Missing an obvious game mechanic

[@FedralBI]

I guarantee that Rowan hit 'Skip' when the quest was explaining about Detective Mode. I'm surprised that Ben didn't grab his horse from his Horse Pocket so they could catch the bandits sooner.

[@ArchahcrA]

I bet they were late because Ben had to explain to Rowan how to dispose of bottles of other potions.

[@musuko42]

I remember unfollowing a streamer for doing exactly this; skipped through important dialogue and then raged at length at the game for not telling him what he needed to do. The Long Dark iirc.

[@kamilziemian995]

I love episode about Horse Pocket.

[@combustiblefire5510]

@@musuko42 I quit the long dark because I ran out of coffee and got scared lmao

[@MyklCarlton]

@@musuko42 Or when they walk straight past obvious loot/clues/whatever? Or read EVERY text conversation out - often mispronouncing simple English words? I understand they're after the longest time but dear God it's frustrating!

[@ditheraith]

One time I fought a final boss that was invisible due to old graphics drivers. At the time, I didn't know that it was not meant to be invisible, it was an epic fight.

[@sp00n]

Ha! Really *_really_* way back in the first Wing Commander game, my dad's graphics card apparently wasn't able to display the red color used to indicate ship targeting and for the dots on the radar. So yeah, just hit T for next target, see if it's an enemy, and frantically fling around the whole area to somehow get it into view. Good times. :>

[@The_Zilli]

@@sp00n we need more Wing Commander.

[@scp2539]

was it in wow? found a couple wrongly invisible bosses there and helped people with them using aoe attacks.

[@pyrioncelendil]

There's a raid boss in SWTOR, forgot which it's been a few years, but iirc if you had shadows disabled because you were playing on a potato rig, you could only feasibly do the boss fight on the lower difficulties, because the game would telegraph a UI element where an otherwise easily-avoidable insta-kill attack would land. On the harder difficulties, the object responsible for firing the attack would cast its shadow directly overhead where the attack would land, so you'd just know to look for those shadows and stay out of them... unless you had shadows disabled.

[@ditheraith]

@@scp2539 It was the Alien queen in aliens vs predator where you are playing as the human

[@TrexelCat]

Rowan was on track for the achievement of having played the entire game without ever once using Detective Mode, and Ben ruined it by tricking him into using it.

[@Leg4cy86]

Underrated comment 😂

[@LegendStormcrow]

There goes "Mr Magoo? Me Too!" He'll never get the bad detective achievement now.

[@bluieasc9206]

@@LegendStormcrow zziiofi

[@jamesik84]

Yeah, 500 h later 😅

[@BenelopeAlmendra]

That archievement true?

[@juliandelphiki7381]

My wife didn't realize you could lock on for things like the bow/boomerang her first play through of Wind Waker until she got frustrated during the temple of the gods. She almost beat the boss free aiming the bow at the hands/eyes. I too was impressed she made it that far.

[@lawlietriver8869]

Dude. In Skyward Sword I never realized that I was supposed to lock onto a boss where you were supposed to shoot the eyes. It was so messed up to aim with an ever drifting motion controller. Luckily for me, they made it so the boss kept dropping arrows whenever I was empty. Then I realized what I was supposed to do, and it was so infuriatingly easy.

[@johnx140]

Your girl is a badass.

[@Everseed]

When I was a kid I played through the early part of Ocarina of Time without Z-Targeting. I knew it was there, just never cared enough to use it until I had to fight the big jellyfish right before growing into big link.

[@pokedude720]

​@@lawlietriver8869 the Squid guy? I have played it so many times and never seen that

[@klegos]

@@Everseed Yeah, I used to find it odd using that, but nowadays, I use it all the time.

[@noam242]

This is the most authentic conversation i ever heard in a sketch , especially the jump gag at the end🤣

[@calonkat]

I am always vaguely uncomfortable when my daughter watches me play games. I seem to be a Rowan and have her dying as she watches me not use fast access menus or not know how to use aiming systems.

[@jaybreezy1616]

Rowan being 4 levels higher than Ben makes this even better. 😆

[@ReZhorw]

Rowan had to kill respawns over and over again 😂

[@anonymousgamer9770]

Thats what I wanted to say

[@THE_SOSC]

I'd just say there's no fall damage when there is

[@ajvanmarle]

Also, very logical. He must have run into hundreds of random mobs, just blundering around

[@thetruetri5106]

Wait how do you know his level?

[@picaludica]

Their interaction is very natural, it doesn't feel like a skit but like an actual conversation that happened! Kudos to Rowan and Ben for their acting skill, and to whoever wrote the dialogue 😊👍

[@DamienTB]

As someone who's dating someone who always skips instructions, tutorials and dialog, yes, these conversations happen more than you think.

[@robertnett9793]

Maybe... just maybe VLDL just uses theis skits to cope with all the bullshit they did, when they grew up with video games :D An endless tresaure trove of material :D

[@petespug206]

@@DamienTB I hope your describing your intimate time here 🤣

[@logiarhythm6285]

thats what I am impressed about everytime on this channel, the acting of the whole crew is just superb!

[@VegetaLF7]

My brother once came to me complaining that he was *still* level 1 in Oblivion despite days of gaming in it and he had no idea why he couldn't level up at all. I told him to just take a nap and he woke up at Level 15. Somehow he never learned that you had to sleep to level up in that game.

[@ShinoaburameX3333]

This was me... The game really didnt tell you. I struggled with the first gate because i was lvl 1

[@scp2539]

i dont remember oblivion explaining how to level up but knew to do that from morrowind before i started using exploits i found. a lot of games try to force sleep to get things but i ignore it most of the time either from cheating or using healing items/spells.

[@pyrioncelendil]

That was actually my first hour with Skyrim's survival mode, because nowhere in the game's documentation did it explain how to trigger the level-up mechanic. I thought my load order was genuinely bugged out (which wouldn't be too hard when starting with 200+ mods in a new install after a couple years). And once I realized I had in fact been playing with survival mode turned on (I didn't think much of it because Fallout 4's survival mode only requires sleeping to save the game, not to level up, so that's what I was used to), I immediately looked for a mod to disable the sleep requirement to level up, because again, Fallout 4's survival mode didn't require it so why the fuck should Skyrim's?

[@chosenuwu]

aah thats amazing :D

[@moviemaker2011z]

Wow that sucks. But I'm sure he was glad to find that out though. My cousin was playing kingdom hearts on the PS3 and one of the default settings was no level up. He basically beat 3/4 of the game before we found out and he got so pissed he quit and never touched it again. My question is WHY IS NO LEVEL UP A DEFAULT SETTING?! Seems like a stupid idea to me.

[@melzz]

I'm actually really impressed with Rowan, it show that he never give up and work hard . He could be a true detective 😂

[@mgtowstanleyzoltanov9808]

18 hours

[@Madi_Ernar]

@@mgtowstanleyzoltanov9808 for a 5 minute quest!

[@JakobStrand]

Yeah, or a manager at a tech store. Would be great I think!

[@ForemostCrab7]

Even Batman uses Gadgets to figure things out, Rowan did it without it, what a lad!

[@DarkDragonRus]

Yeah, like in Witcher 3 you can actually finish the "investigations" parts by finding actual clues without highlighting theme with "Witcher sense", but it is way harder, especially in the tall grass.

[@Warriormon87]

The lack of using detective mode actually means that Rowan solving most of those quests was a legitimately impressive feat of detective work and deductive reasoning.

[@thundercat_pumyra]

More likely, since a 5 minute quest took 18 hours, he just wandered around until he accidentally stumbled on the correct location to continue the quest.

