When I first started playing games, there was no internet. You’d occasionally see cluebooks for sale, but they were few and far between. If you got stuck, and no one you knew had the answer, you were just plain screwed. There were several games I never finished because I could never come up with an answer to some obscure riddle or puzzle (some of the Wizardry series comes to mind).
Now, damn near every game, even indie ones, have a Gamefaqs page. I usually at least glance through the walkthrough to make sure I don’t miss secrets. I’m going to try to stop doing this, and only using gamefaqs when I’m absolutely, horribly stuck. I think without using gamefaqs I can find around 70-80% of the secrets and cool stuff.
How do you play? I’m curious to hear how other people handle having guides readily available that give you information on the best gear, techniques, secrets, etc. Eschew walkthroughs and guides altogether? Play through on your own once, then a second time with a walkthrough to get everything? Walkthrough on first play? Walkthrough only when you get stuck?
In general, I use walkthroughs when I’m feeling frustrated. Following someone else’s steps in order makes for really dull games, and I seldom replay games, but if I’m frustrated, I’ll look at a walkthrough till it gives me new inspiration.
I’ll sometimes read tips and tricks for games that I’m not frustrated on yet–I play a lot of casual games–and it can be handy to know how hard it is to accumulated more hints in a hidden object game, or other broad stroke strategy bits which aren’t always obvious on first play-through but which can affect my overall enjoyment of the game.
Ha! I use them constantly. I really do like finding everything in a game I like, plus the tips and tricks help. And I still have a lot of fun, even if I follow their steps. And I don’t buy a game, at all, unless I think there is a reasonable chance of replay value.
I use a walkthrough when the game is frustrating me with whatever arbitrary thing I need to discover to continue. Before giving up on the game entirely, I’ll consult a walkthrough. Usually the answer makes sense, but I’ll be glad when games are more open-ended with more flexibility in how you accomplish goals.
Canned quicktime pattern boss fights (e.g. Zelda, Metroid Prime, Res Evil).
They are inevitably repetitive, annoying, and unintuitive, and I’ve grown tired of dying and reloading a million times while I’m forced to trial-and-error my way through some stupid boss pattern.
Now, I simply see another :rolleyes: boss fight :rolleyes: and head straight to a walkthrough to lookup up the A A B C A left A shoot high shoot low B A nonsense.
I used a walkthrough for Doom after I had been all through it. It was fun going through and seeing the things I didn’t find.
I had one other game that was quite fun that I got a walkthrough for, but I can’t recall what it was called. It never made it big. It was original and fun, but the tech was antiquated by the time it was released.
I use them when a game has too many non-intuitive puzzles. Usually these are the types where you have to “figure out” that you need to use item X at location Y on item Z. Sometimes these puzzles have sufficient clues to figure out, but when they don’t I don’t feel bad using a walkthrough.
I especially like walkthoughs that mask spoilers and try to answer the specific problem you are stuck on, so as to not spoil the rest of the game. The Myst series has online resources that hide answers behind links and give hints in incremental degrees of helpfulness. I like these the most because often when I’m stuck, just telling me the general vicinity of where I need to be is enough. I hate having to search the entire game world for that one clicky spot.
Normally I can last about two weeks stuck in a game like Myst before I go to a walk through. I use the walk through when I’m about to quit from frustration. Half the time I found it was something I already tried, but the program is fickle on that puzzle and hard to trigger.
On my first playthrough I try to avoid walkthroughs as much as possible (unless I get absolutely stuck), on second and subsequent playthroughs where I’m trying to 100% the game or try out unconventional things, I’ll use them. I liked it the game enough, I try to read and learn as much as I can about it.
To expand on what I posted earlier, I like to experience a game, not solve puzzles. If I’m stuck much longer than 20 or 30 minutes I’ll consult a walkthrough, or quit playing the game entirely.
I use walkthroughs so I don’t miss secrets. They’re like a checklist. I don’t want to play the game all over to discover I needed to pick the blue button in level one so I don’t get my ass kicked in level 52.
Also, a good video game is going to give me hours and hours of gaming pleasure even knowing what I’m supposed to do. Not knowing what to do and having to figure it all out on my own would add more hours to the game that I don’t usually have. In the Metroid Prime games, there were plenty of boss battles where it didn’t much matter if you read the faq, you still have to master the skills and do it 50 times 'til you beat it.
Any Japanese RPG. Those things are a vicious joke these days, but are still worth whiling away time on. The big problem is that the game is virtually unplayable without a walkthrough, because once you pass something by, or fail to uncover some ridiculously complex secret, you’ve knee-capped yourself.
I have to generally agree. Golden Sun, one of my favorite RPGs, I generally played without a walkthrough, but getting the infinity plus one summon without a guild is an exercise in torture, oddly enough the infinity plus one SWORD is just a nondescript chest (iirc it MAY have been guarded by a block puzzle) so anyone meticulous enough (and fans of JRPGs usually are) will get it.
To get the summon you have to collect all the Djinn, now many of them fall into “easy to find, tricky to get to” which is fine, but a select few require you to go to various nondescript forests on desolate parts of the OVERWORLD (which are plentiful and completely empty 99% of the time) and wait for a random encounter. Lovely.
Edit: I usually check guides for most games for anything missable, the dungeon/area it’s in and when it becomes “lost forever.” If I can’t figure out how to get in I usually won’t check it right away because I usually assume you have to come back for it, but if the point is coming up and I haven’t made any headway I’ll check back. Unfortunately most online guides aren’t structured so nicely, and the dedicated ones lack context, so I’m often stuck being walked through the whole dungeon just trying to find a single item. I also tend to check for non-missable but mostly integral powerups, such as the shine sprites and super blocks in the Paper Mario series.
Yes, when I get stuck. How long I keep trying before reading a Walkthrough depends on my suspicion of the problem being or not a bug/mistranslation/ludicrous random requirement.
If I enjoyed the game, I might read a walkthrough to find out what interesting things I might have missed.
I don’t like much not finding stuff by myself, on the overall.
When I get stuck and/or frustrated and can’t get past the particular point in the game or if I get hopelessly lost in a game and can’t find where I am supposed to go next.
I am one of the elitest snobs that disdains walkthrus as crutches for the enfeebled.
That being said, I found them necessary a few times while playing Fallout 3 because of the sandbox nature of the game. It is possible to break quests before you are aware of them just by wandering around. I had to check before I spent hours trying to complete a task that I had already closed off to myself.
Alms for the poor m’lord?