Bad Gaming Habits
This week, I’d like to take a look at some bad gaming habits of mine. I think the manner in which we play speaks volumes for the kinds of people we are. Bizarrely, many of the habits I have when I game, are not necessarily habits I exhibit in real life. Maybe I’m hiding something? Maybe I’m repressed?
Either way, I suspect I’m not alone in the way I often approach gaming. Perhaps you have completely different quirks? If you do and, like me, you feel no shame – then why not share them with the whole world in the comments section below.
HOARDING
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve reached the end of a JRPG with an insane amount of unused items – which invariably turn out to be MP regeneration potions or crafting materials necessary to create items I’ve long since given up on creating.
I stock ammo like I’m waiting for the zombie apocalypse.
Usually, by the time I get to the end game bosses, I have enough items in my inventory to crush them to death through the sheer weight of my bulging pockets alone.
If I was a like this in real life, I could look after an entire nation with all my accumulated crap when armageddon finally hits. Oddly though, I’m NOT like this in real life. I’m a generally neat and tidy – throw-stuff-away-for-the-sake-of-my-own-sanity kind of guy.
Why this doesn’t extend to videogames is a question for my therapist when he finally cancels my restraining order.
THE EARLY GRIND
I’ve played a lot of JRPG’s – and I have this ‘really good’ system where, on beginning my adventure, I spend a lot of time going back and forth in each area, doing it over and over again. I like to call it the ‘progressive grind’ where I spend just a little bit longer – in each early area grinding for pitiful XP before I move on.
Only problem is, sometimes I just can’t bring myself to move on, like I’m stuck in some weird loop of endless monotany.
‘I’ll just do this area a few more times’ I say to myself. And then after six hours in the game’s opening area, I move on, and do the same again.
There’s a really big problem with this kind of approach to your games – it makes them really, really, outrageously, mind-numbingly dull. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to just, you know, plough on through? Enjoy the game’s world, its winding narrative, the amusing dialogue between characters – the natural flow of the game, as the developers intended?
In theory, yes. Yes it would. But can I bring myself to actually do this? No, never. I’m not satisfied until I’ve turned enjoyment into some kind of chore.
I’m my own worst enemy.
BEING TOO THOROUGH
Someone once told me that Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a game ‘about humanity facing up, and reacting to, technology – and how it impacts our lives both as individuals and the broader social spectrum’.
After I suffocated him to death with a Hello Kitty slipper wrapped in an ASDA carrier bag, and began merrily digging his shallow grave, I thought to myself;
1) I hate people who say this kind of crap
and
2) Deus Ex: Human Revolution wasn’t social commentary on the impact of technology at all – it’s most poignant message for humanity was just how tedious (yet bizarrely compulsive) it is to open 1,745 desk drawers and hack 2,386 computers in twenty hours.
Likewise, Skyrim is less about about the unbridled joy of open world fantasy adventuring. It’s a game about opening things – pots mostly – for two gold, a handful of berries and a glass axe that has no meaningful value to you.
And yet I JUST. CAN’T. HELP. MYSELF.
Every pot, chest, drawer, computer, barrel in any world I’m in, must be thoroughly ransacked, otherwise I have some kind of meltdown. I know full well there’s nothing in these drawers for me – but I open them all the same – thus turning a 40 hour ‘romp’ into a 200 hour excursion into epic tedium.
But the worst offender of all is Blue Dragon – Hironobu Sakaguchi’s JRPG. On the face of it, it’s fairly traditional fare, but not many people ever wrote about how it’s the very face of evil itself.
You see, just like in any other JRPG, most locations have places of interest where you press A – like next to a bush or a barrel – and you’ll get a few coins, or a herb or something.
In Blue Dragon, you can press A next to practically everything. Rock, flower, barnacle – anything – and it very kindly gives you a little ‘nothing’ chime to tell you you’ve not found anything.
And then you realise that those ‘nothings’ are themselves a currency. At this point, all bets are off, you can not walk ANYWHWERE without constantly pressing A. Rubbing your body against every surface in the game. Not only are you searching for little item bonuses, but now you’re actively searching for NOTHING.
Somewhere in Sakaguchi’s undergroud lair, he watches Blue Dragon players though Microsoft’s Kinect Spy Network, and throws his head back, laughing at the ceiling. Laughing like a lunatic at how utterly stupid we are, bending to his whim.
THE RESTART
I’m not as bad as I was – but I’ve lost count of how many gamess I’ve played a fair way into playing blind – and then felt I needed to restart the whole game because I should have done things better. Forums like GameFAQS are absolutely the worst for fuelling this bad habit of mine. I’ll buy a game, I’ll play it for five or six hours and then temptation will get the better of me and I’ll start reading about all the intricacies of character development, or about certain important items that I’ve missed – things which, from that point on, soil the very sanctity of my enjoyment of the game.
