Games

When I was a kid, I used to "play" Operation Flashpoint. I remember being too dumb to realise that the mouse was used to move the camera so it was basically me moving around with arrow keys and strafing to see a little to the left and right.

I started playing Pokémon Red before I even knew how to read. I had no idea how to save and just assumed I would find a save point eventually like a bunch of other games. I have no idea how many times I dejectedly had to turn off the GameBoy halfway through Mt. Moon. I was convinced the save spot had to be on the other side.

In LOZ: Breath of the Wild, I didn't think to check if you could use the Sheikah Slate on Eventide Isle (where they take away all your items and clothes). I'm proud to say I beat that challenge with ZERO tools!

Not a game but some of the stories here remind me of the time I discovered I could draw stuff on the screen with Omicron Basic on my Atari ST and I painstakingly entered every square by hand dozens of times to make squares move across the screen...until days later I discovered the magic of the for loop. I must have been maybe 10 or so at the time.

As an 8 year old without much of a guide at all, I was a very proud Magician on MapleStory... one who dealt violence with her trusty magic wands and staves... physically.

I didn't understand what skills and hotkeys were until several years down the line when reading comprehension and life experience improved.

One of the first computer games I've ever played is StarCraft. For context, the game is about human battle with aliens similar to Starship Troopers. The game story has three acts, each from different point of views. It is supposed to start from human pov, and then alien pov, and lastly another alien species. However due to English being my second language, I somehow started with the alien pov first. So my first impression of the game is that I play as a disgusting xenomorph alien species battling mankind. It's not until later that I realized I missed an entire human chapter of the game.

Mario. Was going left the whole time.

This is fairly recent, but I was playing through a good chunk of Zelda TotK after the training area without the glider. I thought going towards the castle was supposed to be towards the end, so I wound up crawling up the great plateau to the old temple of time hoping to find it.

I was trying to play without spoilers, but luckily a friend set me in the right direction

I still don't understand how to play XCOM correctly and I have at least 50 hours in it. Just losing over and over again. Even Crusader Kings I win occasionally.

When I first got Pokémon Red, as a kid, I didn't know you were meant to use Flash to see in I think it was Mt.Moon? I just kept wandering around in the dark thinking it's a puzzle or something. Didn't find out about Flash until I think my third play through, when someone told me or I read it in a guide (I forget which).

As a stupid 7/8 year old I couldn't figure out how to catch pokemon on red/blue. I just figured that if I kept playing the game I'd eventually acquire pokemon(similar to the anime). I wound up playing the entire game with a charizard and nothing else.

It was brutal. Imagine my surprise when my friend showed me his team of 6 pokemon.

I didn't realize metal gear rising had a block/parry mechanic. The tutorial talks about countering enemy blows with your own barrage of attacks so I figured I just had to stagger them and steal health regularly. Monsoon is the first fight with no minions to heal off of, so I got stuck and finally checked online.

I played Valhiem early in its launch for like two weeks on my own server. Once I finally got my friends to join they were dismayed as to why I had dozens of broken copper pick axes in storage boxes.

I had no idea you could repair things and kept mining barely more copper than was needed to make a copper pickaxe.

The game got a lot easier after that.

Bloodborne.. totally ignored that the gun is there to parry attacks and stun enemies on my first playthrough attempt

I beat the original dark souls without realizing there were different weight thresholds for rolling. I fat rolled the entire game. Also didn't realize boosting vigor was important for hp. I did 99% strength/stamina and only as much dex as required to weild my weapons.

I am pretty sure in Witcher 3 I missed like half of the combat features - flasks, signs, rolling lol.

Played far too much of Prey before realizing you can boost in zero G. I was wondering why people praised those sections so much when they were agonizingly slow.

Not me, but a friend's mom, this was back in 97-98 and I had been playing the Diablo demo for hours and knew the mechanics quite good and the two first levels.

So I visited my friend and his mom had bought the game and was playing a lot, and she was quite deep down, I think like 15 levels down.. that's when I asked why she hasn't placed here last level up points.... Turns out, she hadn't placed any point at all 😱🤔🤣.

I changed my control scheme in rocket league like 1k hours in. Really needed the ability to boost while jumping among other things. It was a totally brutal transition, but I'm glad I did it.

I played through a fair amount of Sniper Elite 2 before a friend saw some of my gameplay footage and was like "Damn dude, you don't even zoom your scope in?"

Turns out I'm just bad at reading instructions...

Xenoblade Chronicles 2. I was almost done with the game before I realized you leveled up in camps and inns. Game went from really hard to pushover easy in 5 minutes.

I played Planetside 2 without realizing you can zoom scopes in and out.