Weekend Question: When's the last time you looked up a walkthrough?

[PCG Jody]

I ask the PCG staff a regular Weekend Question and post the answers on the site. If you'd like to throw in an answer here, I'll squeeze the best into the finished article!

This week the question is: When's the last time you looked up a walkthrough?

Long ago, when we still huddled around the campfire in fear of screeching dot-matrix printers as they stalked the plains, walkthroughs used to be .txt files with ASCII art. Sometimes they had FAQs at the end suggesting a long and arcane history of beefs between competing writers. It was a different time. Now, you're more likely to find a professionally written guide or an expansive wiki. Either that or have to scrub back and forth through a YouTube video with the sound turned down so you don't have to listen to someone talk.

 

[ZedClampet]

It's been too long for me to remember exactly. I sort of decided that if I had to use a walkthrough then I wasn't interested in the game.

Walkthrough: Put cat on the turntable to play the secret message.

Me: I'm not playing this anymore.

I should mention that a lot of the games I've been playing now lean toward an extensive wiki rather than a walkthrough, and I use wikis all the time for figuring things out like "How often does the meteor strike?". As for YouTube videos, they are an absolute last resort. Content creators just don't value my time enough. I end up skimming through a 30 minute video just hoping I accidentally land on the right spot. If you are doing a video on a specific topic, just get to it. I don't need elaborate intros or meandering soliloquys.

 

[Pifanjr]

I think the last time was for Dark Souls to get a better idea of what route to take and where to grab some nice items.

I also had to look up how to level up in Dark Souls 2. I either missed a hint or the game just straight up doesn't tell you.

 

[Brian Boru]

When's the last time you looked up a walkthrough?

That would be about 2 hours ago!
Doing the Clean Water Act mission if Far Cry 5—where you have to blow up a pair of pumping stations at a water plant—I couldn't figure out how to reach the second station, and finally looked it up. It was definitely a tricky one!

Apart from getting stuck, generally I'll look up things after a first playthru—or occasionally halfway thru first play—to see what others have to say about the best weapons in each class. I often miss stuff like this gun has an under-barrel grenade launcher attachment, or there's armor-piercing bullets for that rifle.

Previous time was my first play of Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 when for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to get a steady—ie non-sway—sniper scope for long distance. Never found the info, and ended up discovering it by accident later

I also sometimes enjoy watching YT videos after the fact, to see how others approached the more interesting or challenging missions.

 

[McStabStab]

I use the Wiki for Divinity: Original Sin 2 a lot. There's so much in that game and much of it I may have missed if I would have done it blindly. In the end I don't feel like I'm cheating, but really unlocking more of what the story has on offer.

 

[pathospades]

Probably a few days ago. I watch some Dead by Daylight videos and they always talk about "this perk" or "that perk". As you know, with competitive multiplayer games, there's always a ton of info, so it's just expected for everyone to know there's a wiki.

Other than that though, I think I looked up TD Bloons wiki once or twice.

 

[Alm]

I have no shame in looking at walkthroughs (and playing games on easy difficulty).

Last time I used a walkthrough was a couple of weeks ago on Zelda on the Switch.

I'm very much there for the story in games and if I get stumped by puzzles that don't seem intuitive I'll generally look it up. I don't see the point in stressing over solving things myself just to serve some sort of principle.

 

[DXCHASE]

Why just a few minutes ago! Looked up some stuff for Far Cry 6 on where to go to unlock a whole special outfit that i want.

 

[mainer]

I won't use a walkthrough, wiki, or any other source for an entire game, but I have consulted those sources at certain points in a game when I'm completely frustrated by some kind of puzzle that I just can't get my head around. One of the more recent times would be in Dragon Age Inquisition (3rd playthrough) when trying to solve some of the Astarium Constellation puzzles. I love the game, but some of those puzzles just left me completely frustrated, and it wasn't worth spending literally hours on trying to solve one. Some were relatively easy, but others weren't, like this one:

I spent way too much time on that one. Another source of frustration resulting in me consulting a walkthrough, was towards the end of Divinity Original Sin EE and the constant barrage of Teleporting Pyramid Puzzles just to advance the game. I wasn't going to quit the game (because I loved it for the most part) and I was so close to the end, but I just hit a wall and my brain locked up; so I looked up the last few puzzle solutions in a walkthrough.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Deaths Door today. I just killed Betty the Yeti and I have no idea where I'm supposed to go next.

