Wut. I did not know you could do that.

Saint of Killers wrote:I didn't know crossfire and infighting amongst demons in Doom was a thing. I literally learned that only a few days ago.

My favourite thing to do in Quake II was cause infighting among the enemy.

That Carnival Night platform from Sonic 3 must be a strong contender for this.

You land on it, and clearly see you're meant to go down. The branching paths stop, a barrier blocks your route back and it's clear this is the only way to progress.

The barrel moves and bobs down when you jump on it. It does this just about enough to convince that, with enough momentum from jumping, you can move the barrel down and progress.

But no, you literally stand still on the barrel and press up and down on the D-pad to move it. This is literally the only time in the game you do this, and it's never ever explained to the player that it's possible. All the in-game clues tell you that jumping will do it.

And this was the 90s so no internet. I didn't complete Sonic 3 until the early 2000s, and missed our on two whole zones because of it (out of a total of six, so a decent chunk) and there was the link up with Sonic 3 and Knuckles which I couldn't fully implement either.

Parksey wrote:That Carnival Night platform from Sonic 3 must be a strong contender for this.

You land on it, and clearly see you're meant to go down. The branching paths stop, a barrier blocks your route back and it's clear this is the only way to progress.

The barrel moves and bobs down when you jump on it. It does this just about enough to convince that, with enough momentum from jumping, you can move the barrel down and progress.

But no, you literally stand still on the barrel and press up and down on the D-pad to move it. This is literally the only time in the game you do this, and it's never ever explained to the player that it's possible. All the in-game clues tell you that jumping will do it.

And this was the 90s so no internet. I didn't complete Sonic 3 until the early 2000s, and missed our on two whole zones because of it (out of a total of six, so a decent chunk) and there was the link up with Sonic 3 and Knuckles which I couldn't fully implement either.

No internet but it was the heyday of tips and cheats lines. That's how I figured it out.

I remember Sonic 3 releasing around the time of a school holiday. When I returned to class I learned a couple of friends had been stuck on that platform for ages. I told them how to get past it but when they asked how I'd figured it out I just shrugged and said "I don't know, I just tried pressing everything." I was such lying little gooseberry fool They didn't believe me for one second, mind.

Rex Kramer wrote:130 hours and half way through NG+ in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and then I find out there was a whole combat ability called full burst mode that would have wiped out bosses much easier.

I learnt about full burst after about 40 hours. I felt really dumb when I picked that up. As much as I loved the game, it does a bad job of explaining the gameplay mechanics.

That Ocarina of time story is amazing. I assume it was Phantom Ganon.

Squinty wrote:That Ocarina of time story is amazing. I assume it was Phantom Ganon.

...

Lime wrote:Back when Ocarina of time first came out, a friend of mine came into work moaning about how obscure and difficult it was, since the only way to defeat a particular boss was to deflect his energy bolts with a bottle.

He said it took him all evening to do it, it was ridiculous, terrible game design, how were you supposed to know to use that item etc. The timing required to sync the bottle swing animation with the energy bolt must have been immensely frustrating .

I asked him why he didn't use the sword.

WAT.

Saint of Killers wrote:

Squinty wrote:That Ocarina of time story is amazing. I assume it was Phantom Ganon.

...

Lime wrote:Back when Ocarina of time first came out, a friend of mine came into work moaning about how obscure and difficult it was, since the only way to defeat a particular boss was to deflect his energy bolts with a bottle.

He said it took him all evening to do it, it was ridiculous, terrible game design, how were you supposed to know to use that item etc. The timing required to sync the bottle swing animation with the energy bolt must have been immensely frustrating .

I asked him why he didn't use the sword.

WAT.

Cut him some slack.

Guy was just trying to catch lightning in a bottle.

Bravo.

I didn't realise you could sprint in og DOOM until I was well into chapter 3

Parksey wrote:That Carnival Night platform from Sonic 3 must be a strong contender for this.

You land on it, and clearly see you're meant to go down. The branching paths stop, a barrier blocks your route back and it's clear this is the only way to progress.

