Video game lessons learned the hard way

Sid Meiers Civilization 5: (note I am a casual)

• Just because it's a joint declaration of war doesn't mean you aren't going to be called a warmonger by the person you've declared war alongside.

• Wonders are only useful if you're actually going to use the perks of those wonders.

• If a unit is in auto-explore mode, that will not stop them from wandering through city-state borders without permission.

• Get pottery. Get writing. Build Great Library.

Assassins Creed:

Always look before you leap.

Heh, I remember a time when I jumped off a ledge that I thought was a leap of faith point.

It was not.

Dragon Age: Inquisition: If you're going to fight a High Dragon, make sure that you bring a tank warrior, a mage with Barrier, and make sure that all of your party members are equipped with potions. Even if you're playing on easy mode. Those assholes are tough.

edited 20th Nov '14 8:41:59 PM by lrrose

Tales Of Symphonia:

• No matter how good you think you are, use an all-divide during the fight against Abyssion. Or you will die.
• Make sure you level up before fighting Marble. Or you will die.
• Make absolutely certain your body is ready before you fight any of the sword dancers. Or, again, you will die.

edited 21st Nov '14 8:25:32 AM by deviewhatserface

Tales of Symphonia:

• The bosses are generally much harder than the normal enemies in a dungeon. If you can't kill the monsters in 10s, you're not strong enough.
• Kvar will destroy you.

edited 21st Nov '14 9:23:17 AM by MarkIV

Super Mario 3D World: Never count on Toad when you're on a stage that requires precise jumps. Also, reserve a bell when you're on a new level. There ARE hidden collectibles that require a powerup that is not present in the levels.

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze: For aquatic levels, store a blue balloon.

Terraria

• Be vigilant for traps on both land and in the water, because underwater Explosives-rigged pressure plates are a thing.
• Plantera has a stupidly low leash range. Putter around after summoning her, or risk wasting a bulb when she despawns en route to the arena.
• Auto-target is not always helpful; sometimes it will decide to fixate on that tile four spaces away instead of the tile right under the mouse cursor. It also loves doing this when taking out said tile will dump a lake or column of silt/slush/sand into the tunnel. Bonus points if the lake is a lava lake.

Time Crisis 4

• Have backup strats for when one is surviving too well; special weapon ammo is actually pretty sparse when continues are a minimal factor and handgun vs. Terror Bites is slow and painful.

Dragon Age Inquisition: Just like in Skyrim, don't fuck with the bears or they will fuck you and your party up.

Super Smash Bros. for 3DS

• In All-Star Mode, damage is not what KOs you; surviving at 195% with Lil' Mac proves that much. Dumb mistakes, like being scrolled off Dream Land or rained off Distant Planet is.
• Stop dissing Lil' Mac or you're going to find yourself on the receiving end of a KO Uppercut. In general, underestimating players/characters will get you eating attacks you don't need to.
• If you've agreed to play customs with your friends, remember Lady Palutena is now completely unpredictable for the first minute of a match.
  • Mii Fighters always have customs even if customiation is turned off.

SSB4

• Don't go online with a character until you've proven you can beat three random level 9s on a regular basis with them.
• Knowing your skill level, though (and taken your broken R button into account), you're probably better off not going online at all.

edited 24th Nov '14 5:49:23 AM by Midna

Time Crisis: Project Titan

• Unlike other entries in the series, grenadier grenades move fast. Faster than bullets, in fact.

Time Crisis 3

• In Rescue mode, the Guncon 2's D-pad can move the scope, which is far preferable to the initial presented GUI where the light gun has to be aimed at tiny arrows with poor hit detection.

Metal Slug 3

• Firing diagonally isn't a thing for the player characters. However, the enemy has no such limitations.

Doom 3: BFG Edition

• Save your Sprint Meter for when you are in combat.
• Shotgun is king.
• Don't Panic.

edited 24th Nov '14 8:08:45 AM by jdj42

Some more Super Smash Bros 4 lessons:

• If you played Melee but skipped on Brawl, be prepared for some uncomfortable changes to a LOT of your characters. Especially Fox, Pikachu and Kirby.
• The joystick controls are going to give you some trouble too. Dunno why, but it's a whole lot harder to effectively and consistently point the joystick in the precise direction you want, resulting in a whole lot of unintentional side-B attacks and blunders.
• The hitboxes seem to be smaller than in Melee as well. In the past it was pretty easy to score hits with Young Link's sword and up-B since the actual hitbox was a lot bigger than what it appeared on screen, meaning wildly slashing when in a corner often worked. But now you actually have to make sure a part of the enemy's body connects to the blade, or else you just wasted the attack and left yourself open.
• The rate of damage inflicted seems to be slightly less now. But the stages have been made smaller in general, too, meaning there's less room to run or hiding spots to run away from your enemies.
• The Smash Orbs are hella-hard to catch, and you'll end up leaving yourself open to attack if you try to focus purely on chasing them while they float in the air.

