Your "I'm an idiot" moments in gaming.

[The Almighty Aardvark]

In Ico you can get more than halfway through the game without swinging on the chains. I'll leave it to you to piece together how I know this. Needless to say there is a point where you need to, and it took me more than 3 hours of trying that jump before I figured out that swinging on the chains was a thing you can do

 

[Guffe]

Spoiler: Wind Waker stupidity

I didn't know how to climb the ropes in Wind Waker HD (didn't play the original on GameCube) until the final Boss when you need to climb up the rope from ceiling

I didn't understand to use the hotkeys in LoL (Q W E R etc) until I had my summoner on level 14.

 

[FPLOON]

Figuring out how to actually make a good deck in Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories with a proper strategy, rather than just using random cards.

I got all the way to the first battle with Larxene before I figured this out -.- she was much easier when I started spamming the blitz sleight.

For me, it took me my first playthrough of Re:Chain of Memories (after countless playthroughts of the original GBA COM with the strategy guide of said game on hand every time) to find out that there was more dept to the gameplay mechanic than just having more than just high-numbered cards... But then, around the same time, said "fuck it" after finding out that Sonic Blade was the more broken sleight I have ever used so far in this version of the game and just made decks around always using Sonic Blade... What made this more funny was that my friend, who has played this version more than I have, did not know about this as well as finding out my first playthrough through Re:COM was on Proud because I thought it would actually give me an actual challenge after playing so much of COM beforehand... (Honestly, not even the final boss battle was much of a challenge on Proud mode... except while playing as Riku for the first time on Re:COM...)

OT: Besides speedruns showing me that most legitimate shortcuts can be done by the simplest of players, there was this one time where I was having fun with this one cheat code in Simpsons Hit and Run that I completely forgot that it completely hinders one of the main story missions that followed...

Also, just the other day, I was playing some arcade DDR and forgot that some of the songs stop mid-way, causing the arrows to stop as well until the music resumes... So, most of my idiot gaming moments come from just forgetting stuff I already knew beforehand...

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

FFX in the ruined Zanarkand... I spent hours trying to navigate the highway area, trying to get to the next part. For the life of me I couldn't find a way to move on, until I accidentally ran toward the bottom of the screen. This also happened in the weird forest area where later you go to unlock the ultimate weapons.
I should have figured it out only because this shit happened to me in FF7 and FF8 because I forgot to move towards the bottom of the screen.
My brother actually sat and watched me do this, and said nothing until I figured it out, after which he said "It took you that long to figure it out?"
I did however get a lot of upgrades from all the grinding making the next bossfight easier than shitting after taking a laxative...
Speaking of which, I wouldn't say it was an idiot moment, but overestimating a final boss fight. After my experiences in previous Final Fantasy games on NES and SNES, I decided in FF7 to level the hell up including maxing out all materia and killing the Ruby and Emerald weapons before taking on Sepiroth in the crater. I didn't know that for each character at 99 his hp went up in his final form. God damn that was a long fight, but I still beat his ass without dying once. Later I loaded up the save I made prior to my grinding phase and fought Sepiroth at around lvl 70 something and it was much shorter.
Weird how the game actually seems to punish you for grinding and rewards you for being lazy and not getting all the characters nor leveling up or acquiring Knights of the Round... Or you could say it makes it more challenging.

 

[AngloDoom]

My biggest moment was in a game of LoL. Luckily for me it was with friends. Our jungler came up top lane for a gank and I failed to go in on him in time. This resulted in a double kill for him and him becoming fed as hell. He was 18 when the rest of us were 12 and had a full build by 25 minutes in. He just decimated out entire team and the only way we could kill him was by 1v5ing him. Felt like a total dumbass for costing us that game.

As someone who in unfamiliar with about every 9th word in this post, I think this was a good 'I'm an idiot' moment.

OT:

I spent over four days stuck in the Tarzan level of Kingdom Hears because I couldn't find one of the items in a quest (a photograph I think?) even though it was on the - very low - roof of where I got the quest. I was about ten levels overpowered by the time I figured it out, I stomped the boss of that level into the earth.

 

[Iwata]

It's hard to pinpoint one, but I often forget about entire armies and provinces in 'Total War' games.

 

[Drummodino]

Figuring out how to actually make a good deck in Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories with a proper strategy, rather than just using random cards.

I got all the way to the first battle with Larxene before I figured this out -.- she was much easier when I started spamming the blitz sleight.