[@Bateluer]

@@thundercat_pumyra This. I think he said as such in the opening . . . 'lets just fan out and do a grid search as normal.'

[@Aquilenne]

I would say that it was probably more like trial and error

[@scooterthefrog]

Eighteen hours for a five minute quest isn't deduction, it's brute force. Still impressive but it's a feat of endurance, not logic.

[@turnerd20]

or he explored every inch of the game world lol

[@davidl5452]

The "A to jump" at the end killed me. Pro troll move.

[@mzak5204]

Especially with a PlayStation controller

[@KenSlypher]

I laughed so hard when Rowan said "Fuck you Ben" that I spit my food out hahaha.

[@davehillard1591]

And anyone who has played any game and a friend doesn't mock you for something of this caliber, doesn't truly have any friends

[@michaelmonstar4276]

It's more the reaction that did it for me.

[@michaelmonstar4276]

@@davehillard1591 True, I can vouch for that: No mocking ever.

[@Aventinium]

I first played Chrono Trigger on an emulator. The domed cities in the future had a fog effect covering the screen. The emulator I was using apparently couldn’t do transparency layers. So instead of a transparent fog, everything was covered in just a layer of opaque gray. I thought it was supposed to be that way. I ended up walking around blindly and mapping out the entire city on paper in order to get through it.

[@drachefly]

Same with parts of the ship graveyard in FF5. That one was made far more complicated by the presence of stairs, allowing you to walk under where you walked previously with no screen transition.

[@leoncoben6983]

The tenacity of gamers is amazing to me. Back when games did that kind of stuff on purpose we always went to extra mile to beat them. I remember a game, don't remember the title, my brother played and in one part you have to remember a bunch of passwords to get through an area. Normally there's an in-game notebook keeping track of all the info you need but he didn't know about it and went out of his way to constantly right down every password himself instead of just going to the Notes section of inventory screen. XD

[@fafnirchaos0711]

Lufia 2 - underwater shrine where you get the dualblade - depending on what version of the game you had would be a glitchfest of pixels - didn't know it at the time had to make my way towards the blade. Found out years later after playing it again on emulator that it was a glitch and not as intended.

[@Technichian462]

This was old school, and the year was 1986. I had an Apple IIe. A friend bought one because we enjoyed they hell out of it. He did bought it just for Utlima III. He borrowed my copy, and made a copy of it. The game came with a map of the games world that was the size of a poster. He mapped out the entire world, one step at a time. Duplicating the graphics in each "cell". He was done with it in about a week. Leveled up his character while doing it. And went back to the beginning to begin playing! He did it on "science graph paper" the graph paper with very little squares. It did look really cool. I was impressed.

[@MDKGunner]

@@drachefly I remember that glad it got fixed by a simple setting that most of the resolutions had at least back in the late 90's/early 2000's

[@voxar3206]

I feel a bit sorry for Rowan being “tricked” into botching the epic and probably world first “complete the game without using detective mode” achievement

[@heloxiii8894]

well tbh just complete the game write down every directions and retry the game with those directions

[@garrettdemoss9465]

@@heloxiii8894 or just look up a guide. That's pretty much what everyone else does...

[@audriusfrankonis6862]

@@heloxiii8894 Some games with similar features don't let you do things until you've got the clues the "proper" way. Honeywood seems... fairer, at least.

[@murray821]

@@garrettdemoss9465 people look up everything if it takes more than 2 minutes to figure it out

[@garrettdemoss9465]

@@murray821 agreed. I myself have pulled up guides on more then one occasion. I still wait until I'm ready to pull out my hair before I go that far though.

[@capp00]

I absolutely love these two and their total disbelief in each other, even after all these years and different games!

[@Bullet_t_raiN]

The OG VLDL commenter

[@capp00]

@@Bullet_t_raiN glad to still be here.

[@drakkolich5130]

Absolutely great creator! You helped me so much in getting better at 7D2D!

[@VivaLaDirtLeague]

These two are the best of friends 😅😅

[@ElSarto_ESP]

I'm actually impressed by the devs of the game. Apparently, they actually took the time to put clues around the investigation zones so the hardcore-inmersive players could figurate it by themselves

[@Landrassa1]

Or Rowan just kept increasing the size of the grid to be searched till it included wherever the bandits ended up and found them through the medium of getting shot at.

[@gemsdirtykitchen3658]

We should meet them one day :) Dev series was one of the goals of Kickstarter campaign :)

[@PainRack]

To be fair. That's partially doable in Witcher 3 too. Certain quests can be done without using Witcher senses by making some intuitive leaps and actually noticing the blood stains or tracks in game.

[@manjunathajakka8218]

@@PainRack Vldl showed this in witcher logic

[@Dargoneth]

I don't think so. If it took him 18 hours for Honeywood murder he most likely just ran all over the place until he stumbled upon it

[@user-bc7cb8uu7e]

That comment at the end saying A jumps totally got me. Once I was playing a first person shooter (can't remember which one), and I'd gotten more than half way through the game without realizing I could jump, when they suddenly put a short obstacle somewhere. I assumed it was intentionally unpassable, walked around looking for alternate routes, eventually came back trying to figure out how to destroy the obstacle, finally, frustrated, I hit a few buttons I hadn't tried before, and my character jumped. Turned out it was trivial to jump over. It wasn't even supposed to be a puzzle.

[@newyorker122]

To be fair, there's a ton of first person shooters where you can't jump. I mean, Turok, way back in the day was revolutionary in so many regards because you got to jump in that game.

[@jzekaron]

Reminds me of Portal 2, because if you go through the developer commentary sections one of them talks about a puzzle near the start of the final act of the game with an extremely simple solution which the devs put in purely because after several chapters of using the bounce goo and speed goo to traverse playtesters had forgotten they could actually just move through portals by regular walking.

[@austinwagner3231]

its rare that Rowan actually learns something in these videos, very satisfying to see him growing as a person after 15 years

[@SilentHotdog28]

But sometimes ben is the stupid one lol, it's funny when they do it the opposite way around.

[@ABQSentinel]

Remember when Ben had to teach Rowan to use his horse pocket?

[@VivaLaDirtLeague]

Growing having personal growth?! What?!?!

[@KwstasTsiropoulos]

Man i'm seriously impressed Rowan made it that far into the game, not giving up by doing the literal extra mile and by playing hardcode mode by default the entire time ahahaha

[@Terrkas0]

He probably just now lost the possibility to get an achievement called "The real detective" by never activating detective mode before finishing the mainquestline.

[@slovnicurling9808]

what game?

[@Nashleyism]

@@slovnicurling9808 Skycraft

[@MrMaradok]

And thus Rowan began the trend of “No Detective Mode” challenge runs

[@ColonelSandersLite]

Unfortunately, "detective mode" type mechanics mean that the designers aren't going to put in the effort to do things like actual clues or visual story telling or whatever. Why bother when the only thing anyone is ever going to see is some glowing footprints.

[@hcharlequinharlequincorps8394]

Right, things like big yellow bouncing exclamation marks over clues like "Broken Grass Stems" or huge bloom glows over "Scraped Tree Bark"

[@MrMaradok]

@@ColonelSandersLite True, but it won’t stop some dedicated few from trying

[@Steir12]

@@MrMaradok People who do all sorts of challenge runs usually well familiar with the game so lack of detective mode isn't big deal if you know where to go beforehand.

[@MrMaradok]

@@Steir12 Oh, I got it! It’s an optional Speed Run condition!

