintegration trap. If you step into a disintegration trap wearing armour, your armour is instantly destroyed. If you walk into a disintegration trap without wearing armour, you die instantly, regardless of how many hitpoints you had or how much of the game you've beaten. They're always a possibility. There is no way to stop it. There is no way to predict whether or not a square may contain one of these traps. You can search adjacent squares any arbitrary number of times and still not be certain that there is no trap there. You basically play this game until the developers get bored of you and say "Right, you've had enough fun, die now please".

So next time you complain about not being able to buy items, think about how easy you have it.