For me, it took me my first playthrough of Re:Chain of Memories (after countless playthroughts of the original GBA COM with the strategy guide of said game on hand every time) to find out that there was more dept to the gameplay mechanic than just having more than just high-numbered cards... But then, around the same time, said "fuck it" after finding out that Sonic Blade was the more broken sleight I have ever used so far in this version of the game and just made decks around always using Sonic Blade... What made this more funny was that my friend, who has played this version more than I have, did not know about this as well as finding out my first playthrough through Re:COM was on Proud because I thought it would actually give me an actual challenge after playing so much of COM beforehand... (Honestly, not even the final boss battle was much of a challenge on Proud mode... except while playing as Riku for the first time on Re:COM...)

Sonic Blade was awesomely OP indeed. Although by the end I found Lethal Frame better for single enemies and bosses, and Judgement and Raging Storm for multiple enemies.

OT: I have another one, trying to melee a big fattie zombie in State of Decay with almost no health. I was literally torn in half.

The worst part was I still had ammo for my gun...

 

[StarStruckStrumpets]

In Final Fantasy X, the cloister of trials. I think it's the third one where you acquire Ixion? Well you have to supercharge one of the puzzle spheres, and cross a lightning bridge. Literally spent days trying to figure out how to do it but never could, so I gave up. Years later I decided I was going to finish the game, so I looked up the trial on YouTube. As soon as I saw that all you had to do was push the pedestal with the supercharged sphere into the lightning I slapped my head repeatedly and just swore at myself for an hour. Honestly such an easy thing to have figured out and for some reason I never saw the solution.

 

[Phasmal]

I think I played about 50 hours of Oblivion before I realised you could fast-travel.
Looking back, I wish I hadn't realised! It just made me lazy.

 

[Auron225]

In Final Fantasy X, the cloister of trials. I think it's the third one where you acquire Ixion? Well you have to supercharge one of the puzzle spheres, and cross a lightning bridge. Literally spent days trying to figure out how to do it but never could, so I gave up. Years later I decided I was going to finish the game, so I looked up the trial on YouTube. As soon as I saw that all you had to do was push the pedestal with the supercharged sphere into the lightning I slapped my head repeatedly and just swore at myself for an hour. Honestly such an easy thing to have figured out and for some reason I never saw the solution.

If it makes you feel any better, the exact same thing happened to me -.- I was stuck on it for DAYS. Then I got bored - stopped playing. It was my friends copy and he wanted it back so I gave it back to him. I eventually tried it again weeks later, only after looking up a walkthrough... and I am physically incapable of kicking myself as much as I wanted to. I felt like a moron 0.0 Oddly enough, I managed every Cloister of Trials after that no problem, including the one where you get Bahumut which apparently floored all of my friends for a long time.

OT: Aside from that one, in Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories - for the longest time I did not use any zero cards. I missed the explanation at the beginning and only thought of them as the most useless cards you could have that for some reason used a lot of CP to equip. I did not see the point whatsoever - until I looked it up... and learned that they can break f*cking sleights of any kind! I had gotten all the way to the 3rd fight with Riku before I finally discovered this. I had been trying to dodge any and every sleight that had come my way until that point! Needless to say I fixed my deck and destroyed him mercilessly after that.

Actually, also in CoM - I didn't know how to use enemy cards! It took me a long time until I pressed Select by accident and thought "Wait... what happened to my deck? Why is... oh damn it..."

 

[Fijiman]

I've got three from Oblivion. First one was that I didn't know you could change the difficulty for quite some time. Only reason I found out is because I was stuck on the Area fight where you face three Argonians and got my ass handed to me every time whereas I remember my brother breezing through it. When I asked him about it that's when he told me how to change the difficulty.

Next time was when I was doing the Knights of the Nine quest and was going to fight the main bad guy. I had made it to the final room and had lost like only one guy. However, I couldn't figure out what the hell I was supposed to do so for like an hour I sat there fighting enemy after enemy and had lost all but the two invincible followers until I thought to go around the corner and found the stairs.

Third case was while playing the Shivering Isles for the first time. I was going after Syl and had gotten stuck at a round room. I probably ran around that room a hundred time without finding the switch I needed to find to move on all because I kept running around it in the same direction. I actually had to watch a let's play in order to move on.

I know I have more cases than that from other games, but I can't think of any of them at the moment.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

My most recent one was playing A Link Between Worlds. A thing you can do in the game is use your power of merging with a wall to get behind something and then pop out and push it over, I was in a room where I could not figure out how to get out of it, I went all over the room, scoured it head to toe trying to figure out what the heck I was supposed to do before finally looking for something online only to find out that there was a bridge like grate I was supposed to pop out from behind to get it to fall over and make a bridge for me. I thought the thing was some sort of climbable grate to get to the upper level and had tried several times to climb it with no success, this is in spite of there not being a climbing mechanic in the game to begin with.

