Video game lessons learned the hard way

Age Of Empires III: That redoubt cannon on the road to Yorktown can stand up to a lot more punishment than your average falconet.

Playing Phantasy Star Online is NOT like riding a bike. #soconfused

Dead Or Alive:

• Admiring the Jiggle Physics mid-battle will get you beat up.
• Learn to counter.
• People will fall for the same trick twice, but not three times.
• Seriously, ogle boobs when you aren't fighting for your life.

Contra:

• The lives they give you at the start are insufficient. Get more. Konami code, game genie, options, Level Grinding, whatever. Three is not enough.
• Spread Shot was only overpowered in the first ones. It won't save your life in Hard Corps Uprising.
• Sayuri is overpowered, but she is not invincible and some sections will still give her hell.
• Sheena's Ax Laser has the piercing effect of a laser, the homing effect of the homers and fires in a spread pattern. It's even more effective than it sounds. Don't lose it.
• Choosing "Fight till the end" isn't always the best choice, oddly enough.
• The "Peashooter" is better in some games than others.

Castlevania:

• If you want 100% map completion, you are going to have to freaking work for it.
• Throwing a chariot wheel at your opponent is not as effective as throwing a horse.
• Luck-boosting items are better than they sound.
• Do not try to defeat an Iron Golem conventionally in Aria Of Sorrow.
• Sometimes the Dagger really is just useless.
• That soul or item you want just isn't going to drop.

Didn't find the Iron Golem that hard. Just a lot of tedious work.

Modern warfare 3: The RPG is a blast to use. But always be aware of teammates crowding your shot.

It has 9999 HP and takes 1 damage from all attacks. I managed to do 2 with the Balore Soul. Just. Use. The. Killer. Mantle.

edited 13th Aug '12 12:53:46 AM by ShirowShirow

Forza 4: The hired driver is CRAP.

The King Of Fighters '94:

• Don't mash the stronger attacks frantically if you're under pressure. Unless you want to get your foot driven in you.
• Bait your opponent into being an idiot by feinting your charge up.
• Rugal is a fucking asshole.

Tribes Ascend:

• Gravity is one mean mother. (Thank God everyone was as unskilled as I am and I'm sort of used to games with bullet travel)

Skullgirls:

• Two characters are often better than one.
• Keep an eye on the clock and who is the current leader in the match. Make sure that leader is you when time runs out.

Just Cause 2 - remember to aim for the comcrete, not the water if you're going to avoid terminal velocity death by grapplegunning the ground and smacking into the ground slightly faster.

Alien Soldier:

• YOU HAVE LIMITED AMMO. This isn't... Every other 2D shooter ever.
• You get a new password after every boss.
• You'll be seeing the "Game over" screen a lot.
• Master those controls. They shoved a lot of utility into those three buttons.
• Supereasy is not, in fact, super easy. It is superhard. Superhard is just worse is all.

Kerbal space program- FIRST THING YOU DO is put a parachute on. YOU WILL FORGET otherwise.

Heard it from Nerd Cubed. Didn't listen. My kerbals died in an other-wise perfect flight.

Age Of Empires III:

• The battle at the Lake of the Moon only requires you to destroy the Fountain of Youth, not defeat the Circle of Ossus as well. This is because their stronghold is much too well defended for your Fortress Age ass to assault. Stick to defense.
• The fixed gun has a minimum range, and the Circle's ships know this.
• When assaulting the enemy alongside computer allies, don't just smash one of their trading posts and plan to put yours up after the dust settles unless you want an ally swiping the place in the meantime. Bring your explorer along.
• Given the choice between hitting the Colonial Age a little bit earlier and spending Food on extra villagers, make the villagers. You may be able to run light at the moment, but you'll feel the strain when you can't make any more while aging up.
• Don't build your defensive structures until you've figured out how much of the map you can gobble up.
• That said, don't put them all on the border. Soldiers will still manage to sneak past and cause trouble at your base.
• When playing as Japan, your daimyo is neither a waste of a card nor Too Awesome to Use.
• Foreign relations at the Consulate are not like age-up politicians: you can reap the benefits of each in turn.
• Until the late game, you can never have enough Wood.

Ultimate Marvel Versus Capcom 3:

• Don't go straight into online from five minutes of training.
• They may have a button dedicated to them, but air combos aren't as big here as they were in MVC 2.
• Spider-Man's Web Ball doesn't actually hurt the enemy.
• Yes, Phoenix Wright is awesome, but he's Difficult, but Awesome. Emphasis on difficult.
• There are no Combo Breaker moves. Play more defensively than usual.

That first rule should apply to every game and its prequel.

Shogun II Total War: Building up your economy to support an army is all very well, but at some point, you have to, you know, remember to build an army.

edited 14th Aug '12 11:45:10 AM by GameChainsaw

Soul Calibur 5: The AI for Cervantes is a cowardly, movespamming bitch. Make sure you block a lot when you fight him.