[@Migsterium]

Have a friend who had never played The Elder Scrolls before. After much insisting on my part he finally gave in and bought Skyrim -Special Edition-. Naturally, I didn't hear from him for a couple of months. When I checked up on him he had finished the Dragonborn and expansion, most of the guilds' questlines, and he was about to start the Dawnguard. When I asked him on the main storyline he said he'd put it off because he had to return to the Greybeard's temple and he didn't want to climb the mountain all over again. I asked him: "Why don't you just fast-travel there?" He dropped the controller to the floor, slowly turned to me with tears in his eyes and said: "You can fast-travel...?"

[@leoncoben6983]

I remember during my third playthrough to do a, "No Fast Travel" run since I had gotten used to it being disabled in Fallout 4 Survival and my god the amount of walking that's done in that game. The game already feels so long with Fast Travel and 5 years later I still haven't beaten that playthrough.

[@DeathnoteBB]

Stories like this make me wonder how you miss fast travel. I don’t know when it became first instinct to check if I can and how to fast travel, but surely SOME game introduced me to the concept. I feel bad for anyone who missed that lesson in gaming.

[@MuljoStpho]

@@DeathnoteBB Hmmm... Fast travel in games would go at least as far back as the N64. Ocarina of Time, using the songs to return to certain key locations. Other games in later generations (especially ones that really made a "large open world" their main selling point) would just connect it to the world map, with special icons marking the points that you can select for fast travel. Older games than that... Well, unless you're looking at something like Metroid or Castlevania a lot of the games older than that were built around a linear progression through stages / worlds where you always wanted to move forward, never backward. But even then, I guess we could take a look at something like the warp zones in the NES Mario games. Find the right hidden passage or blow a magic whistle and you get access to a set of three pipes to skip ahead to one of the next three worlds.

[@jonathannilsson8482]

Thing is, at least half the game in games such as Skyrim is all the random content you run into along the world that is not part of some big questline. If you just fast travel everywhere, you're missing out.

[@Anvilshock]

"controller" - 'nuff said.

[@teetbeezoon]

Dare I say that this one is unexpectedly flattering to Rowan's ego in some way, to have been that far without using such a helpful ability is a testament to his perseverance and hard work! He usually comes out as the noob in such circumstances, this time I'm quite impressed!

[@mjsvitek]

"I'm baffled, but I'm actually impressed" Dude was Sherlocking his way through the whole game up until now like an absolute boss. It's like playing Minecraft without realizing you can put blocks down as well 😂

[@Indian0Lore]

You can put blocks down?

[@afedorchak77]

you can get blocks?

[@benjaminstephens7524]

You guys have blocks?

[@davidcool5189]

What's Minecraft?

[@mhammer3186]

It's more of a monkey and a typewriter situation if it took him 18hrs to do a 5 minute quest.

[@Sergeant_Stammer]

Ben: "Total noob". Rowan: has gone the entire game accidentally on hardcore mode and is 4 levels above Ben

Yeah, I really wish games were made to be also playable without any HUD, minimap, map and detective modes. Even many AAA games fall apart without having icons on a map.

[@Hoch134]

@ Exactly. Even loot that isn't visible until you try to pick it up is very rare.

[@raka1996]

@ Well... FromSoftware games come close and bunch of CRPG

[@IQEGO]

@ Basically Kingdom Come: Deliverence on hardcore :D

[@nayber2352]

@ elden ring

[@caesarlandoco7526]

I love the respect they give each other once they realize how raw Rowen did the game. It definitely captures that feeling of "woah" when you realize how cool your friend it.

[@ramsolo8819]

Best part is that Rowan’s higher level than Ben, meaning he’s accomplished more the hard way than Ben has the normal way

[@daxcasselman8627]

Or that they've accomplished the same amount of game content but because rowan has to do so much extra unnecessary work he has gained more xp.

[@sjonnieplayfull5859]

Ben started later. He first tried playing mugger

[@niekesselbrugge1132]

Or he could’ve used the wiki

[@AmarothEng]

@@niekesselbrugge1132 Rowan might ask "what is wiki, wiki does nothing"

[@juzzfuzz0]

Because he can't run away he's the manager

[@Pronchonche]

For once Rowan wasn't mocked to death, I love how "old" concepts keep getting better

[@eugenefrolov1396]

Ben is obviously up to something at Playtech.

[@drizzitdude]

Yeah for real, he had to give credit where credit was due, guy brute forced his way to a HIGHER level

[@IamGrimalkin]

Come to think of it, how did he get so far in the game before without taking a horse out of his pocket like a normal person?

[@ku8721]

"Oh one other thing... A jumps" Yeah but that one glorious final line fulfilled the mockery quota!!!

[@dynomical.]

Skipping tutorial is indeed embarrassing, but missing a basic skill from the start and realizing it in the late game sends your soul flying

[@Juidodin]

a lot if Ragnarok Online Player do suddenly see something very interesting in the sky while they are whistling.

[@marktaylor6553]

I know I've done it at least once.

[@ipraytovodka]

being able to access stash via car trunk blew my mind in cyberpunk 2077...i beat the game before i realized it and instantly remembered when they introduced it

[@marcfruchtman9473]

Skipping the Tutorial... so classic.

[@DivaQuinzel]

@@ipraytovodka You can what?!

[@WakkasLove]

I actually love the antagonistic broship of these two.

[@FeloniousChihuahua]

this reminds me of the time i played a game to completion and didnt realize i had to level up manually- i thought the game was just really hard

[@rakakakarakakaka4907]

Which game

[@Semudara]

I know the Kingdom Hearts games on DS have a system like that; you have to remember to periodically hop into a certain menu and apply the "Level Up" pieces you've gotten (along with other kinds of pieces), or they'll have no effect whatsoever.

[@rakakakarakakaka4907]

Yeah FFX and FFXIII do this too, you need to manually level up in the sphere grid or crystal grid.

[@lilhanhan]

The first kingdom hearts was like that with me too. I was a little too to young to realise that you had to equip the HP bar skill once you unlocked it... It made the boss fights harder when you had no indication on how well you was doing!

[@kimudo]

This... THIS comment. I had a coworker explain that he used his credits to upgrade his skills with the latest update. I kind of looked at him and just admitted that I wasn't as hardcore into the game as he was. I've been playing, online, against other people for well over a year and never knew I could upgrade anything. I thought the credits were like achievement points. ...

[@sydtopia1]

I remember playing a game in the 90's where I missed the map making kit right at the start of the game so I did the maps by hand. Yeap, that happened.

[@Frank-j4b6q]

That sounds pretty interesting, did you save it? I think it would be amazing "ingame" item that you could keep irl as souvenir of sorts

[@arcanask]

If you've ever played any games by Cyan, you would ended up doing that as a matter of course. Along with a notebook or two of clues, notes and obscure references from some other completely unrelated books.

[@mangosteak]

been there

[@sjonnieplayfull5859]

I did the same with 'Secret of Evermore', but it had no ingame map feature. Drew the world map as I went, and maps of puzzles bit by bit. Later I learned that the haunted wood has a hint: there is a creature in the leaves of the trees overhead when you go in the right direction....

[@HH-hd7nd]

@Faceless one Well - it was actually very common in games from the 80ties and early 90ties to not having in-game maps at all. We all drew our maps by hand when playing games like The Bard's Tale games, the Wizardry games, Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, Black Crypt or the SSI-AD&D games like Pool of Radiance or the Dragonlance games. The Ultima games where a bit different - they had physical maps made of cloth or paper in the box. It's actually not that hard to understand how someone could miss that feature which was new in the late 90ties. We all where used to draw our maps by hand, it was common practice to have a block of paper and a pencil at hand to draw the maps and take notes.