 

[kasperbbs]

The first time i encountered the door puzzle in skyrim, i had the claw to open it, but had no idea that it had the password on it since it was displayed in a weird position in my inventory, i tried reading random drawings on the walls, tried to use cheat codes to open it and in the end i ended up looking at a walkthrough on the net.

 

[randomsix]

It took me two and a half months to find the last door in the Gerudo Fortress to free the last captive. Then one day I was just rolling around not paying attention and I rolled into it.

 

[Branindain]

Well, I played through the original Jak & Daxter when it was new and finished it 100% except for ONE Precursor Orb. It completely ruined the satisfaction of my achievement and I spent 4 hours scouring the level for it to no avail. Many years later I revisited the game and when I got to that level, I routinely got all the Orbs without a hiccough. Didn't have to try at all. I'll never know which one I somehow managed to miss the first time.

 

[Someone Depressing]

Costume Quest... pretty much the whole game; it's like a collectaphon in RPG form. When I was trying to construct the unicorn mech (it's a long story) I had spent a good half hour trying to find the sprinkles. I did find it, though.

Unicorn is the best mech in the whole game.

And Left Four Dead, both of the games. I don't know why, but I... always get lost in the maps, and I always have no idea where to go, even if I've played the life out of the maps.

Skyrim is also a big cause of this for me. For a game with as many puzzles as McDonalds has GDA positives, what puzzles there are really stumped me.

There is a locked door, and some thingys on it. So, I read the book; "The answer is in the palm of your hand." So... I unequipped and then looked at my gloves. I did realise it was talking about the Golden Claw eventually, but damn, I felt like an idiot.

Also, Final Fantasy 10-2. Mostly because I realised I was playing Final Fantasy 10-2.

 

[Someone Depressing]

I think I played about 50 hours of Oblivion before I realised you could fast-travel.
Looking back, I wish I hadn't realised! It just made me lazy.

I really think that's the best way to play Oblivion; just think, all of those poor mappers making highly detailed ruins, castles and landscapes, and most people fast travelling over them. I think I've found a few genuinely beautiful looking areas.

 

[Poppy JR.]

Never figuring out how to open the abilities menu in Kirby Super Star. Curse you, Milky Way Wishes!

 

[Smeatza]

Speaking of which, I wouldn't say it was an idiot moment, but overestimating a final boss fight. After my experiences in previous Final Fantasy games on NES and SNES, I decided in FF7 to level the hell up including maxing out all materia and killing the Ruby and Emerald weapons before taking on Sepiroth in the crater. I didn't know that for each character at 99 his hp went up in his final form. God damn that was a long fight, but I still beat his ass without dying once. Later I loaded up the save I made prior to my grinding phase and fought Sepiroth at around lvl 70 something and it was much shorter.
Weird how the game actually seems to punish you for grinding and rewards you for being lazy and not getting all the characters nor leveling up or acquiring Knights of the Round... Or you could say it makes it more challenging.

Safer∙Sephiroth's has base stats, but they change depending on a few things.

Spoiler: Copied from the wiki

For every character at Level 99 (not counting Aeris), 30,000 maximum HP, 2 Attack, 20 Defense, 5 Magic, and 16 Magic Defense are added to Safer∙Sephiroth's stats.
If Knights of the Round was cast on Jenova∙SYNTHESIS, Safer∙Sephiroth receives an extra 80,000 maximum HP.
For every time Bizarro∙Sephiroth's head was killed during the previous fight, Safer∙Sephiroth's maximum HP is reduced by 100, up to a maximum reduction of 24,900 HP.

Considering all these, Safer∙Sephiroth's maximum stats (bracketed in the table) are:

400,000 maximum HP, 246 Attack, 260 Defense, 140 Magic Power, and 308 Magic Defense.

OT: Playing Final Fantasy 8 for the first time I didn't managed to find the cave with Ifrit in for a good 4 hours or so. That's a lot of fighting caterpillars and flies.
Took me a good while to find the exit to Pallet Town on Pokemon blue the first time. But I was just a kid with not a lot of experience in video games back then.

 

[scorptatious]

I think I played about 50 hours of Oblivion before I realised you could fast-travel.
Looking back, I wish I hadn't realised! It just made me lazy.

Same thing happened to me.

I kinda enjoyed traveling across the country side as I head from town to town though. Made it feel like an epic adventure.