How dare that person not plant some pies in there every now and then
Aren’t sweets like really bad for dogs?
Doesn’t mean they don’t love them!
This is the exact same instinct that drives us to run away from the obvious path first. “Clearly that’s where the final boss is. Let me just check what’s down this way first…”
“…oh no wait, there’s a point-of-no-return ledge here. Ok, so maybe that other way was actually where the secret was. I’ll go back…”
“…hmm, there’s another ledge on this side too. Let me just put in a save point and…ok, yeah, this one is the final boss. Let me reload and check the other path…”
“…ugh, it restarted me way back here? And respawned all the enemies when I reloaded? That’s frustrating…”
“…THEY BOTH. LED. TO THE SAME. EXACT. PLACE.”
This is why I have 120 hours in 40 hour games.
This, plus looking at a tiny little toe-sized piece of unexplored minimap on the opposite side of the world and thinking, “but what if there’s something important there?!”
This, plus dragging every scrap of loot back to town to sell, no matter how bad the value/weight ratio is.
Oh this one’s not me. For the first hour maybe but I get really picky really fast because it’s more efficient to just find a new place to take the best loot from. Especially in something like Skyrim where the goons just respawn forever.
I play games this way too, but I feel like the bigger factor in my playtime way higher than necessary is that I don’t want to miss any dialogue so I talk to every NPC until they repeat themselves. Most of the time that’s the second time you talk to them so I definitely get a lot out of that.
…during the bg3 character creation
Accidentally going the right way is so infuriating.
WTF I don’t come here to be attacked like this
It’s ok. We’re all here for each other.
No we’re not. You two are on your own.
I still remember being really mad I missed the “added effect” materia in the original FF7. You can never ever go back to that cave, so if you don’t turn around to pick it up you never get it. Pain.
Yeah… I felt that. Hard. I need to actively tell myself it’s not worth wasting so much time. Other times I just can’t be bothered and I mindlessly waste time checking everything cause it somehow feels like less work.
That’s why I find idea that in Ready Player One no gamer tried running a car backward offensive.
Its like, people rub against every square inch of geometry in say, Destiny 2, just to get out of bounds. It’s insane that no one just…tried cause they’re bored even.
I always remember back in world of warcraft, before you had flying mounts, there were spots you could spam jump on to slowly climb the barrier mountains and get up to the flat area they never meant for you to see. Good times.
Or old 3D platformers that didn’t disable collision on visual detail bits, so you could do skips or get out of bounds.
or getting under stormwind, haha. good times.
I was a frequent flyer in mod chat because I got stuck out of bounds a lot back in the day.
There’s a little explanation in that it costs to get in to the race. So naturally people wouldn’t want to waste the attempt, except there’s always someone that will pay the fee and try just about anything.
That might buy you a few days, but not the absurd amount of time in the story.
Donkey Kong Country did this to me forever
Yup.
Also at the end of the level. I remember 3 had balloons n stuff there.
Developer: here’s a fun little thing people will be excited to find!
Player: I will never trust anyone again
I love it, when Devs anticipate that players might break their levels and reward them for it.
E.g. when I played Supraland, I had it happen several times, that I managed to get to places that were obviously not intended to be reachable - you know the drill: Low poly terrain, low res textures, holes in the terrain, invisible walls everywhere,… You keep exploring that wasteland, carefully managing to not fall of, go around a corner and… There’s a chest there waiting for you.
Or some of the coin stacks in Super Mario Odyssey, that you’ll never really see or collect, until you do some crazy trick jumps or so to get on top of $building.
Every single waterfall I find I must check behind it, forever.
I still get irrationally upset when there isn’t. But, if a game gives me a waterfall find (or 2, or 3 like Avowed) it will rocket to the top of my list.
Lived in a place that had a koi pond and waterfall fountain years ago. I placed a small adventurer and treasure chest behind it. Wonder if it’s still there.
I really love that you did that. I hope some kid (or an adult that’s a kid at heart) found it! Imagine how stoked they were!
I hope so too!
Donkey Kong Country…
This is the one.
There is another.
deleted by creator
Replayed it the other week, soo many levels start this way
How about that roller coaster race level on DKC2? If you don’t go backwards as soon as the race starts, you miss that sweet speed boost.
Some of the skips are so fun, I love the cannon canyon level for it.
Credit to Tim Buckley for briefly becoming one of the most widely mocked people on the internet and spawning a meme that lives on to this day but just rolling with it and continuing with his dream of making webcomics.
Iirc correctly there was something about somewhat scamming his patreons or so. Ny memory is hazy but something about a drawing tablet?
Ah well if true then that sucks. I’ll have to look into this.
Also in this list: checking under stairs and behind waterfalls
The most damning game for me was Dragon Ball Z: Super Saiya Densetsu on SNES.
It was an rpg. A good like 10 hours into the game you’re wondering around on Planet Namek and the only way to progress in the story is to find Dende. Well you get pretty much no info or hints about where he is. Well all the houses and huts all have decorative pots in them, kind of like the kind you could smash in Zelda games. In DBZ, at no point was anything in any of these pots, and you couldn’t break them, or even get acknowledgement that pressing a button near one of these pots even “checks” the pot. All the pots seem to just be decor you can’t interact with.
Of course, that’s where Dende was. The only thing in any pot in the entire game was a kid that you were required to find in order to continue progressing, found half way into the game after you’ve decided already that the game won’t let you interact or check pots, and then making you check all the rest of the pots for the rest of the game because “they hid one thing in a pot, surely there could be another”.
Yup. The worst Dragonball game, that for some reason I sometimes replay. I get the feeling that there is a spirit of a good game in there, if it was almost completely reworked. Something like a fusion with Legendary Super Warriors.
Anyhow, the game is pretty funky and has obscure stuff to it. Escargo being needed for fusing a Super Piccolo (1.9 billion BP), getting an third wish with Porunga, or getting Goku to Earth before the battle of the Saiba Men commences.
Other than that annoyance with dende and the pots, I still really enjoyed the card aspect of the game and playing through it. Not the worst rpg I’ve played. Plus I was all about dbz way back then, and just glad I could find a translated rom of the game.
Super Saiya Densetsu is actually a pseudo-continuation of a Famicom series that used the card system. In some ways, the older games had neater battle aesthetics, particularly in how fighters weave between background and foreground. The video below covers the assorted card-RPG games.
TIL CAD is still going and it looks different.
I always try to figure out which direction the game wants me to go so I can try going the opposite way first.
I mean, we can’t risk advancing the game and leaving unexplored areas behind
It’s almost frustrating to play something with no intended path because it takes away my option to deliberately take the wrong one.
There usually is an intended path regardless. Signposting is definitely something that’s done even in open world.
New Vegas shining brightly in the distance…
It’s not always explained though. A lot of games use flames/torches/lights though. Vast majority of games follow the same tropes unfortunately.
In Sega Genesis/Mega Drive Aladdin in several levels in the beginning you have go forward a bit and then return back to the start to find the secret. Needles to say, it also messed me up for life.
Sonic on the game gear does this on the second boss
Bonus points for your appropriate username
And then the movie adaptation of Ready Player One acted like placing something before the starting line is some kind of super-sneaky hiding method.