[@shaun9625]

That little, “Aw fu*k you, Ben.” At the end was a perfect ending line, delivered excellently

[@HierophanticRose]

Rowan played the game on full immersion mode, he tried to deduce the clues from the game world and solve the mysteries. Sadly for him, the developers used detective mode as crutch and did not leave much in the game world or the quest text for him to go off of.

[@countluke2334]

2:27 "It's literally a core mechanic of the game" - "And I can see why!!!" That got me. Rowan never admits stuff like that usually, lmao.

[@azrani2023]

Exactly what startled and delighted me as well, haha

[@sgg3586]

I'm actually impressed he got to his level without using Detective Mode. 99% of games are practically brain-dead impossible to solve without it (though that's because instead of putting actual effort into making the mysteries solvable ingame, they just get lazy and go "Let's just give them a literal glowing trail, then we don't have to like build a whole murder-scene with actual clues".)

[@Littlebob1986]

Yeah I hate the must use ability, rather than being able to solve it

[@arcanealchemist3190]

for real. couldve modeled actual footprints and like, required gamers to track them with their eyes and brains and such. would be wwaaaayyy more immersive.

[@okeyhehe1728]

@@arcanealchemist3190 sadly the wider they reach into the market they more they realise average people just like immersive movies experiences :(

[@techsmechs2485]

In these games, "Detective work" = gimmick to create a Fischer-Price facsimile of solving mysteries. Nowhere close to actually solving the issue under your own steam.

[@Buglin_Burger7878]

@@arcanealchemist3190 There is issues with that on a fundamental level, what is the aspect ration and graphical quality of the device running the game? The footprints can very likely be literally impossible to distinguish. But even more so is everyone you track going to leave obvious footprints? That isn't exactly immersive. People cover their tracks and can be smart. Which means you'll have to learn advance tracking skills and estimations to figure out where someone is going. Sure it is "immersive" but so is actually dying irl when you die in game. In reality it just makes the game worse.

[@diggoran]

This happened to me this week while playing Yakuza 3. I was just about to finish the main quest and decided to wrap up the side stories first, and lo and behold, there’s a side story that unlocks a dojo where you learn advanced combat skills. I spent the ENTIRE GAME thinking the combat was so BORING, until right at the final challenge when I could suddenly use all the moves I had been missing.

[@psyqualiaxd]

yakuza 3 is still the worst one..... the only one i actually hate.

[@diggoran]

@@psyqualiaxd yeah I’m playing them all in order and Yakuza 4 is such a breath of fresh air so far

[@tavoknaza7086]

@@diggoran Yakuza 3 active bored me and the combat sucking at least you go to this dojo is still a black mark for me. You ve able to get through the game just as easy without that stuff....

[@LordTyph]

'not doing side stories until nearly beating the game' Well, there's your problem.

[@diggoran]

@@LordTyph 'decided to wrap up the side stories' is not the same as 'not doing side stories'. I only had 5 of the dozens of substories remaining when I decided to wrap up, and it turns out one of them was a lot more impactful on the gameplay than the others. Yakuza substories tend to just be fun little distractions, and any that are impactful are usually pretty obvious. Yakuza 3 just did a really bad job of making sure this particular substory was prioritized. It sounded super unimportant, the starting point was way in the least important corner of the map, and the substory menu didn't give any hints where to find the starting point. It was just a complete failure of game design, uncharacteristic of the other games in the series.

[@Avid.Binge.Watcher]

Man, I relate to this so much. When I started playing skyrim, I somehow didn't notice the combination to locked doors was on the backside of the key things. So all I did was do process of elimination and look around the environment for clues, which it didn't. It wasn't until I was in discord with my friends ranting, that they told me to look on the backside of the keys. I felt like such a idiot. They never let me forget it.

[@iriestorm1508]

I did the same thing. I probably went back and forth through Bleak Falls Barrow twenty times trying to find the combination for the door. I eventually just sat down and brute forced my way through. If I remember right, you have to turn all three rings twice, so I literally tried every possible combination. I did that for three of them before a friend finally explained it to me.......

[@PinkBroBlueRope]

That's okay fellas we were only kids when skyrim came out

[@guitarmama06]

@Derek Uy. Ah, you're talking about those claw keys that are for those round door mechanics thingies. Now it makes more sense 😂. The first time I played I had no idea where to go past that first main chamber in bleak falls Barrow. They had scared me with the talk of trolls and who knows what else was in there. I didn't want to fight trolls at level 1! I found out there were no trolls *after* watching a KZbinr do that quest at the beginning of their own journey through Skyrim.

[@VariisNailo]

Bro… no… please make it stop… all those awful memories I had nearly forgotten…

[@hypermaeonyx4969]

The book literally gives you a book saying the Answer is on the key or claw thingy. Either Bethesda sucks ass at making a good tutorial and giving information or Players are really really dumb Either option is pretty likely

[@Ebinisti]

Ahhh this was a good one! The realization and the fact that they were both thinking how in the hell Rowan did all that without the mechanic instead of just starting to argue got this scene so much further! Thank you!

[@nixeleth]

I love how Ben is both impressed and baffled by the amount of the game Rowan has slogged through--it reminds me of being a kid and watching my brother tick through every single possible combination on a lock in Myst, rather than just LOOKING AROUND THE DAMNED ISLAND FOR CLUES. He beat the game... eventually, but at what cost? Time. The cost was time. Hours of time. Days, really. Days of frustration and hilarity.

[@Fallen608]

You know the fire marble puzzle near the end of Riven? They give you 6 marbles but you only need 5 to solve it and you just leave the sixth out….. Yeah there are a lot of positions you can try before you realize that as a dumb kid 🥲

[@Escarii66]

'Just look behind you! Look right there at that rock!!' '1774... 1775... 1776... nah its cool this is quicker. 1777... 1778'

[@squee599]

Reminds me of my partner's first lvl 60 in WoW. He was a druid and he stayed in human form the entire time, hit things with his staff, healing himself until they died. He didn't know any better. Impressive really!

[@acelilumelody4445]

@@squee599 omg i went through the first 45 levels of wow not realising i had to buy the spell upgrades as i levelled up so i went through most of 15-45 thinking it was the hardest game id ever played until i teleported to moonglave and saw a quest for a cool staff.

[@simonw3858]

Lol I couldn't find the 3 digit combination in a game once so i did the same thing and brute forced it. It only took me hours but it was honestly quicker that it would have been for me to figure out the annoyingly obscure way they hid the code (which i found out later). Fun times!

[@SquirrelOfTheNight]

This is exactly how I felt when I didn't know about "sharpening" in Monster Hunter World and was completely losing my mind because taking the monsters down (with an obviously dull weapon) was taking so long I literally ran out of time on multiple missions. My friends didn't understand why I was ragequitting so they decided to go over some gameplay with me and when I asked them "Ok but what is THAT meter for?" they were like "Oh. That explains a lot." 😅

[@Aeroldoth3]

I'm curious about this. If you see symbols/displays in games and you don't know what they mean, do you usually just ignore them and NOT try to find out what they mean? Do you do this even when you're really struggling with a game and find it impossibly hard? Do you ignore game manuals or online guides? I ask because I always read how to play a game before I start, and if there's something I don't understand (an item, a feature, a move) I'll look it up. I can't understand someone being fine with not understanding a game 100% and even ragequitting over a game being too hard without considering that maybe you're missing something.

[@LordTyph]

Man, must suck to have to waste time sharpening your weapons. -This post is sponsored by the Bowgun Gang

[@jaydenwilton5279]

@@Aeroldoth3 knowing 100% of a game makes the game super cringe though. Discovering things by yourself is one of the best parts of gaming.

[@Aeroldoth3]

@@jaydenwilton5279 I see a huge difference between exploring a game's world, and learning the game's rules.

