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angelus_04Lady KestrelTheTMD

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How much of a walkthrough fascist are you?

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What is your policy on using hint systems/walkthroughs for adventure games?

Do you consider even hotspot highlighting to be “cheating”?  Will you wander around a game for the rest of your natural life before you’ll give in or will you look up the answer as soon as it starts interfering with the advancement of the story?

I’m pretty close to the former, although I’m happy to highlight hotspots as soon as I get stuck as I don’t consider pixel-hunting to be part of the game.

I’ve tried to soften my position on walkthroughs recently as there are so many good games I haven’t gone back to after getting stuck.

Did you start playing adventure games before the advent of the internet so have the no-surrender, try-everything-with-everything mindset?

I still have fond memories of getting to that point in GK2 and eventually hitting on the solution:  use cuckoo clock with plant! Smile

     
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I don’t consider pixel hunting or noticing object to be part of the game and I tend to very often miss objects without a hotspot highlighter.

In games that do not have hotspot highlighting, I will sometimes look at walkthrough if I’m stuck not reading them but searching for words like “pick up” or “take” to see which items I might have missed.

As a kid though, I used walkthrough a lot more. I only got on internet in 1995 but before that there were walkthroughs in magazines and books of walkthroughs that were published..

     
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dumbeur - 17 May 2017 12:11 PM

Did you start playing adventure games before the advent of the internet so have the no-surrender, try-everything-with-everything mindset?

I still have fond memories of getting to that point in GK2 and eventually hitting on the solution:  use cuckoo clock with plant! Smile

In Brokensword days, there were a whole lot of gamers got stuck on Syrian kebab stand
So we waited for online walkthroughs there were only 2 and didnt help much
Then some Mag had full walkthrough and game retailer started selling that and gamers bought it
It was similar to cheat codes/Fatalities of MK or other games

Still nobody progressed
It turned out you had to press O on PSX joypad to look on kebab stand twice at certain point to progress

Funny thing is , goat puzzle wasnt the place we got stuck

It was my initial experience with AG and since then the fun was how to crack the game
Or Devs mind

Now puzzles in PnC are lost art thanks to zero invention, i consult walkthrough if it doesnt hold my interest or kick some motivation
The feeling , Hey i have done that before and some chore destroys all the enthusiasm

I totally surrendered on GK3 though, it was all walkthrough, i got stuck alot managing to score some points to progress story
Shit was hard

     
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Games are a lot buggier than they used to be, so if i’m stuck for more than a few hours i usually check on Steam forums to see if it’s a game issue or me.

It also depends how much i like the game. Some games I trust to have logical solutions and would never check walkthroughs because i know i will find the answer.

I noticed a long time ago that if I use a walkthrough i enjoy a game much MUCH less.

     
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Puzzle games like Portal, Talos Principle or Witness I try to avoid a walkthrough since it’s mostly logic based and try to work it out.
Point and click games that add pixel-hunting or irrational puzzles to the fold I mostly go for a walkthrough when start to resort to trying things randomly.
Before the internet I used walkthroughs less because they were not easily available but I also finished a lot less games.

     
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Oh yes, walkthrough for pure puzzle games like Portal, etc… definitely ruins the fun.

     
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I don’t conside pixel hunting a puzzle that challenges the mind. I consider it bad game design, so I will always use a hotspot finder if present. As far as walkthroughs, I will revert to one if all else fails, but I feel bad about using it.

     
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SoccerDude28 - 17 May 2017 01:04 PM

I will revert to one if all else fails, but I feel bad about using it.

This is ultimately how I feel.  And the better the game, the worse I feel about it.

To my eternal shame, my favourite puzzle in many years (my avatar) I had to resort to a walkthrough, and even then I had to watch the youtube video several times.

It’s Still Life‘s lockpick puzzle for those that don’t recognise it.

I think where I am now, I will play while stuck at the end of a session until I feel I’ve exhausted every possibility, then start a new session with a fresh head and resort to the walkthrough only once I’m bored of it.  That probably equates to 2-3 hours of gameplay before giving in.

     
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When hint books were the keyword and hardly obtained I had to suffer for years sometimes.. yeah years to finish.
Now that. Walk-through are available I can’t be harsh on myself but I have curse once I used the walk-throughs more than three times per game I might feel turned off already so I either continue with the WT all the or neglect the game. That way I must be very careful while consulting them.

     
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As others have mentioned, I use them on the rare occasion I get really stuck, for like hours. I know adventure gamers that use walkthroughs all the time, but I hardly think that makes them fascists. What the heck is a “walkthrough fascist” anyway? I certainly wouldn’t want to be branded a fascist just because I might use a walkthrough more often than other people.

Maybe I’m reading too much into the title of this thread. Maybe it was just meant to be silly…  Meh

     

Life is too short to drink bad wine…

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It’s actually someone more like me or you, someone who is totalitarian in their feelings about using them.

And yes, I may not have been totally serious or meant it in the strictly political sense. Wink

     
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If there’s a tightly timed element and the game keeps killing me off after a bunch of attempts, I will check a walkthrough to find out the exact steps I need to take.  Dracula: The Last Sanctuary had an underwater sequence like that, and I must have drowned 10 times before i checked and could streamline my moves to make it through.  Otherwise, I avoid looking as much as possible because I’m stubborn and would rather do it myself! Smile

     

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My starting point is that using a walkthrough means I’ve “lost” the game. In games I really enjoy and where I trust the developer’s good judgment and puzzle design skills I never use one. It destroys the fun and satisfaction completely. From there it’s a sliding scale, involving how much I care about the game and the feel I get of the puzzle design as a whole. And the type of game is an important factor too.

     
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I have absolutely no problem using a walkthrough. Particularly when it comes to puzzles I have solve before in a different game. If I know how the puzzle is solved. And I know it is going to take me a long time to go through all the steps needed to solve it. And I know the walkthrough will give me the steps I need to take in order to get past this irksome, tedious puzzle, I will open the walkthrough, write down the solution and move on to more enjoyable parts of the game. Life is too short to drink bad wine and too short to slave over a bad puzzle.

     

For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.

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Lady Kestrel - 17 May 2017 03:36 PM

If there’s a tightly timed element and the game keeps killing me off after a bunch of attempts, I will check a walkthrough to find out the exact steps I need to take.  Dracula: The Last Sanctuary had an underwater sequence like that, and I must have drowned 10 times before i checked and could streamline my moves to make it through.  Otherwise, I avoid looking as much as possible because I’m stubborn and would rather do it myself! Smile

Totally with you on this, Kes.

Action sequences for me, all bets are off.  I will still give them a go first but I am positively terrified of them.

     
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I used to really hate having to look up a walkthrough: to me, it meant not only that I’ve “lost” the game (as Veovis says) but that my willpower wasn’t strong enough to continue working toward a solution. After getting unstuck, the game would feel different. Like the progress is not my achievement any more.

Well, these days I am much more relaxed about walkthroughs. I try to be easy on myself whenever I need some help. And I have no qualms about using hotspot revealers (which is another thing my purist past self was uneasy with).

dumbeur - 17 May 2017 06:50 PM

Totally with you on this, Kes.

That’s Lady Kes to you, commoner!  Tongue

     

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