Since I've just completed Age Of Mythology on Titan (Very Hard) difficulty, some lessons from that:

• Under no circumstances whatsoever can you afford to play defensively. The AI outproduces you something awful, so you have to be proactive and offensive. You won't win if you just rebuild your defences every time an attack withers them away - the next one will only do the same, and eventually your resources will run out.
• When you absolutely have to defend, go with the "lots of walls with multiple fortresses behind them providing covering fire" approach with a couple of cavalry on hand for taking out siege engines.
• Walls without fortresses behind them will die in seconds to anything siege.
• The enemy employs siege extensively as of mission 3, and never lets up thereafter.
• The AI tends not to rebuild anything except fortresses, town centres, resource dropoff points and docks. Exploit this to your advantage - a few siege engines rampaging in the enemy's base while all their units are attacking you can really take the sting out of their next attack. Take advantage of their going all in every time - if your defences are adequate, you can spare a few units to attack in the meantime.
• Never go to all out destroy the enemy on Titan. Few missions require it, and few are even made easier by doing so anyway. Exceptions are those to destroy the giants, and the mission to reach the well (since you have to go through the enemy base anyway). Otherwise - only destroy what you have to, and go for the objective. This is essential in missions in which Titan mode really screws with you, like chopping down the Tamarisk tree (the gimmick, aside from havng a few Norsemen, is that you have hardly any resources. Titan takes away most of the few you do have).
• The AI is smart enough to counter your unit choices - do not ever focus only one unit, or you will die. This is less important in the Norse campaign (Throwing Axemen can beat cavalry at range in numbers) but cannot be said often enough about the Egyptian campaign (almost every Egyptian unit suffers from Crippling Over Specialisation, and they do not have a general-purpose unit like the Hoplite or Ulfsark).
• If you don't mind Rules Lawyering, you can wreak havoc with event triggers, particularly in the Norse campaign. Great example - the mission where you have to defend the old mining town. If you don't mind holding off for a while, you can mine out all the resources in the area, and get all your classical age upgrades before you start - which, since you're Thor, means Mythic Age armory upgrades.
• Wall off your entire base, and the enemy will knock it down. Leave one entrance and fortify it to Hell with everything except walls - and the AI will walk right into it and die. The above mission is a great way to use this to survive longer than 5 minutes.
• Myth units are fantastically strong - but use them in support, rather than replacement, of your human units. Melee units like Sphynxes, Scorpion Men and Avengers do their best work when fighting foes distracted by much cheaper, expendable humans. Ranged ones like the Crocodopolis Ra should be shielded from harm by a wave of meat shields and never allowed to suffer a scratch - while massacring the enemy in their dozen.
• Whatever your unit choice in the Egyptian campaign, Chariot Archers are your only reliable anti-priest unit. Crocodopolis Ra hordes are very useful, but will die fast unless protected by the archers. Bear in mind, due to the cost, the AI employs literally hundreds of priests in any given mission, more if you use myth units. Weak as they are, they will still beat up your barracks units if given the chance.
• Do not over-rely on your campaign heroes; in Titan, they're not much good. In easy, however, they win you most missions on their own.
• Stop wishing you were playing on Easy mode - you wanted a challenge, you bloody well got one!
• In Egypt, do not even think about attempting any naval engagement without Leviathans on yourside. Transports have balsa wood for armour, and naval myth units are overpowered to Hell in vanilla AOM.
• In Greece, there is more to your strategy than "horde resources until you can worshup Hephaestus and get a Plenty Vault. At least, there is if you want to stay alive more than 10 minutes.
• Norse myth units that aren't giants, Battle Boars or Fenris Wolves suck (you need Valkyries for healing, but they can't fight for shit) so don't bother. The wolves will give you stupid amounts of trouble when used by the opposition, but can really bother them when you use them in sufficient numbers - they're ridiculously cheap for a mythic age myth unit.

Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne: Save. Yes, really. Even if you just are going to do some demon fusion first.

Dark Souls:

• Unlike Demon's Souls, you are actually expected to defeat the boss at the end of the tutorial.
• Archery is tedious and unfun.
• At least as pyromancer, you get the ability to cast spells near the end of the tutorial. Trying to find a way before that is pointless.
• Parrying and countering is harder than in Demon's Souls.

Skyrim: Death hounds are really dangerous at level 4, especially if you're playing a unarmed fighter.

edited 15th Aug '12 2:26:51 AM by ABNDT

Death hounds? Are they from Dawnguard, or what?

Yep. Nasty bite, and it comes with extra cold damage.

• Speccing as an unarmed fighter, even an optimized one, isn't worth the effort.
• If you're a vampire and you don't yet have significant bonuses to regeneration and fire or magic resistance, regular feeding is more important than maxed-out vampire powers. This goes double at low levels.

edited 16th Aug '12 4:17:47 AM by ABNDT

Continued playing FFVI/III. stayed up all night. Wrote about it.

http://lalalei2001.deviantart.com/journal/Final-Fantasy-VI-III-Lessons-Learned-321482111