[@NeinKyori]

@@Aeroldoth3 Seriously I don't understand either. How do people ignore an obvious bar that'd been depleted and did not refill back automatically? That's like spending all your mana bar and then wondering why can't you cast spell.

[@gintonic9967]

I’m actually surprised that Rowan is somehow still a higher level than Ben

[@grom4games]

Probably his vast exploration when doing investigative type quests...

[@10503.]

Probably because spending 18 hours doing a 5 minute quest makes you run into a ton of enemies

[@thelonggame9166]

He got extra XP for completing quests without detective mode. It's all part of Ben's plan to catch up in XP!

[@timawaviking526]

I love how Rowan is still sceptical with tips and pointers Ben keeps telling him when he's never wrong. Dude never learns.

[@ForestX77]

Well Rowan did break the game twice.

[@CursedEgg]

@@ForestX77 ooh can you link both videos?

[@CursedEgg]

@@ForestX77 I don't think I saw him break the game twice I believe he only did it once when trying to pet a dog

[@ed3839]

@@CursedEgg The second time is when he stepped over the log, then clipped through the world.

[@ForestX77]

@@ed3839 That was the first time. Second time was when he pet a dog.

[@slebbeog]

Rowan is my spirit animal. So many games have been needless grind for so many hours, until some mate of mine comes and "oh you didn't know x?" and I'm always equally ashamed, relieved and grateful. lol

[@yodawgzgaming4416]

Rowan failing to recognize core mechanics is very on point for him in d&d in particular 😂

[@VivaLaDirtLeague]

VERY on point 😂

[@matteosberna735]

while also being the D&D lawyer

[@Gottaculat]

I think it's cool some games let you disable highlighted clues for a more hardcore experience. One such game is theHunter: Call of the Wild. All animal tracks are dynamically created, and remain for quite some time, including trampled grass. The highlighting system simply illuminates those tracks, but they remain with highlights disabled. Pretty dang challenging.

[@edwardrhoads7283]

This was totally me in a Mario game. Mario RPG or something like that. Was playing it emulated on my pc and not with a controller so totally forgot about the power jumps. Got pretty far until there was a jump you could not make normally and had to go to an online chat room to ask how to get past it. Got a lot of "how did you get that far not knowing that" comments. Totally like this sketch. Finished the game pretty easy after that.

[@schwarzerritter5724]

I am pretty sure there are a lot of "no action commands" playthroughs out there.

[@Al-cs7pt]

I had the same story with Commander Keen 2 (I think 2). I didn't know you could conjure a pogo stick by hitting a certain button (I think iy was J). Somehow made it through many levels till I got somewhere where a bigger jump was the only way to pass the level. Took me watching demos and logically coming to a conclusion that I need the pogo stick for a combined jump, then found it by trying all the keys. Yeah, I didn't have an instruction and I was like 9, took me months till I had my a-ha moment. I know exactly how Rowan feels 😅😅😅

[@kurtisharen]

"Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars" was the first RPG I ever played. I got all the way to the final boss before realizing how to equip weapons and armor to any of my characters. I absolutely loved that game, and I started from the beginning after beating it. Game was a lot easier when you aren't making Mario try to take everything down with his bare hands.

[@noam242]

Budokai emulated on laptop, but the laptop could only register 3 keys qt once so alot of moves i couldnt do...

[@schwarzerritter5724]

@@noam242 The joys of gaming with a cheap keyboard.

[@bigjake360t]

This reminds me of a story I heard in GameStop many years ago. Apparently this guy and his friends were playing one of the nes Final Fantasies, and doing quite well. They got about halfway through the game before realizing something. Although they had acquired new equipment they never actually equipped it.

[@DeathnoteBB]

Honestly that doesn’t even surprise me. For some reason it always was confusing how to equip new stuff in that sort of game

[@Dumbird0]

I can understand that. I was the same when I played my first tales game

[@RW77777777]

most early FF titles didn't have big gear leaps you got all your power from leveling and new spells and if your team is all casters anyways... you just rest more

[@moosechuckle]

I love how they go from bickering old couple to best friends in a game within one line of dialogue. Also, anyone who’s played RPGs for any amount of time felt this in their soul.

[@NerdyDJ95]

Ben’s tip for jumping at the end had me rolling

[@DaddyCaedisVA]

"Oh by the way... A... Jumps."

[@morganjenkins8464]

“Oh f**k you Ben”

[@JaneXemylixa]

"So what you did just then is called jumping... you... you just jumped..."

[@Dethneko]

"You might have a slight case of... severe brain damage."

[@sirennightshade4977]

As someone who's missed core mechanics of games before, I feel this. Deeply.

[@jacobfaro9571]

I remember playing StarCraft and not knowing you could do attack move. Did entire campaign before learning that. Lots of save scum.

[@eugenetswong]

I find it impressive that people get so far in games. It's frustrating, when it costs us rewards. Good on you for your persistence, though.

[@realglutenfree]

Skyrim was one of my first video games. It took me a long time to learn about some basic game mechanics

[@mnArqal93]

Indeed, I've played games where I've only learnt some of these core mechanics a bit later on. Or I've even been doing something wrong. There's some tutorials that can sometimes get missed or accidentally skipped. Though some tutorials are bad due to devs designing it poorly.

[@diegovicente8756]

I almost finished dark souls without knowing that you can parry

[@tonyod.1161]

As an old gamer, Rowan's method is way more immersive. This detective mode helps too much, and basically just drag the players through the quests. :D

[@Hereistos]

That reminds me of the guy who let his father play, I think it was Counterstrike back in the days. His father had a good time and wrecked a good amount of kills.. until he asks his son if there was a way to get another weapon. He had been playing with the starting pistol all the time. Probably an urban legend, but reminded me a lot about this clip. Thanks for the memories, guys ;)

[@Alex-on-youtube]

Probably, but when I hadn't played for a while I'd start again only using the pistol til my skills sharpened again. So there might be some truth to it.

[@andreaslindahl9687]

Yep, that would be me..

[@mgsxmike]

I find it hard to believe. Even if you don't know how to buy a gun, you can automatically pick one up from a dead enemy.

[@imnotaweenie8223]

theres a story of a dude who played 900 hours of DOTA 2 fully zoomed in because his apple magic mouse kept the game zoomed in.

[@scrojay]

LOL this is me in any game with complicated controls. I always forget how to use like half of the abilities I have because I played the tutorial right before bed and I wind up doing everything the hard way.

[@avrilfan0521]

Like playing a game all the way through without using the toggle map feature.

[@slimnagirac3393]

It’s eerie how accurate this is to something I’ve experienced. In Genshin Impact, there’s a thing called Elemental Sight that shows directions of elemental trails, and I met someone who is Adventure Rank 30 who didn’t know that was a feature of the game

[@kk6doc]

Hahahah, I've had the EXACT same experience

[@Alpha.Phenix]

Well the game does try to remind you sometimes by having Paimon say ''something, something, use Elemental Sight''...but the way to activate the thing is god awful, at least on mouse & keyboard (think it might have been easier on controller). Either you activate your mouse cursor and click on the Elemental Sight icon; and yes there is an icon for it on your hud...or you hold, for a while, and keep holding the middle mouse button... utterly terrible, it is not at all the player's fault for forgetting about it; the design for it's activation is just plain bad. Very few games actually justify middle mouse *click* ...those being Magicka & Magicka 2 and I can not think of any others. The keyword here is *click* , you should never have to hold middle mouse, this ought be common sence!

[@Mistform]

Yeah I was going to say Elemental Sight, you use it sooo rarely that I've forgotten about it many times.

