"YOU CAN STEER THE TORPEDO?" moments

[Eggsnham]

YOU CAN MANUALLY DECIDE YOUR ARMY'S STARTING POSITIONS?!

I was doing a campaign in Medieval II: Total War, when I found out you could manually position your units before the battle started; it took me 70+ hours of playing before I figured that out.

Needless to say, I no longer have to worry about my archers being slaughtered by enemy cavalry since I can just slap a few units of spearmen in front of them.

EDIT: I also remember that I found the "group selected units" button in the same battle; there's nothing quite like being able to withdraw your general and his cavalry with minimum hassle.

 

[L4Y Duke]

My moment was in Resident Evil 5, and is a bit more mundane compared to some of the others:

"There is a 'Sell all treasures' button?!?"

 

[Jimmy T. Malice]

I didn't realise that you could press 'C' to bring up the character screen in World of Warcraft until many hours in. Before that, I put equipment on my hotbar and clicked it to equip it.

 

[Snownine]

Ah, oh yeah there is one that instantly popped into my head!

I was playing Final Fantasy 12, not a good game btw, and I got to the last boss. However my disk was scratched, so I could not even try it, so to youtube I went to just see the end of the damn thing.
So I looked up the fight and... YOU CAN CHAIN ATTACK!?

Some weapons chained more then others. I just went with the ones that had the highest power, which was maces that almost never chained. It worked, but it bugged me the whole game that the other weapons had so little power, I didn't want to use mace/shield.
I don't think the game ever explained this, though I may have missed it. It was bad overall at explaining things, and I still don't know what the plot was.


Oh while Im here, I want to add another from way back when while a friend played pokemon red on gameboy.
YOU CAN CATCH POKEMON!?
He could not get past the guy with the lvl 20 butterfly, as he only had his starter. He did not get pokeballs as he thought those were just balls for his pokemon to play with. Poor english skills back then -.-

What did he think the mandatory, unskippable, Pokemon catching tutorial was about then?

 

[Da_Schwartz]

Xenosaga. Took me 2 half play throughs with restarting mid way before i fully understood how to level my characters properly. If that counts...third time was a charm. Worth it though. That series was good times.

 

[Full]

I didn't know you could sprint in Resident Evil 4 until one of the swinging blade puzzles about 60% into the game.

However I still liked the slow pace and chunkiness of just having to walk.

 

[V3KT0R]

I recently switched my Brawl main to Snake after my friend told me Mario was G Tier T_T
So I'm playing Snake against his Dedede, blow him up with a NIKITA.

"YOU CAN STEER THE MISSILE!?"
Me: "Yeah man.. You like stop moving and everything. Dude, really? You didn't know?"

 

[Carnagath]

80% way tgrough demon souls

YOU CAN COLLECT THE SOULS FROM YOUR DEATH LOCATION?

Hahaha, oh wow. You really manmoded that shit, didn't you?

 

[Rattja]

What did he think the mandatory, unskippable, Pokemon catching tutorial was about then?

How should I know? Maybe he thought he was just showing him how he got his pokemon in the first place *shrug* We were 8 and no one knew what pokemon was at that time. With next to no english skills it was basically just learn by doing in a random game he got from his aunt. =p

 

[NightmareExpress]

When I realized that in DOTA 2 you could drag items from your sash on the bottom of the screen over to other people on the overworld and give them away.

I swear, I played at least two games as Lone Druid thinking that I had to have the items on my primary character to have them affect the summoned bear because there didn't seem to be an easy way to hand 'em over (which left the Druid overpowered and the bear an annoyance on the sidelanes) like there did to sell/drop. Turns out there was and a good many people got slaughtered by micro skills as a result (the items you give to the bear effect it's stats, effectively giving you two hero units instead of just one).

Way back it would have been learning about EV/IV training in Pokemon for the first time.
My initial impression was that farming in general to scale up levels and learn moves was the point.
But it turns out you can make overpowered Pokemon by selectively farming select Pokemon that will boost certain stats...when you target the IV that's naturally highest on your Pokemon (attack/special attack), it pretty much gives it super powers later on.

 

[Denamic]

I CAN USE THE RCS TO GO SIDEWAYS?!

That makes docking in Kerbal Space Program so much easier. Easier, but still not easy. I've blown up more space stations than I care to admit.

 

[Sir Boss]

I CAN PUT BUILDINGS IN CONTROL GROUPS!?
Starcraft 2 and Age of Empires 3.

30 hours in to SC2 and like 150 in to AoE 3, needless to say my spam capability went up by roughly %103 percent.

 

[Galen Marek]

Kingdom Hearts 2. My first playthrough, The Castle that Never Was. I CAN SWITCH MY MAIN KEYBLADE?!

Was still fun, beating the game with the starting keyblade though.