I don't get that frustrated if I can't beat a game section, but if I have no idea where I'm supposed to go or what I'm supposed to be looking at I'll be straight to a walkthrough. Wandering around kicking the scenery is boring to me.

 

[Krud]

Hmm. I don't remember. Last Tuesday, maybe? I'm so unabashedly casual about it now that I don't pay attention. Waaaay back when I felt guilty about it, I could tell you every time I gave up on a puzzle and looked it up, but now I'm just lazy and entitled, er, I mean, too busy and efficient...

 

[Brian Boru]

Wandering around kicking the scenery is boring to me

Boo! Hiss!!

You need to play games where the scenery kicks back—and bites front

I'm so unabashedly casual about it now that I don't pay attention. Waaaay back when I felt guilty about it

Umm, sorry mate, you're in the wrong forum—this place isn't for adults, we're all one big happy bouncing castle of grown-up kids.

Kiddery rules, adultery not allowed!

 

[Zloth]

An actual, proper walk through? Not a wiki or a video, something that covers every part of the game and how best to deal with it... I think I might have for Styx: Master of Shadows back in March, but I definitely did for Resonance of Fate about 15 months back.

(Hmm, green pills or pink pills? Tough choice. Let me alt-tab real quick...)

 

[Sarafan]

It was quite recently. I was playing one of the Star Trek classics - Bridge Commander and couldn't get through a mission that requires a stealth approach. Basically Bridge Commander is a game where you have a limited direct control of the spaceship. You can do it, but it's better and more fun just to give orders. This is what this game is all about after all! The problem starts when you have to avoid enemy patrols just by giving orders to your crew mates. And what's very important, you can't save the game during the mission. So if they detect you, the only option is to start again. After a few tries I had enough and decided to check a walkthrough on YouTube. I didn't regret this, because the mission was too much...

 

[wencelaus]

I use walkthroughs/maps for open world games like Assassin's Creed or Crysis so I do the right thing at the right time. In Tomb Raider, for example, if you don't do things in the right order you can find yourself unable to proceed at some point, and then you have to reload an earlier saved game. For more linear games like F.E.A.R. 3 I don't have to have a walkthrough handy.

 

[UserName]

Depends.
It's one thing if games allow multiple saves and you can go back if you mess something up - but seems like many games all have this 1 save slot (which is ridiculous for so many reasons - Ubisoft!). And even if you do get multiple saves you need to make sure the door you pick or the one response you have to make or not make doesn't have terrible ramifications 60 hours later.

Too many games in the backlog and too little time to get through them all without any help.

 

[sambouwie]

It was loongg ago since I broke my PC's, now I just can see people playing a game at the stream or youtube

 

[TrickyPicturesYT]

dragon ball xenoverse 2 which was yesterday

 

[YOLO_So_PlayGames]

A few months ago I decided to refresh my memory with a walkthrough of Stalker (to be ready for Stalker 2)

 

[tchamy]

1 week ago

 

[Brian Boru]

1 week ago

What did you look up?

 

[flashn00b]

Usually in cases where I absolutely need a walkthrough, it's less of a skill issue and more of an obtuse puzzling issue. I remember the second act of The Witcher 2 having a fair chunk of moments where trying to progress through the game organically seemed like an insurmountable task, which kinda has me wondering if that's the reason why PCG says "just skip straight to The Witcher 3". Dunno if Iorveth's path is more straightforward than Roche's, however.

 

[Brian Boru]

an obtuse puzzling issue

I looked up one of those last night, playing Far Cry 5. Looking for a Prepper stash in 'Angels' Grave' involved a bunch of platforming via grappling hook across acid water, with multiple choices of what route to take.

I don't like platforming, so it's the last thing I want to have to replay because I'm poor at it. So straight away looked up instructions and parked them on my second monitor.

 

[Harrigan]

A couple of hours ago while playing Deus Ex - Mankind Divided. I mostly used it to find these perk kits, but it helped me on 2 missions as well

 

[Krud]

And even if you do get multiple saves you need to make sure the door you pick or the one response you have to make or not make doesn't have terrible ramifications 60 hours later.

Yeah, I peeked at a couple spoilers to make sure I didn't get the "bad ending" for The Witcher 3.