The barrel moves and bobs down when you jump on it. It does this just about enough to convince that, with enough momentum from jumping, you can move the barrel down and progress.

But no, you literally stand still on the barrel and press up and down on the D-pad to move it. This is literally the only time in the game you do this, and it's never ever explained to the player that it's possible. All the in-game clues tell you that jumping will do it.

And this was the 90s so no internet. I didn't complete Sonic 3 until the early 2000s, and missed our on two whole zones because of it (out of a total of six, so a decent chunk) and there was the link up with Sonic 3 and Knuckles which I couldn't fully implement either.

That describes my experience with Sonic 3. I spent HOURS trying to jump on that goddamn barrel and never ever got any further on the Megadrive version because of that stupid design.

Having watched that Sonic 3 video and then read Parksey's post... yeah, I can see how that could have foxed a lot of people.

Moggy wrote:

Parksey wrote:That Carnival Night platform from Sonic 3 must be a strong contender for this.

You land on it, and clearly see you're meant to go down. The branching paths stop, a barrier blocks your route back and it's clear this is the only way to progress.

The barrel moves and bobs down when you jump on it. It does this just about enough to convince that, with enough momentum from jumping, you can move the barrel down and progress.

But no, you literally stand still on the barrel and press up and down on the D-pad to move it. This is literally the only time in the game you do this, and it's never ever explained to the player that it's possible. All the in-game clues tell you that jumping will do it.

And this was the 90s so no internet. I didn't complete Sonic 3 until the early 2000s, and missed our on two whole zones because of it (out of a total of six, so a decent chunk) and there was the link up with Sonic 3 and Knuckles which I couldn't fully implement either.

That describes my experience with Sonic 3. I spent HOURS trying to jump on that goddamn barrel and never ever got any further on the Megadrive version because of that stupid design.

This must be true for so many people! It was a terrible bit of design that gave you no clue as to what you needed to do. I don't think it says anything in the manual about it either!

I remember trying all sorts of jumping timings and techniques to see if I could get past it - "what if I do lots of little jumps in time with the barrel bobbing up and down?", "What if I do progressively larger jumps?", "what if I use a second controller to get Tails to jump at the same time?", "Can I just use Tails to fly up and around the barrel area?" NOPE!

The only time I got past this before learning the real technique was because the game glitched and Sonic got pushed through the wall - it was an incredible feeling suddenly being in that area of the zone which comes after this for the first time!

Squinty wrote:

Rex Kramer wrote:130 hours and half way through NG+ in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and then I find out there was a whole combat ability called full burst mode that would have wiped out bosses much easier.

I learnt about full burst after about 40 hours. I felt really dumb when I picked that up. As much as I loved the game, it does a bad job of explaining the gameplay mechanics.

Yeah it could definitely do a better job at explaining things. I played about half of the game before realising that the "overkill" percentage (or whatever it is called) that you can get by killing an enemy with a Chain Attack relates to the amount of XP and WP you get from the kill - you can level up so much quicker once this is understood!

Jenuall wrote:

Moggy wrote:

Parksey wrote:That Carnival Night platform from Sonic 3 must be a strong contender for this.

You land on it, and clearly see you're meant to go down. The branching paths stop, a barrier blocks your route back and it's clear this is the only way to progress.

The barrel moves and bobs down when you jump on it. It does this just about enough to convince that, with enough momentum from jumping, you can move the barrel down and progress.

But no, you literally stand still on the barrel and press up and down on the D-pad to move it. This is literally the only time in the game you do this, and it's never ever explained to the player that it's possible. All the in-game clues tell you that jumping will do it.

And this was the 90s so no internet. I didn't complete Sonic 3 until the early 2000s, and missed our on two whole zones because of it (out of a total of six, so a decent chunk) and there was the link up with Sonic 3 and Knuckles which I couldn't fully implement either.

That describes my experience with Sonic 3. I spent HOURS trying to jump on that goddamn barrel and never ever got any further on the Megadrive version because of that stupid design.

This must be true for so many people! It was a terrible bit of design that gave you no clue as to what you needed to do. I don't think it says anything in the manual about it either!

