Electronic game players: how do you use strategy guides/FAQs?

Cafe Society
1

[NOTE: Unless you are, at the very least, a moderately interested player of computer and console video games that have hidden features or secrets, you’ll find this post confusing and boring. You still may even if you are.]

I’m a big console RPG fan. I’ve been making an effort to avoid strategy guides and FAQs while playing one of the latest titles (Shadow Hearts: From the New World), and mostly succeeded. I’ve made it to the last save point before the final boss and completed quite a few subquests.

However, there are certain features/subquests in the game that made it obvious to me that I was missing a relatively substantial amount (in terms of length, not necessarily quantity) of (optional) items and hidden dungeons, and I had little idea of how to find them. I’d visited and revisited locations with little success, and I was becoming a little frustrated, knowing that certain things and places were out there, but being unable to find them.

So I consulted an online FAQ, and found the location of two important items, which would give me the missing dungeons I knew had to exist. But I feel vaguely guilty about it, like I’m “cheating.” I also used the FAQ to confirm a suspicion (i.e. if I have a character with three “alternate forms” that each have four associated special items, and she gains a fourth “alternate form” and I only find two of the associated special items for it, that there must be two more out there that I simply haven’t found). This might not be a big deal, but for the fact that this affects which of two endings I get (which I also didn’t know until consulting the FAQ, which bugs me too).

It’s exascerbated by the fact that there’s a “New Game +” feature (enabling you to play the game over with many items and magic spells left over from your first runthrough) where I COULD have played through with additional knowledge (thus making my first time through “virginal”), but did not, because of my reluctance towards having to wait through another playthrough of the game to get to the end, where my missing features unfold.

So I ask you, fellow game players, what do you think of my use of it? Am I “right” to feel the way I do? How should I approach how I finish my game?

And, to throw out a general question, how do YOU use strategy guides and FAQs?

2

We don’t use cheat codes, but we think the guides are a good way to get a fuller experience of the game. They don’t tell you where the Golden Sword of Thator is, just that it’s a good thing to have. You can decide how you want to proceed in the game, and they give you tips but not the answers.

To me, it’s like taking a guidebook along on a trip. There’s a lot of things you might miss if you don’t know they’re there.

But rigging the game to get unlimited gold coins or healing potions? Nope, that’s cheating.

3

I tend to play the few games of this type that I like once without codes or resorting to a guide unless I am completely stumped, and if I am that stumped the game is probably screwed up in some way or another (silent hill, that one stupid fraking key in some dumbfuck location that had nothing to do with anything at all…yeah once I found it in a guide I quit playing the game)

I think you are more than reasonable, think about it. the whole reason we play games is for enjoyment, if you dont enjoy the game there aint much point in playing.

4

For me, a lot depends on the quality of the game and how well its interface and approach fits with the way that I think. The bottom line for me is that I’m playing the game for enjoyment: for some games, I’ll enjoy it more if I work it all out for myself while for others, I’ll enjoy it more if I get quickly over whatever hurdle I’m stuck on and move on with the game. Examples:

  1. Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate II - both of these I played through completely without looking at a strategy guide/FAQ at all. Having completed the game, I read through the strategy guides and forum discussions and played through a second time, this time trying to do every sub-quest and get every bit of hidden stash. Both games were interesting enough for me that I didn’t feel this was a waste of time.

  2. Knights of the Old Republic - I played through the vast majority of this without consulting a strategy guide, but I needed to check an FAQ on a couple of occasions when I knew what I had to do, but I couldn’t understand how that fit into the game’s interface. After finishing it, I read through the FAQs and such, but decided against another play-through.

  3. Pools of Radiance: The Ruins of Myth Drannor. In my opinion, this game is at best a competent AD&D RPG - I enjoyed it enough to keep playing, but not so much that I wanted to spend lots of time blundering about looking for things. So if any quest was starting to drag out (usually after an hour or two of fruitless searching) I’d consult the FAQ to find out where I was meant to go. I also consulted the FAQ early on because I desperately needed another decent fighter, knew there was one in the dungeon, and wanted to find him.

5

I use strategy guides a lot, especially if I rent a game and only have a short time to play it. I only use cheat codes if I’ve played the game through already or if it’s a fighting game (for example) where all you’re doing is unlocking characters.

6

Here’s what I like to do : play through a level/area, then save my progress in a new game. Then I read the FAQ/guide, in order to see if I missed anything wotrh replaying the level.