[@Mistform]

@@Alpha.Phenix I play on mobile and it's sucks there too, tiny button on top of the screen away from all combat buttons.

[@TinyTalesBookClub]

@Allison DaCruz well damn, don't forget A jumps :D

[@JBS_Gaming]

I was thinking Ben is going to say "Just click ALT+F4" on the second time 🤣🤣

[@deotic]

That would've been hilarious if Rowan did it, though they were using a controller

[@JBS_Gaming]

@@deotic Ture man, and yea, forgot they were using a controller, my bad

[@timthorson52]

I definitely have done that in a few online games, and seen the teammate suddenly dissapear..dissappear... worth it everytime.

[@exzobree9158]

Love to see the skit where Ben tricked someone by clicking ALT+F4 and see their reactions once they log in back.

[@cjnf11]

If you'd manage to CLICK Alt + F4 that'd be hella impressive. And probably kinda spooky.

[@FractalMelody]

Rowan/Ben skits rock! It's obvious that these two guys have mastered the art of passive-aggressive comradery. Well played, gentlemen!

[@nairocamilo]

The "A, jumps" line at the end is proof enough!

[@shadowknight1121]

@@nairocamilo savage. 🤣

[@VivaLaDirtLeague]

This is true friendship 😂

[@jonosteven6364]

I didn't realise that in Horizon Zero Dawn, you can reprogram the machines to fight beside you as allies. I was so confused by the corruption storyline that stopped you from taking over particular machines, as it felt like every other encounter. I figured it out after doing it by accident, after I had practically finished the game

[@natchu96]

...but you literally need to do that once to progress the story? First thing you do for the mainquest after taking down the first Corruptor is to override a mount and ride out of town

[@jonosteven6364]

@@natchu96 i thought it was just mounts for some reason, not all other machines. I'm certainly not proud of that one

[@g80gzt]

@@jonosteven6364 You genuinely have to outright mute the game blur it so you can't read and bruteforce it to not realize "OH STEALTH TO MACHINE POKE IT MAKE IT FRIEND"

[@kentho7093]

Gotta give Rowan respect for playing the game without detective mode and not giving up.

[@MrJonline]

I actually miss the times when you actually had to investigate and read quest objectives really good. Rowan must be an oldtime gamer like me

[@MrDARKJAK]

I miss that in Morrowind most of all. I hate Skyrims compass, because i end up just staring at the top of the screen

[@lytsedraak]

Skycraft is known for making it a little too easy sometimes. Like in that skit with Greg pointing out the clues while the adventurer wanted to find them himself.

[@cenciende9401]

There are usually options to turn off quest markers, hints, highlighted items etc still but you could probably count the amount of people who actually do that on one hand! I played System Shock 2 for the first time around 2015 and having no markers or real map or any help at all was a shock in itself, still finished it though somehow lol

[@animebrigade2874]

Would not remotely be the same even if games did bring that kinda feature back. People will just google/youtube guides to the locations once they get fed up with being lost on a quest for 5-10mins

[@lmcgregoruk]

Well a lot of the time they're called anti-frustration features, since people don't generally like spending hours not knowing what they're supposed to be doing or where they're supposed to be going.

[@Remrie]

This reminds me of when I had to beat the Shadow Temple in Ocarina of Time without the Lens of Truth. I couldn't find it after hours of searching under the windmill, so I just gave up and did the temple without it. That was in 2002, or 03 or so. before I had internet or friends or any game manual. For many years everyone thought what I did was impossible until speed runners started doing it after they had the temple memorized.

[@akselmc01]

This was how it feeled to play the witcher 3 as a colorblind person, before realizing it has a colorblind mode 😂

[@rhys4209]

Was hoping someone was in the same boat!

[@batman106]

Every game has that feature

[@justindavis8104]

Oh my good God it has a colorblind mode? I have beat the game more than once and just accepted I would always be running around like an idiot looking for clues.

[@urtoryu_dy_althraidn]

Help me on that please, I'm coloblind and I saw that option and thought "I'm seeing things fine for now, I'll togle that if I ever run into something I can't see well" and left it there, then continued playing and eventually came up the smell detection sections of tracking, which I couldn't see well at all (gave up a couple quests because of that even), but can't find the option again for some reason even after minutes of serching. Where is that option? I've been looking for a pretty long time now...

[@aether610]

@@urtoryu_dy_althraidn If you're still trying to find it, I believe you have to go to Options while in the Main Menu to find it. At least, that's the only time I've recalled seeing it as an option.

[@profchaos91]

Ben is literally the MASTER of getting the best of any other character. Is a precious jolly in an already stacked deck of cards that is vldl. Love how he interacts with everyone else, and that final jump is *chef's kiss*

[@SweboySMM2]

Ben being a good buddy, throwing in some light mocking afterwards🤣

[@mistahanansi2264]

I always love the Ben (game mechanics) vs Rowan (reality) arguments 😆

[@ChanceTM]

Classic Rowan 😎

[@aaronbatitis2650]

Ben vet vs Rowan noob hahahaa love this skit, hope it continues

[@MatthewSmith-sz1yq]

So, my dad told me this story about my grandma, apparently she nearly beat this old game (I want to say Wolfenstein, but not positive), all without knowing how to save. He only found this out because he was visiting, and she asked him how to get past this part she was stuck on (it was one of the last levels). He asked if she could show him, and she goes "oh, it will take a while to get to that part." This lady was restarting the entire game every single time, and not only that, she had played through parts of the game likely hundreds, if not thousands, of times. She only got stuck when she encountered a difficult boss pretty far in, and this meant that each time she had tried to beat that boss, she would have needed to play for hours beforehand. He asked her how long she had been trying to beat that boss, and she responded "about a month now, I think." He didn't have the heart to break it to her, so instead, he bought her a different game, and showed her the "new" save system in that game. To this day, nobody has told her, but we are all secretly in awe at the level of patience, time, and determination she put into that game. Just imagine spending over a month, trying to beat one boss, and each attempt required hours of work beforehand. It's both endearing, but also a little bit terrifying, when you think about it.

[@Stratelier]

Not unlike trying to beat an arcade game.

[@ThunderTheBlackShadowKitty]

Was it Return to Castle Wolfenstein? It's from 2001. That game's bosses can be a bitch if you don't know what you're doing.

[@erischaos]

I grew up with Nintendo and I think there were a few games where I couldn't save... in fact, the reason we eventually broke the console was we were in the middle of a game we couldn't save, our parents told us we were going to leave the house for just "10 minutes" so we hit pause. (I was confused why my sister and I couldn't be left alone for 10 minutes since I was left home all the time when I was sick.) Three hours later we returned to find a dead Nintendo console.

[@changer_of_ways_999]

I remember being so excited when Sonic 3 came out with game saves. Sonic 1 and 2 didn't have it. Since I was only allowed to play for an hour at a time as a kid, I had to secretly leave the Sega on hoping noone would turn it off or pull out the power cable.

[@coffeeaddict9605]

That last line was the essence of friends riffing eachother.

[@tuf-gg7ui]

This reminds me of my first time playing breath of the wild. After you learn to deflect guardian lasers in the tutorial, i somehow completely forgot about it, and played the whole game without deflecting lasers. I was doing my best to dodge them and typically meleeing guardians to death, avoiding and running from the flying guardians. Then finally at the end in the battle against Gannon i accidentally did it on my second attempt at the battle, went wtf was that, and hated myself for how much more difficult i made the game for myself by forgetting such an important mechanic. Second playthrough went much easier.

[@aethere4l]

.... I'm just now learning of this mechanic.

[@xerkas4]

YOU CAN DEFLECT GUARDIAN LASERS!

