Video game lessons learned the hard way

Dragon Age Inquisition

Get the console version, you fucking dummy.

Nethack: Be careful when using unidentified or strange gear you've never seen before.

Spelunky: Don't rush headlong to your death! Check the height of drops.

One Way Heroics: Plan ahead, even if only a little. It sucks to get trapped in a dead end.

XCOM Enemy Within: Stick together team, don't rush headlong into unknown ground without cloaking up first.

Terraria: Grappling Hooks save lives! Tether up if knockback could become a problem.

Terraria

• The Pumpkin and Frost Moons' lack of forethought just isn't worth dealing with.DPS race aside, the engine just plain has issues dealing with that many mobs existing in the world to the point that it slows down PCs that lap its minimum requirements fifty times over. Not to mention that it easily rams the game's 400-item cap, which may arbitrarily start despawning dead mediumcore characters' items. On that same vein, this also makes mediumcore and hardcore not worth dealing with either.

Re: Tiberian Sun: Been a long time since I played, so lemme ask: does the harvester AI in that one still try to drive straight through an enemy base to get to said tiberium? I recall encountering that 'pleasant' surprise in the original and Red Alert.

That, and a whole bunch of other stuff. From the looks of it, the Harvesters generally try to go after the nearest source of Tiberium using the refinery as the point of origin. Problem is, it doesn't take into the account the obstacles in the way, be it water, rocky obstructions, destroyed bridges, the proximity of enemies, or as in my previous example, clifflines. It also had some odd issues with the Fog of War; sometimes it could sense the Tiberium through the fog, other times it would stop collecting until you found a new field and gave it orders to begin harvesting again.

The Harvester AI in Red Alert 2 was fortunately much better, avoiding enemy concentrations, avoiding extremely long trips, and were capable auto-repairing themselves. It made them better at choosing fields at short to medium ranges, but long range harvests were still very much hit-or-miss in terms of intelligence.

Ah, okay, thanks for clearing that up. I played the original, Red Alert and Red Alert 2 enough to remember the AI being as you stated it, but for whatever reason, I was always kind of iffy on Tiberian Sun. It's the one game in the series where I haven't felt inclined to go back and either do the campaign(s) again or throw around a handful of skirmishes (not counting C&C4 for reasons, but that's a different can of worms I won't get into).

My personal 'favourite' situation that made me monitor my harvesters more closely is the ones in the original and Red Alert would get stuck against each other trying to go opposite directions on a bridge and BSoD. "Wait, why am I suddenly broke?" is a pretty rude wake-up call. The whole driving straight through an enemy base thing is a very close second, though.

edited 26th Nov '14 9:08:16 AM by KuroiTsubasaTenshi

Mirror's Edge:

• Everything that is red is not a good idea to jump on/at.
• They didn't debug those holey metal sheet things properly; be wary of them, and only hit jump, not up.
• The hint system is a fickle friend. This is a puzzle game; use your noggin.
• Disarming feels harder than it is.
• So, you've beaten the story and are thinking, Well, now what? That's why you don't stay up until quarter to six playing a new game, idjit; you burn through it too fast. Hell, you already knew from reviews that they didn't manage to pack all that much in there.

Far Cry 4 - never assume any animal is friendly. Even animals that do not have the claws and teeth symbol to indicate that they are predators enjoy the taste of human flesh. Especially Yaks, Rhinos and Wild Boars. All of them behave like they do in real life, only with the intensity of their hatred of mankind dialled all the way up to eleven. Remember, Wild Boars are pigs that inspired their own type of spear to be used against them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boar_spear

Because normal spears when used against them in self-defence or hunting were ineffective.

Kill everything that's animal shape on sight, but be smart. For example, don't shoot beehives if you want to explore an area they are in - throw Molotov cocktails at them or douse them with fire from your Flamethrowers. Bullets just anger them.

Far Cry 4

• Small arms fire? Honey Badger don't care. Honey Badger don't give a shit. Honey Badger jumps up and latches onto your arm because he's a hungry little fuck.

edited 26th Nov '14 9:18:44 PM by Dragon573

I feel like we can shorten this to "Be careful."

So many people die from just charging ahead and not planning every step they take.

Part of the reason I stopped playing Nethack. It's not as much fun when you're just messing about.