I can’t continue with the knowledge I’ve acquired. I have to go back. I’ have to restart. As if I had precious little time to play my games as it was.
I hate you GameFAQs. ;___;
ASSUMING THE SAME ROLES
Any game with classes, I go through two decision processes.
I always prefer to play a support class – healer / buffer preferably. If none of those appeal, I’ll go for a ranger or a class with a pet. I never, EVER play as a tank, or close combat character, even if I would actually enjoy it.
I play a lot of fighting games, but I’ll only play a character I like the aesthetic appearance of, or feel some kind of affinity towards, or happens to have tricks and traps and set ups that I like – even if it means I’m a terrible, TERRIBLE player with that character. Even if I could dominate using a grappler or a higher tier character, I wouldn’t use them. I wouldn’t use them if you PAID me. And once I pick, I can’t switch – it’s like I’m betraying them.. cheating on them somehow.
Of course the only person I’m really cheating is myself – it means I never get to experience the diversity so many games have to offer. So many people look at something like a fighter and look at how big the character roster is before they invest. That’s a totally moot point for me in my purchasing decision – because I know I’ll only EVER use two characters at most – regardless of how big the roster is.
SNOBBERY
I won’t play Call of Duty any more because a) I’d like to think I have just A LITTLE more imagination when it comes to making an informed videogame purchase and b) Because I don’t really like it.
Oh yeah, and c) because I’m not a Paedophile.
Yes, that’s right, the games I like make me amazing! And the games you like make you an imbecile.
Heaven forbid you should like a ‘mainstream’ game that I don’t. That suggests to me that you’re a sick weirdo who interferes with his neighbours pets.
And not in a good way.
Yup, I’ll admit it, I’m a terrible snob and I’m extremely judgemental when it comes to other people’s videogame collections. Sometimes I forget the fact that this is, after all, an entertainment industry. I have to accept the fact that not everyone wants to play Ico, while listening to the Nier soundtrack, wearing a pair of underpants made from the pulped pages of the Limted Edition Arcana Heart 3 art book.
That’s just me – and nobody else really gives a shit.
*takes meds*
CHOICE PARALYSIS
Any game that has an abundance of loot – a kind of game I favour – I can waste HOURS of game time, just staring at them. Trying to ascertain which one to go for. Inevitably, I just keep them all, don’t use them, and let them sit there until they become obsolete – because I simply can’t make a sensible decision.
Do I go for the Arcane Helm of the Destroyer? Which confers 31.6 dps and also gives me 3.6 additional points into my elemental defence BUT with the penatly of a 1.2 downgrade to my movement speed?
OR
Do I take the Unholy Pantaloons of the Whale which, while making me run like the wind at a whopping 8.9 movement buff, makes me practically defenceless when faced with any Dark Magic weapons with a 4.65 rating in Arcane- AAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGHGHHHH!
I fucking hated Maths in school as a kid. I remember, as a curious 13 year old boy, asking my teacher what possible use Maths was in the real world.
‘It’s no use in the real world’ he said to me, as he asked me to take off my trousers.
‘But it will be really useful to you when selecting the appropriate weapons, armour and accessories for dungeons in future digital entertainment releases’ he cried as I repeatedly stoved his face in with the corner of a 386 Compaq PC (running windows 3.11) in the school’s newly built IT lab… salty tears streaming down my cheeks.
Basically, when faced with anything with numbers on it, my brain immediately shuts down and I’m unable to make a sensible decision. It’s what I like to call ‘Number Blindness’ and it’s why I a) can’t tell the time b) drive a car legally and c) ended up in hospital after playing Titan Quest.
I’M STILL MR HARDCORE
I think this is a throwback to a time when I had more time to play games. As a kid, games were so expensive, that me and my brother would always stick it on the hardest setting from the word go – as though playing on easy was some kind of sin – that we were somehow robbing ourselves of enjoyment by putting it on easy.
I still do it – not to the same extent – but it often means that I don’t ever see the end of games because I don’t have the time to put in the practice at those difficulty levels, if I lowered the difficulty, chances are I’d see the end credit roll and, in the long term, get more enjoyment from my games.
But still, that compulsion remains – though I have no idea why. I guess internally, it’s a pride thing, a badge of honour – although quite who I’m supposed to display this to, I don’t know.
Ladies? Did you know that I once completed Thunderforce 4 on the hardest difficulty setting – even though the button on my Mega Drive pad for weapon select was a little bit sticky?
Oh yeah… NOW you want a piece of me… 😉
This feature was brought to you by ILJG who runs the I Love Japanese Games Facebook Page.
His views are definitely not those held by Rice Digital or it’s partners.
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