I remember trying all sorts of jumping timings and techniques to see if I could get past it - "what if I do lots of little jumps in time with the barrel bobbing up and down?", "What if I do progressively larger jumps?", "what if I use a second controller to get Tails to jump at the same time?", "Can I just use Tails to fly up and around the barrel area?" NOPE!

The only time I got past this before learning the real technique was because the game glitched and Sonic got pushed through the wall - it was an incredible feeling suddenly being in that area of the zone which comes after this for the first time!

Chalk up another victim of this. My 10 year old self was utterly bamboozled by the whole thing.

Persona 4 - didn't realise that selling materials to the weapons shop unlocked more weapons you could buy until after I'd completed the game. Relied on fairly uncommon weapon finds in dungeons with a good amount of my party not having decent ones.

I had a similar thing to this only last night as well, although this was more a case of "I forgot you could do that".

I played the first three chapters of the excellent (but challenging) platformer Celeste a while back but then got distracted by other stuff. I finally got back around to playing it last night and found it incredibly hard work - how the hell was I supposed to make all of these complex wall jumps, cutting through gaps in moving obstacles that are out of sync with me and whilst I'm sliding down the walls with no control?!? IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE!

I persevered for a surprising length of time and made a not unreasonable amount of progress before deciding that there was clearly something wrong and consulting the internet. Yeah it turns out that you can hold onto walls and even climb up them which makes the whole thing about a million times easier.

Now do the first level without dashing

Drumstick wrote:

Saint of Killers wrote:

Squinty wrote:That Ocarina of time story is amazing. I assume it was Phantom Ganon.

...

Lime wrote:Back when Ocarina of time first came out, a friend of mine came into work moaning about how obscure and difficult it was, since the only way to defeat a particular boss was to deflect his energy bolts with a bottle.

He said it took him all evening to do it, it was ridiculous, terrible game design, how were you supposed to know to use that item etc. The timing required to sync the bottle swing animation with the energy bolt must have been immensely frustrating .

I asked him why he didn't use the sword.

WAT.

Cut him some slack.

Guy was just trying to catch lightning in a bottle.

I played Elder Scrolls Online without realising that you could fast-travel to shrines outside of your immediate map area. Yep, I used to get to places by walking long distances through multiple areas.

I did that for about three years .

Moggy wrote:

Parksey wrote:That Carnival Night platform from Sonic 3 must be a strong contender for this.

You land on it, and clearly see you're meant to go down. The branching paths stop, a barrier blocks your route back and it's clear this is the only way to progress.

The barrel moves and bobs down when you jump on it. It does this just about enough to convince that, with enough momentum from jumping, you can move the barrel down and progress.

But no, you literally stand still on the barrel and press up and down on the D-pad to move it. This is literally the only time in the game you do this, and it's never ever explained to the player that it's possible. All the in-game clues tell you that jumping will do it.

And this was the 90s so no internet. I didn't complete Sonic 3 until the early 2000s, and missed our on two whole zones because of it (out of a total of six, so a decent chunk) and there was the link up with Sonic 3 and Knuckles which I couldn't fully implement either.

That describes my experience with Sonic 3. I spent HOURS trying to jump on that goddamn barrel and never ever got any further on the Megadrive version because of that stupid design.

Perhaps worse for me, is that I DID manage to do it by jumping and did so every time I played though it (which was a lot). I hated that part so much but i always got through it somehow, so by GITTING GUD I actually played myself.

Not knowing you could punch people in Splinter Cell. That took me ages to figure out for some reason. You could argue I was therefore playing the game properly, but I sure was making it harder for myself.

As a kid I played through about 2/3 of Final Fantasy 7 without realising that Materia and Limit Breaks levelled up, as such I was still using Braver/Cross Slash near the end of Disc 2.

I was woefully underpowered by the end of the game and it's no wonder I had such trouble getting through certain parts of the game. Surprised I completed it at all.

Not on the same scale but the first time I played Goldeneye 007 on N64 I didn't realise the controller had a trigger button to fire. As a result I spent the entire time running away from everyone!