Playing it wrong

Games, PC games especially, are prone to bugs. Lots of them are visible or game breaking.

Some are more subtle.

I got the game Director’s Cut edition of QUBE in the latest Humble Bundle. In the promo materials, there was a bunch of talk about how they hired some great writer for the game, but I played for about an hour without any inkling as to why a writer would be needed. There’s no text, and there’s no dialogue, and there’s no voiceover.

About halfway through the game, I check the steam reviews and, lo and behold, they talk about how the narrator is really irritating and doesn’t add anything to the game. Turns out, for some reason, I’m not hearing the narrator at all! In fact, I’d been dwelling on how QUBE is trying to tell a story without any dialogue and why that was or was not a good idea.

Here’s another one:

I played the PC version of Resident Evil when I was young. I got somewhat into it but it wasn’t really scary, and I didn’t really get the hype. It was just a big ol mansion with some monsters in it.

Then one day, I turn it on again and now the game is dark, moody, and full of atmosphere. Also it scared the shit out of me because I was essentially playing a different game, and I couldn’t figure out why.

Turns out that, for some reason, the first few times I played it, the music and weather effects weren’t working. A fully lit mansion with no music to speak of wasn’t really very intimidating at all. I never really figured out why they didn’t work the first few times. Really bizarre.

I also played Doom for a good while without realizing there was music. I thought it was this kind of quiet violent action game, but it turns out my MIDI drivers weren’t working.

Anyway, I’m curious if anyone else has these experiences where they’ve played a game “wrong” without realizing it due to bugs or weird issues with hardware/software. Anyone?

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The only thing close to this that I can recall right now is the few occasions when World of Warcraft had a laggy connection with the server, so suddenly it became impossible to cast spells or use items, and you could fly just by holding the spacebar.

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Also: https://youtu.be/OJyCppPNEeM

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the first time i saw evo: the quest for eden, it was being played by someone who somehow hadn’t realised there was a menu if you pressed select, and they were trying to get through the entire game without evolving new body parts

i played through parasite eve in black and white because it was the first ps1 import i got and the tv i had in my room at the time didn’t like to co-operate with ntsc signals

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There were a lot of old PC games I played from a pirated CD where the music and FMV scenes where cut out. So games like Tomb Raider and Interstate 76 I played for years not knowing the story or realising there was supposed to be music during gameplay. Playing Interstate 76 from GOG.com recently I realised how much I was missing with the music, the plot was nothing special though.

This was also my experience! I can’t imagine any voiceover actually adding to it.

I mean, my first playthrough of Pikmin I forgot that the red pikmin are fire-resistant which made certain parts of the game… interesting.

My real answer is that I picked up ibb & obb for the PS3 on sale for a buck as I’ll try any decent looking indie platformer at that cost. It is a co-op game but they tossed in a “control both characters with a single controller” mode as a goof (it was cut from the PC release). I played through the entire game that way as I thought it was just a random absurdly difficult game.

why do you have so many audio issues clint

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It’s pretty hard to coordinate some of that stuff, too! Getting a landing on another player while you’re both moving and cross-threading gravity layers ain’t easy especially if there’s a disparity in platforming skill.

Not quite the same thing, but I recently started Abzu and played it for a solid ten minutes without realizing there was a swim button. I thought you moved by boosting and that there was some kind of Mario 64 swimming rhythm I wasn’t getting.

And three of us got stuck on a level of Overcooked because the third player couldn’t move quickly enough to serve enough food. They don’t list the run button in the controls.

Gotta press more buttons I guess.

See also avoiding powerups that look like threats.

Yeah I could see some of the later areas being a challenge even with two actual human players. If they didn’t put checkpoints after almost every single obstacle I doubt I would have been able to come even close to besting it as… hell, I got the Golden God achievement in Super Meat Boy and I’m not sure anything in there was as challenging on a micro-scale as some of the ibb & obb ones when you are on your own.

Also, playing Hack ‘n’ Slash I managed to legit glitch my way past the level two boss (as opposed to the fake glitches you often have to do). I did this before I was supposed to so I didn’t unlock certain abilities, mainly the one to translate the symbols into english. I got a decent ways into the third area before I was just completely stumped as to how I would even proceed at which point I looked online for help and discovered exactly how off course I was.

The Team Fortress 2 hitboxes mismatch bug that has been in the game since release is a thing of wonder. It does affect accuracy and all that. But if a bug has been since the beginning and is the way every single person has been playing the game all this ten years, is it really a case of “playing it wrong”? There was no other way to play.

People have won, lost and went esport shooting at wonky hitboxes. A whole meta was built around a game where you were not really shooting the real target all this time. In a sense, it’s amazing.

The article: https://www.engadget.com/2017/02/15/team-fortress-2-patch-fixes-decade-old-bug/

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Yeah I watched a bit of an LP for QUBE Director’s Cut and the voiceover was pretty much disappointing.

Not exactly playing it wrong, but it took me until I almost finished Radiant Historia to realise that you can move around using the touch screen. Didn’t really effect much since I was playing on 3DS so the circle pad was much better for control anyway

Since I play a fair amount of ROM hacks, I’m constantly worrying about whether or not I glitched my way into a situation, and am now stuck. I don’t trust amateur game designers apparently.

Oh, I just remembered something like this.

When we first got a GameCube when I was a kid, we also got Eternal Darkness. There was one time when the game froze with a weird error message, and I thought it was just part of the game. But then it never recovered. Turns out the GameCube was busted - it kept freezing like that. But for a bit, I genuinely thought the game had an insanity effect that just ended your game.

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this happens to me a lot because i’m dumb and don’t experiment enough to discover many game mechanics

especially in point and clicks when i can’t figure out how to combine items (not ‘what items to combine’, but the actual mechanics of putting things together)

it’s to the point i now actively seek out hints if i’m stumped about something because more likely than not there’s an interface or something i missed

Yeah I do pretty much the same thing.

I remember when my mom returned Ghosts and Goblins for the SNES because we couldn’t get past the first level. We never figured out the double jump (and I guess didn’t read the manual?)

there’s this ‘pirates of the caribbean’ rpg i played on pc that i got as a gift. for some reason the water didn’t appear in the parts where you take control of the ship and go sailing. it was all just black and it covered most of the ship, too. whenever i engaged in a fight with another ship or had to escape a storm i had to do it blindly.

i never went really far in that game.

I remember when I used to play Double Dragon with my friend down the street, we found it hilarious to constantly jump down off the bottom of the screen to escape the baddies, while calling out “quick, into the depot!”.
Took us a while to realise that we were losing lives that way

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