Playing It Properly

[MPerce]

While I'm good at not giving shits about achievements and trophies, it's the scoring systems that kill me. Fucking LA Noire and their pointless score that makes obsessive gold medal-ers like myself screw up the game for themselves by constantly reloading the last save. I would have enjoyed that game so much more if that wasn't there.

 

[Ljs1121]

That struck me deep. I've been an obsessive freak when it comes to 100%ing video games for as long as I can remember.

I think it's pretty hard to play a video game wrong, though. If you're having fun while playing a game, you're doing it right.

 

[MetalMagpie]

Another thing you could do is instead of just telling your girlfriend what to do, ask leading questions. Like for example with FBI crime scene ask: maybe the victim's body has clues you might want to examine it before leaving; or this area is really muddy, how could anyone walk down here without leaving behind foot prints.

Personally, I would find that more annoying than someone trying to take the controller off me (where I could at least tell them to kindly f**k off without seeming like I was overreacting).

My boyfriend is a real RPG fan, whereas I'm completely rubbish at them. But even when watching over my shoulder (which he doesn't do very often because he knows it annoys me), he has never tried to prod me in the "right direction". And while this has led to me having to restart Dragon Age: Origins from the beginning (having mucked up my first game after about six hours) I appreciate him leaving me to learn rather than trying to "coach".

After all, he learnt to play RPGs without someone telling him what to do.

 

[westx207]

I'm feeling exactly like this with Dishonored. All the warnings about rising chaos levels and dark endings has killed my ability to own my experience. I choose not to use my badass murder powers not for fun or out of empathy, but because of my slavish commitment to the "good" ending. If developers insist on informing our play styles like this, I wish they'd do so more surreptitiously.

 

[shadyh8er]

And never EVER take the controller out of their hands even if they tell you to.

I remember they said almost the exact same thing in an Extra Credits episode.

OT: I used to be like this when playing Tekken. When my brother and I played against each other, we agreed to never use throws on each other. Needless to say when we started playing in the arcade, we would call people who threw us "cheaters."

A few years and watching a few tournaments later, we've matured past this now.

 

[Divinegon]

He wasn't thinking about "good" or "bad" endings - he was just thinking about how neat it was that he could shoot someone mid-sentence if they annoyed him too much - while I'm sitting there itching to jump up and say, "But no! If you do X, Y won't happen! Think, man!" He was the one playing properly, I was the one being the asshole.

But people are rather conditioning by movies, shows, books and also games on how things should end. 99% of the movies don't have a bad ending and when they do we feel aggravated because we spent all that effort and it didn't work out. Of course, that's part of life in a nutshell but we've grown to dislike that possibly because we already deal with that on a daily basis and we want to escape.

So I'm actually surprised the girlfriend or your brother didn't feel bad when they got bad endings or playthroughs since at some point they should feel "Oh this isn't going well for me" and either quit or try again to make it better.

That's what drives us more than the "high score" system and this article neglects to truly mention it when speaking of a right way to play: We genuinely prefer a good ending over a bad one to be the definitive one and we'll only see a bad one for completionism's sake, not because we think it's canon.