[@hands743]

This was so me in Elden ring. I had already explored all of Liurnia of the lakes and most of Caelid without finding the map for either place. I had no idea the traces of road on the greyed-out map led directly to the location of that area's map. In my defense, maps weren't a big thing in the other FromSoftware games I've played. (DS1-3) I went back and discovered so much stuff that I had missed while galivanting around aimlessly.

[@VivaLaDirtLeague]

Good work! That’s crazy!

[@edgeelric4245]

I am playing Elden ring right now... thank you so much. I just figured out our mount could double jump when a friend asked why I wasnt doing it to get up a rocky cliff faster.

[@ValbrandrLeonhardt]

@@edgeelric4245 just remember that certain weapons make it so you can't double jump if you fell off the ledge instead of jumped off. Notably polearms, and some greatswords

[@mockkingbird13]

Oh god...I am not going to admit how long it took me to figure out how to sprint on minecraft. Or farm. My first survival world I was basically playing on hard mode due to not knowing how to do so many basic things, plus i spawned into a giant badlands so I was living on rotten flesh until I figured out how to fish and there were no sheep or villages so no bed for sleeping. For real though...not being able to sprint sucked real bad and I didn't even realize it, I just thought I was going at max speed the whole time until I was looking up how to turn off auto-jump and I saw that there was a sprint option. So amazed when I did my first sprint, I was basically flying by my standards. My sister making fun of me. Me reminding her that she can't figure out how to drive a boat.

[@VegetaLF7]

I had a friend who didn't know about sprinting in Skyrim for ages. He'd just jog along at regular running pace and that was it until he saw me play and noticed I was going faster than he could.

[@emrahalien2972]

I mean.. a Boat is more complex.

[@redt3788]

I just love the ending that was hilarious "oh one other thing a jumps" "f*ck you ben"

[@Jenachy]

Especially considering A and R3 are not present on the same controller lol

[@nicholaskehler9169]

It would have been so hilarious if Rowan was genuinely baffled by the fact that jumping was a thing in the game as well.

[@gisellegrey5343]

@@Jenachy Every time there's a good joke, in order to set the balance, there's always that unpleasant person with the "aCtUaLlY..." (let me actually you, the A button and R3 are a key button on logitech controllers for PC, maybe for xbox aswell)

[@darksunrise957]

@@Jenachy Xbox controller...

[@LuriTV]

@@darksunrise957 R3 on XBox-Controller is called RS

[@bradencosier80]

And then there are games that overload you with mechanics and controls so that you inevitably forget half of them.

[@sonalita_]

I had to play the witcher 3 combat tutorial like 3 times. They throw so much at you so fast. I did end up loving that game, one of my few 100%s

[@RancorSnp]

I'm very impressed with this game. They made the detective mode a core mechanic of the game BUT it is actually POSSIBLE to progress without using it. Most games nowadays just go "the player will use this, so there is no reason to give ANY information about the quest to the player"

[@Silamon2]

He said it took him 18 hours to do a quest that should have only been 5 minutes. He wanted to do a grid search to find the bandits because the game gave no other information to find them than the detective mode. That means he was just power gaming to find the answer without information, checking every rock for activation prompts until something happened. I wouldn't call that any better than what most games nowadays do....

[@evilwizardington]

@@Silamon2 I woudln't call powergaming to be looking in all the map, randomly, without any idea of what to do.

[@Silamon2]

@@evilwizardington It's more in the way he did it. He just powered through everything instead of doing it the right way. It's like brute forcing a combination lock.

[@VivaLaDirtLeague]

Rowan has basically being playing in EXTRA hardcore mode and didn’t even know

[@TaylorWeston]

As someone who found dozens of mythics from ESO's scrying system without the use of antiquarian eye tool...I feel this one in my soul.

[@MP16948]

This is by far my favorite format you do. I must have watched Horse Pocket a hundred times and it’s still funny when he makes that “HOLYPOOPITWORKED” face 😂

[@jcjev1641]

Horse pocket was indeed really epic

[@arturoaviles7587]

i love the potion flask one

[@Vaelandria]

Horse Pocket is to this day my favorite VLDL skit and is the one I choose when showing new people their videos

[@12HitCombo]

@@arturoaviles7587 Yes! Ben crunching down painfully on a glass potion bottle and acting like it was completely normal was hilarious

[@NinjaFlibble]

I always love real world physics vs game physics 🤣

[@theyearwas1473]

Years ago I played a game and I had no idea there was a flashlight feature on the character, for a game completely in the dark that would have been wonderful to have known.

[@Dethneko]

Giving "blind playthrough" a whole new meaning.

[@aidenbooksmith2351]

What's the game?

[@MourerMoulin]

Probably Doom 3 or F.e.a.r.

[@corriehingston6744]

I once played a game where I kept dying in the cold and then I learnt I had to go into anything that wasn't cold such as a cave, a non ice dungeon etc. Took me forever to beat the giant bosses because you succeeded and then died on your last giant, you had to restart that quest again. I learnt to stay away from them (ie. not using an NPC with a sword. Use an NPC with a bow and arrow. Whilst the other characters kept dying, I would run around like crazy and when the others came back alive, I continued the battle.Those giants were the hardest and not even the final final boss. The final final boss was actually easy but then again, maybe that was because I had spent so much time beating smaller enemies so that I just levelled up

[@zerid0]

That final "Oh fuck you Ben" is how I feel every time a tutorial tells me to press a to jump or wasd to move around 😆

[@yan3066]

"Use the mouse to look around". "If you health level hits 0, you're dead". 😉

[@alex05k]

I've been watching all your videos for about 2 years and really enjoyed them. I've been having to rely on the KZbin algorithm to put these videos in my feed. I had no idea that subscribing was an option. This makes it so much easier to see your new content!

[@macmcleod1188]

Now see, at the end, I expected Rowan to casually use another core mechanic which Ben was completely unaware of.

[@NoName_NoTitle]

In Black Flag I didn't realize your ship had mortars until like halfway through the game. I think the tutorial prompt appeared at the same time the characters were having a dialogue, so I had to choose what to pay attention to.

[@AwakenedAvocado]

Bruh me too

[@DivineBeaver]

During my first playthrough I didn't know you could fast travel... I sailed around the globe i dont even want to think about that tragic piece of history that exists in my brain.

[@TheShadowofevolution]

This is why I replay tutorials multiple times, so I make sure I completely understand the basics. Not using even a single early game basic skill can make even simple tasks difficult.

[@Scientist_Salarian]

Yeah, Black Flag’s tutorial is basically just like “Well, hopefully someone on KZbin can help you with this. Good luck!”

[@franc8279]

New achievement: "Beat the game without using detective mode"

[@dylanmonk6732]

Least believable mechanic is the boys not pilfering right away

[@censay9344]

I recently took to the saying: "If you want me to talk to you, do not put loot around you." (while leaving the "help adventurere npc" writhing in pain on the floor for about 5 minutes)

[@disbelief3911]

At this stage in the game they are already disillusioned by all the piles of gold and weapons that are there purely for decorative purposes.

[@sparkselm173]

Probably nothing there that was made lootable.

[@BeheadedKamikaze]

You've allowed me into your home? Great. I'm going to have a look around and take anything that looks like it might be even slightly valuable - as is my custom. You can watch if you want, but don't get in my way: if anything surprises me, or even for no reason at all, I am likely to kill things - as is my custom.

[@Anti_Woke]

@TallDryGlass You're more than a man ... [Heroic pose. Dramatic music] You're an RPG player!