That's how Honey Badgers act in Far Cry 4? In real life, they go for the nuts.

Nah, they do that too, if they get the drop on you. What makes them so annoying is that the sound they make sounds like a chicken, or some other species of wildfowl, not the ferocious bastards that they actually are. So you think that they are a chicken or a wildfowl, until they start eating you.

Dragon Age Inquisition:

• Just because the Hinterlands are the starting area doesn't mean you can handle any encounter you face right off the bat.
• Inquisition perks that give you shipments of crafting materials are a trap.
• So are the ones that give you schematics. The best schematics are either found or bought.
• Running away is (almost) always an option.
• Not all enemies of a certain level are created equal. Especially dragons.
• A lot of status effects you'd really want to use on high-level threats won't work on them.
• Don't assume that your fight won't attract attention from nearby, currently passive beasties.
• If you hold a quest item hostage in exchange for answers, you might just lose the quest entirely.
• A warrior who can't generate guard is a bad warrior.

Endless Legend:

• Don't try to go for a quest victory if you play on a large map. You have to destroy or capture a territory that is guaranteed to have an enemy capital in it, but if the map is too large you might never find the place before someone wins the game.

Heh, that first one sounds like my experience with Baldur's Gate. Right after leaving Candlekeep, I was all, "I should explore a bit and get a handle on the situation. If nothing else, I should be able to run if I get ganged up on by stuff." I then proceeded to walk around a tree, getting me too close to a bear, which aggroed, ran up and one-shot crit my Paladin main character. Cue game over and an, "Oh." >.>

Don't Starve:

• Lightning Rods are your friends.
• Don't plant your farms too close together.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor: Trying to run from a rampaging Caragor is more trouble than it's worth early on in the game, as they can still track you down even when you're running at full speed. If you see one, either stand and fight, or lure it into the path of some Uruks and let them deal with it.

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity

• Regular A-button attacks have been nerfed to the point of being near-useless. Use them only as a last resort.
• Kilionea Road represents a major Difficulty Spike. You can't take any party members other than yourself and your partner along, an army of Pansears show up to burn away your consumables with Incinerate, Palpitoads can confuse you with Supersonic and hit you regardless of your location in the room with Uproar, there are no Kecleon Shops along the way, Monster Houses start appearing... Basically there's a good reason why you're asked twice if you want to shove off.

edited 28th Nov '14 10:13:10 PM by Midna

Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time

• This game is a lot more fond of sending large waves of Zombies your way... early on, when you have barely enough firepower in the first place. Your old strategies from the first game likely won't carry over here.
• Buccaneer Zombies can swing down lanes where there's a plank, and not just the ones where there isn't one.

Total War: Rome II

• Hey, remember you used to probe your chances then reload if it goes badly? Guess what, you're playing an online campaign right now and Ptolemy is now about to run your arse into the ground because you stupidly risked your army. Good job chief.

Bravely Default: have everyone Brave to the max and you've pretty much broken every Random Encounter ever.

Keep doing that against bosses beyond the earlygame, and you're going to get pwned. (currently waiting to re-challenge the Dragon and get the Rainbow Thread)

General: Don't forget the name of the online store that you bought a particular game from, or else you could be spending hours checking through emails and websites trying to find out where you got it from.

Something I've learned about that is to create a folder in the inbox specifically for online transactions and other important e-mails.

I'm going to start doing that.

Luckily I found the game I was after, and that way I don't have to pay again to get the thing from another server.

Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth:

• The bit in the character descriptions about which row they work best in only takes their weapons into account, not their attributes or skillset. Put Minato or Mitsuru in the front row (like their descriptions recommend), and they're pretty much going to get wrecked. Put Aigis in the back row (ditto), and her stupidly high defense is pretty much going to waste.
• Early on, at least, Fuuka really is a better Battle Navigator than Rise. Healing Breeze is cheap and saves you a lot of SP or items that would be needed for healing.
• Don't get so attached to your Personas that you can't fuse them. If you really want to have a certain set of skills on multiple fusions, well, resummoning them from the Compendium isn't THAT expensive compared to how much you haul in from the labyrinth! Which leads to...
• UPDATE YOUR COMPENDIUM before you start fusing!

edited 1st Dec '14 5:59:14 AM by Reflextion