The first game was ridiculous with the starting keyblade. I was swapping them anything and everything until I got Lionheart/Oblvion (Ultima just too strong).


Despite playing many games, I can't really think of any. I know it has happened about twice to me, but I spend the first 3-4 hours of a game looking at every single thing cause Im boring.

Guess the latest two would of been Dragon's Dogma, playing about 3 hours in, slicing a head off the Hydra then failing a simple quest vs some giant lizards (Surians).
Wiped on it about 6-7 times. Finally went "bugger it, Im going to check the $25 guide I bought". Apparently the vendor the next door over had some lovely gear I could buy so I actually had armor and proper weapon. Those lizards didn't last long after that.

Other then that I can only think of:

THERES A PATH UP THAT/AROUND THAT MOUNTAIN?!

Every mountain in Skyrim without fail. 66 hours, not a single path up/over/around a mountain followed yet.
So much funner that way, just need to spam save incase you kill your horse.

 

[Groenteman]

Playing Dwarf Fortress is this for the first few months. Then theres more of it every now and than the next year or so, then a few more every time I theres an update.

That game is full of stuff to discover. Lots of 'That would have been nice to know earlier!' kind of discoveries.

 

[Galen Marek]

I'll see you Guadosalam and raise you Home. I knew how to open the menu, but I didn't understand how the Sphere Grid worked. I thought the number was your level, and not the number of nodes you could move, so I was always trying to move to a node that raised the S.LvL, which, of course, wouldn't work. I actually got a little bit further than Home, to that fucking dragon that attacks you on the airship as you near Bevelle, and he absolutely wrecked my shit with one or two attacks every time. My friend told me what I was doing wrong a few days after I had given up on the game. Ahh, youth.

Other than that, I played Star Wars: Battlefront II in first-person mode for a long time before I realized I could change it to third-person. Then I realized I hated playing the game in first-person, so I never changed it again.

THATS HOW YOU BEAT THAT STUPID FLYING CARPET?!?!?!?!?!?!

Why didn't my mates tell me that? They just laughed cause I could never defeat it. My favorite attempt was when it downed Tidus and Lulu and left Auron (who had so much more health then those two) on about 100 health. And that was just its first turn, I hadn't even attacked yet.
Quit then and there.

 

[OutsiderEX]

When I was playing Lock On, I struggled a little bit when I was playing through the game because of the loadouts you were given during the campaign. Especially the last A-10 mission because the Russian radar-guided AA was so heavy and you only had four AGM-65s to work with.

I then realised how to change the payload of the aircraft so I could get enough missiles to take out the enemy air defense from a safe distance.

 

[Broderick]

THE ANSWER TO THE PUZZLE IS ON THE DAMN CLAW?!

When I first played Skyrim, I was following through the main story missions, and got to the part where I had to open a door using a Golden Dragon Claw. When I got to the door in the depth of a murky ruined cave, I found an obstacle; a door, with three circles around a lock, which you could rotate. The rings had different pictures on them and I guessed I had to work out what the proper combination was.

I must have spent at least an hour, first just fiddling around, second, scouring the murals on the walls near the door for some kind of hint to the combination, and finally, just fucking hammering those buttons in every single possible combination. When I finally got it, I went on the internet to see if there was some kind of logical explanation for it, and sure enough... the combination is on the back of the claw the whole time. I did not know you could look at items in your inventory in that 3D view and I really didn't know it would somehow be a vital skill to learn for a mandatory bloody story quest.

I hate to admit that it took me a week to figure that out after I bought the game, while my friends were several hours ahead of me...

Being a Resident Evil vet, I had looking at items in the item screen hard wired into my gaming tendencies heh.

I would say holding down the action button to drink continuously in Fallout:3 and new vegas. It took me forever to figure that out.

In skyrim it took me about 5 or so hours of playing before I figured out how to sprint.

In WoW when I first played, it took me forever to figure out that keybinds existed.

There are a couple bonfires in Dark souls that I did not know the existence of until I watched a Let's play.

 

[Coppernerves]

YOU CAN IRON-SIGHT AIM IN BIOSHOCK!?

Yeah, for the pistol, machine gun and crossbow, you can look down the sights...

I had a derp moment that day >.>

It took me kind of a while to learn that.

Also I went the whole game without knowing stunned enemies took more melee damage.

Another thing it took me a while to pick up on was that, since you can strafe so fast, you can aim by pointing in roughly the right direction and then running, which kind of made up for the slight delay between moving the mouse and the character aiming in a new direction.

 

[kailus13]

YOU CAN PUSH THE LITTLE HOOD BIT UP OFF THE CLI

*ahem*

Uh...is it weird that this is the only thing I don't get?

One day, Alex, you'll get it and your girlfriend will be forever grateful to the hint given here

Well his girlfriend would have to be playing that specific game, find that specific hood, and push it off that specific cliff...