[@MaxOutrider]

This scenario is very close to home. I play with a group of people that simply don't read onscreen text and spend most of the time asking how things work and where to find things that have already been explicitly spelled out for them. I have also played with people that do read the text but then don't really understand it. They played the first 20 levels of an MMORPG having never equipped any new gear that they were given.

[@MisfitSass]

I feel this pain deep within my core, I DM a D&D game, and over half the irl and in-game problems/mistakes/misunderstandings would of been solved instantaneously if they just for once read a line of text.

[@jabalisearcot]

Yeah. Been there. Lost hours and entire days cause I didn't read some text somewhere or missed a dialogue in a long cut scene Who knows. maybe Rowan had a better game experience. A true immersion

[@Frost_Saber]

Not really great tho when the game assumes you have a hand hold feature, for example try playing Skyrim with the quest markers off, so many quests give you basically no info.

[@mattspurrell6572]

im so happy this channel randomly got recommended in my feed a couple weeks back

[@eclairamisu2517]

This skit is the most amazing example why tooltips exist. They are the answer to never underestimating how stupid a player can possibly be. 🤣

[@nathanielbass771]

or actual tutorials instead of one sentence that disappears forever if you accidentally skip it XD (double button press or just trying to get out of conversation that's been going on forever XD )

[@theultimatederp3288]

"This skit is the most amazing example why tooltips exist." Tooltip: Did you know tha- Rowan: SKIP, SKIP, SKIP, SKIP...

[@Pnaraasi94]

To my experience the most clueless people never read tooltips. Hence why they're so clueless.

[@richardpagel6959]

So "stupid" that he was able to solve the cases even without a newby-quest-trail... 😉

[@kokocaptainqc]

@@thecookiemaker so im guessing 14 was your very first FF then? limit break is a thing in the series as a whole so most fans now of it already

[@Jalabhar_Xho]

Thank you for telling us about this ' comment section' thing, folks. I've been missing out, and now that I've learned about it, I'm impressed by how much it improves the interactive aspect of the KZbin gameplay.

[@ulfjohnsen6203]

They didn't mention it in the video, but you can also "like" a video by pressing the tumbs up

[@jigSAW1059]

This has been one of my most favourite videos you guys have done as I've literally had this happen to me in a game on time and I felt like such an idiot when I found out a core mechanic in the game that would have made getting to the end of the game so much easier.

[@amirshlomolavan]

Not only is it sad that things like this happened to me so much, but especially on the right thumbstick, which sometimes actually never did something

[@DeathnoteBB]

Never assume a button does nothing until you’ve actually pressed it. And even then apparently some buttons are contextual

[@amirshlomolavan]

@@DeathnoteBB ikr, i mean, i cpuld check the controls list but who does that exactly?

[@saraheverett181]

Can definitely relate! My husband mocked me like this for playing the first Mass Effect game all the way through without realising you could use cover 🤦😒😂

[@aidanmagill6769]

How do you play Mass Effect without snapping into cover unintentionally? Is that the remaster or something?

[@Okinawatrip]

I think it was in Mass Effect, possibly even the 2nd one where I noticed it was possible to aim a weapon.

[@cdgonepotatoes4219]

Playing the true WW1 officer's experience: to take cover is to cower, show no fear in front of the enemy. I also ignore cover at the bedt of my abilities, but it's because I have a personal slight against cover shooters.

[@thewarmwind6171]

Honestly understandable in the first Mass Effect. The cover system didn't really factor much into the gameplay, that game was more about throwing numbers downrange at enemies while they threw numbers back at you. Was good for it's time but my god that game has not aged well. If you were talking about ME2 or 3 on the other hand...

[@Leo.23232]

@@thewarmwind6171 hard disagree

[@diogoribeiro7009]

Ben has had the greatest progression ever. From early videos to now, wow... amazing...

[@michael_pilot]

That's right, throughout all of the videos he appears in, we see him portray a wide variety of emotions/behaviours very well. He is very good

[@pyttpytts2690]

it was after he killed all does puppies

[@MiskonceptioN]

@@pyttpytts2690 all does puppies?

[@thegreengreenie5879]

@@pyttpytts2690 aw man, we never talk about the puppies....

[@andrewj1754]

Outrageous!

[@TheSnowdogsShorts]

I relate to this, as I have missed game mechanics. One funny one was in GTA V. There was a collectible event, in which you had to search certain areas. It was taking me ages to find each item. My girlfriend said but it’s easy, all I had to do was follow a sound. It didn’t matter what I did, I couldn’t hear the sound. It turns out, that the sound was very high pitched, I have partial deafness, and cannot hear high pitched sounds. So I literally could not hear the sound. My girlfriend was impressed that I was actually finding the items, even though I couldn’t use the game mechanic.

[@vojtechjanda9684]

Well, that's just bad game design. Audio cues can be great but using a very high pitched sound kinda sucks for a lot more people than just those with some hearing impairment like you have. Really hope there's at least some accessibility setting that allows players to modify the pitch or (more likely since it'd cover more users' needs) add visual markers on the screen. (The issue of finding out that there IS something like that that you have to circumvent with accessibility settings in the first place would probably persist, but...)

[@TheSnowdogsShorts]

@@vojtechjanda9684 one thing that helps me with audio cues, is turning off in game music.

[@nathangamble125]

@@TheSnowdogsShorts *cues

[@TheSnowdogsShorts]

@@nathangamble125 You are quite correct. I had just woken up. 😝

[@TheDutie]

Friend of mine played multiple rouges in wow got them all on max Level and one time he compmained that his right Hand hurts always after a few hours due to that constant lmb Spam... it was on this day he found out that auto attack is a thing and you don't need to manually klick on an enemy every time you want to hit him with one of your daggers... A few weeks later he found out that you can track Ressources on the map he had high lvl in alchemy and collected all his herbs by scanning the ground anywhere he goes ... Collecting herbs in the un goro crater must have been a pain in the ass for him

[@Frosty_tha_Snowman]

I love their reaction.. it's exactly what goes on inside an individual gamers head, but portrayed between 2 friends

[@CoryRayGordonMusic]

This type of thing actually happened to me once I spent a lot of time doing things the difficult way, not knowing something was there to make it easier that I didn't know existed.

[@eternalpaladingaming5575]

The fact is just realized detective mode and he is a higher lvl then him proved thats a badass

[@theDemolisher13]

To be fair I remember playing "James Cameron's Avatar: The Game" from start to finish without realizing my character had abilities they could've used. I only found out on the second play through that I discovered them and my word the game got stupidly easy once I learned how to use abilities.

[@followeroftheprince]

It is funny when you power your way through a game and only once you're most of the way, if not more, through the game when you suddenly realize there was a mechanic you just never knew about that makes the game leagues easier. It's like, "Well... that would have been, very nice to have known sooner." And now you have to decide whether to make it out as though it was intentional and just keep not using it, or try to fix your play style to add in this "new" feature

[@PolevayaMysh]

That happens to me all the time. I can go through the whole game and only in the fight with the final boss realize there's some obvious and very useful feature I never noticed before.

[@QruisS]

TFW you dont even bother using detective mode because it takes the fun out of looking for clues

[@PM-ut6sy]

You know it’s going to be good when these two drop the “what are you doing?“ 😄

[@SandraOnCloud9]

I just love these two acting together!

[@ryanodom6101]

One of my favorite series y’all do. Ben and Rowan’s dueling incredulity about these things is hilarious. It’s even better because Ben is constantly skipping stuff, so he’d be the one more likely to miss tutorial type scenes. Keep going!

[@princessthyemis]

describing it as "dueling incredulity" is brilliant! This is my only exposure to New Zealand humor, as well, so I can only assume that this is what New Zealand humor IS. XD