TELEGLITCH: DIE MORE EDITION

• Shit's hard.

• Dying is oftentimes inevitable, so don't feel too bad when you lose.

• Ammo is FINITE. Missing every so often is inevitable, however certain guns should only be used in certain situations, especially AP weaponry, as running out of AP ammo can happen, and will kill you!

• Being a nightmarish combination of nails and high explosives in a can, the cangun is capable of liquifying an entire horde of weak enemies, and severely injuring squads of tougher, more armored ones too. Use them responsibly and only in ideal situations, however, as they deal damage to you too!

• The Panzerfaust and Panzerfaust AP are weapons that should ONLY be used in boss battles, as they're specifically made to deal heavy damage against single targets. If you want a crowd control weapon, go make a cangun.

• EVERYTHING is valuable in this game, so carry everything you can— anything you leave behind when you leave a level is gone!

• Not all weapon upgrades are in fact upgrades. The autopistol, while able to fire much faster, is an aiming and ammo conservation nightmare, while things like the X2 shotgun is vastly more accurate and does phenomenal damage against unarmored opponents.

• Every enemy in the game— barring ONE— has a unique sound they make either passively or when moving, so use your fucking ears!

• Drones are the one enemy that can move around silently, and use a very high damage armor piercing weapon on top of having thick armor. Thankfully, their weapon has a rather short range and the Drones themselves don't dodge at all, so wail on them with your MG-HV!

• A Squids' laser can kill you from full health in a matter of moments, however it requires a moment to charge up. Use this time to dodge, get behind something, shoot, or run out of it's aiming range.

edited 24th Nov '14 12:22:56 PM by shadowdimentio

General: never use the uplay launcher.

General: Don't buy from Ubisoft until they fix Uplay.

General: Don't buy from Ubisoft.

Mercenaries 2: World in Flames Air strikes and support fire all follow Murphy's real life examples.

Supporting fire falls short and theirs will always be more accurate.

Double check who you are requesting support from. This is the difference in using up fuel stores and a purchased or found strike vs using up fuel, a strike, and money. For example use the bog standard smoke marker bomb strike instead of the rocket strike unless you have to have the area flattened.

If there is something you don't want killed or blown up chances are very good that is exactly what will happen to it.

I think generally, don't use anything that goes boom if there's anything in a half-mile radius that you don't want to go boom. Well okay, maybe just airstrikes and C-4.

Also, don't trust iron sights; I'm pretty sure aiming down the sights actually makes guns less accurate in that somehow. Also also, yes, you can totally dodge and outrun incoming bullets.

Valkyria Chronicles II:

• Stop trying to take on escort missions the moment they show up. You'll be lucky to scrape by a C rank. There are way too many concealed Lancers and AT Turrets for you to try and rush these maps. Save it for when you can assign lieutenants for bonus CP, and have a bunch of Commandos to torch anyone trying to crouch tank you.
• No, you can't take on the Dirk or Baldren in the first maps you encounter them, on your first try. Stop trying.
• Commander bosses like the above tend to panic and flee if they trigger a mine. Don't count on them. If the explosion knocks them close to an ally, they WILL attack before retreating.
• If you get a heavy tank for parking on your base to tank an army coming to capture it, remember that you can't start the map with the tank actually on the base. If it costs 3 CP to move, then that's 3 CP you won't get on the first turn.
• No vehicle comes with Ice Break AND Off Road. So if you use the Utility APC on a snow map to find those little shortcuts, keep in mind that it has a much shorter travel distance on the map.
• APC or Heat Suppression. Pick one. You don't need both.
• Fencers won't knock a crawling enemy flying. So if a Mortarer is on the ground, he can't be cleaned up by a sniper if your fencer can't finish the job.
• Mortarers have a minimum range. If a Shocktrooper or Gunner gets them alone, Retreat is the only option.
• Just because you're desperate to upgrade a class, don't immediately upgrade them. You want to grab the third class potential first, and make sure you don't end up running out of whatever class you're promoting from (Snipers are good, but you still need Scouts for quick reinforcements).

Command And Conquer Tiberian Sun:

• Don't place anything that fires explosives on a ballistic trajectory underneath a bridge. Dropping a bridge on your own units is not good.
• Just because an unit is piloted doesn't mean it's intelligent enough to know that touching a Firestorm barrier is instant death.

An extension to that: don't trust the AI of your harvesters for anything. ever. Unless you enjoy watching them cross half the map trying to pick at a small little nibble of Tiberium on the edge of a cliffline overlooking your base, versus the one they could've reach within a minute.

Dragon Age: Inquisition: Riding a hart may sound cool and in character for an elf, but the sounds the hart makes will force you to reconsider.

Super Smash Bros for Wii U. When fighting Master Fortress, when finding the fourth... thing,... back track. Don't go down, you are going to die.