That’s if it’s my first time; if I’m trying to explore all the permutations of the game I’ll consult the guide(s) constantly. I don’t regard it as cheating unless you use cheat codes.

7

If I feel I won’t want to play through the game again, I use FAQs the first time around.

8

It really depends what game I’m playing (I hate console games, BTW… I’ve always been a PC guy), but as a general rule, I keep FAQs for a second play-through to make sure I haven’t missed anything.

This is very important for “Big” RPGs- the Fallout series is the best example of this, where the game world is simply so enormous there’s no way you can get it all in one game unless you know what you’re looking for.

Also, I use FAQs and cheat codes for when a puzzle or situation is just so hard or difficult that it’s ruining my enjoyment of the game… if I’ve paid nearly $100 for the bloody thing, I see no problem with giving myself The Uber Gatling Laser Of Death and enabling Total Invincibility so I can smite the Great Green Arkleseizure and get on to the next part of the game…

9

I try to avoid them to a certain extent–I’m not going to beat my head against the wall trying to do something, but when I get suitably frustrated I’ll consult a walkthrough. Some games practically demand it (Golden Sun relies heavily on puzzles which are a complete PITA to figure out, meanwhile you’re fighting enemies every three steps). It doesn’t really affect my enjoyment of the game much in general, though some games are far too frustrating without one.

10

“Back in the day”, I used to do everything on my own the first time through, and then check a guide before I played through again. Nowadays, when games routinely take 40-60 hours and frankly aren’t as interesting (on average, at least), the odds are a LOT higher that I’m not going to want to play it again, and I’m much more likely to check a guide everyone now and then to make sure I get the full experience the first time through. The goal isn’t to get hints on how to beat the game most easily; the goal is to make sure I don’t miss the impossible-to-find-on-your-own secret scene that completes the story.

11

the third selection was a damned good game. not as good as the original pool of radiance game on regular nintendo, but it wasn’t too shabby.

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as for my view on the topic, you’ve still actually gotta go and DO those things that you didn’t know existed on the walkthrough, right? well, as long as you do them the legit way, i don’t see how it’s cheating. i think that (i think it was ivylass) the comparison to a guide book when in another city is most applicable.

13

Buying strategy guides for online games are a waste of money. By the time you get the guide and start playing the game, chances are a few patches for the game have already come out and much of the content in the guide is already obsolete. Starcraft strategy guides are a perfect example of this- Blizzard tweaked the game so much over a year alone that the end result was very different than the original release version.

14

I tend to enjoy games where there are no hidden features, no secret rooms, and where you are not evaluated between levels on how many Easter Eggs you found. Halo is a perfect example of a game I enjoy, because there’s no score. It doesn’t tell you your accuracy percentage, your preferred weapon, your % of Secrets Discovered, or anything. You just play it. If you can’t beat the game you turn down the difficulty setting.

When I play online games (like City of Heroes) that have FAQs and build guides and stuff, I ignore them all. I’m not particularly obsessed with finding every last damn percentage of optimized damage-per-second or damage-per-mana and I don’t care if I’m not Uber Bestest Ever.

On the other hand, in single-player games like Morrowind and Baldur’s Gate, I have no qualms about consulting a FAQ or a guidebook or a list of cheat codes, though I don’t think I go overboard in giving myself a million bajillion gold and the +5 Slayer Of Everything Sword.

Okay, there was this one time I created a new physics model in Marathon that made the pistols super-powerful with a ton of knockback, but I’d already beaten the game a dozen times, so that was more like getting my full money’s worth out of it…

15

…okay…i’ll allow it.

16

I try to avoid them for the first run through, unless I get really badly stuck and get tired of wandering around trying to figure out what to do next (rarely happens more than once in a single game, only happens for about every other game).

For story/secret progression, that is. For other things I’ll consult it, sometimes.

For instance, I’m playing Dragon Quest VIII right now, and ocassionally consult a FAQ for alchemy recipes, since experimenting is incredibly frustrating and the recipes you can find are often absurdly confusing, And I check to see how close I am on skill progressions since the woman at Perigrin Quay is such a pain in the ass to use for that.

I feel no guilt when I have to consult a FAQ - if I’ve given it my best shot, I’ve got the moral victory, in my mind.

17

Shooters I tend to avoid a walkthrough/FAQ unless I’m really stuck.

RPG’s I’m more likely because I may want find out what quests I missed, or the best resolution, for games like “Knights of the Old Republic”

And then of course, when there’s a Boss who is really annoying me. Rarely use them for RTS’s.