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.
When I first played I didn’t know what Pokemon centers were. Everytime I needed to heal I ran all the way back to Mom’s house in palette town
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.
Ah yes, the transition point when video games moved to assuming people have a mouse. A similar thing happened to a lot of people when games assumed you have a soundcard.
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!
In totk I wanted to explore as early as possible so I didn’t know the glider was still in the game until I got to a tower without it. I just figured with all the new travel options they figured it wasn’t needed anymore
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.
Bloodborne… totally ignored that the gun is there to parry attacks and stun enemies on my first playthrough attempt
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.
Jedi: Fallen Order
First whole play through on Jedi Master (hard) difficulty and didn’t collect a single extra stim so just had the two you start with
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…
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.
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.
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.
Path of exile. Had no idea about builds and tried to just play casually lol
2nd character went a lot more smoothly
Honestly, by now I’ve come to hate games where you can’t figure out how to play them from the game itself. It seems like nowadays you can’t play without a whole community figuring out what’s currently the meta way to play.
I am pretty sure in Witcher 3 I missed like half of the combat features - flasks, signs, rolling lol.
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.
That combat system is dope once you get like 25 hours in lol
It’s extremely easy to entirely not understand a huge amount about that game because it outright doesn’t tell you most things, at least not very well
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).
