Getting lost in video games

[Erana]

As the title suggests, this is a thread in which you state in which games -and how often- you get lost.

I, myself, have never played an RPG without becoming hopelessly confused at least thrice. My personal best example of this is Final Fantasy 7. I became so confused and disoriented that, compounded with the discs themselves containing read errors, I am at level 43 and have just now gotten the Tiny Bronco.
I blame many inept excursions on poor game designs, (Seriously, who would know to go BACK to a casino in the middle of the desert right after they recieved a broken biplane?) but I must admit, I am generally prone to disorientation. Such examples of my own fault are me having wasted an hour in God of War because I overlooked a rather blatant lever, or the cosmic error that is me playing Adventure games.

 

[Dr. Sean]

When I used to play World of Warcraft I decided to go on a little adventure.. On my first day of playing. I went from being on the orc starting zone, to Ironforge. At level 1... Yup, official blonde day. (note I knew what none of these locations were at the time).

 

[Sniper_Zegai]

The Water Temple in Orcarina of Time was murder but incredibly satisfying once I did it. There have been a few moments where I simply did'nt know where to go. Cant remember any except Zelda but it happens alot.

 

[L4Y Duke]

Does anyone remember that Portal area where you had to use the turret to blow open the pipe?

Yeah, I didn't think of that. I ended up getting really frustrated and just getting piles of electronics from the room the turret was in to build myself a staircase out of there.

It was only playing through with the commentary on that I realised the pipe could be blown.

 

[KaynSlamdyke]

It was only playing through with the commentary on that I realised the pipe could be blown.

I think that happened to at least half of all Portal players.
It definately happened to me.

I tend to get lost in a lot of games nowadays - but they're getting better. Minimaps and Compasses are godsends, and when level designers do thier jobs correctly I can correctly identify which part of North Korea or San Francisco or Space Age Venice I currently am sitting in, and can navigate easily back to AN Headquarters or Los Angeles or my Lighthouse no problems.

Getting lost because of arbitrary plot points that I need to spend a good age researching (such as the topic starter's issue finding that Dio has the Key to the Temple of the Ancients) is a pain, but a bearable one. It's an RPG - if you're not following the 'talk to everyone' rule there's something wrong. Not saying it's not a stupid design choice, but it's something we expect from the genre.

Letting your users get lost (or explore) is a good way of increasing shelf life to a game - if they're lost and know they're lost and enjoy the fact they're lost because they know they're meant to be lost at this point (like navigating to a new place, or being in a Silent Hill game) it's good. After all, everyone like a good journey to see new things and explore places. But if they're lost because you're purposely making things vague, or have designed the game so you need to do X Y and Z before Bridge A repairs itself and you've not explained it...

 

[Shiroi_Okami]

As the title suggests, this is a thread in which you state in which games -and how often- you get lost.

I, myself, have never played an RPG without becoming hopelessly confused at least thrice. My personal best example of this is Final Fantasy 7. I became so confused and disoriented that, compounded with the discs themselves containing read errors, I am at level 43 and have just now gotten the Tiny Bronco.
I blame many inept excursions on poor game designs, (Seriously, who would know to go BACK to a casino in the middle of the desert right after they recieved a broken biplane?) but I must admit, I am generally prone to disorientation. Such examples of my own fault are me having wasted an hour in God of War because I overlooked a rather blatant lever, or the cosmic error that is me playing Adventure games.

Yeah i had the same problem in FFVII. yay tiny bronco! ....now what...? i think it took me a good half hour or so of blundering areound until i just started going back to places id already been. THEN i figured it out. great game tho. even though *spoiler* i was bitterly disappointed that you dont get to really fight sephiroth in his human form. you just auto-oneshot him. sepher sephiroth was a pretty cool fight tho. */spoiler*

 

[Duck Sandwich]

I've actually got lost in, of all things, HALO (1). Once where I didn't know I was going backwards because all the bloody corridors look the same, and once where I was in a Scorpion Tank and there was this big door that wouldn't open. It took me a while to find the tiny switch that was RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE DOOR, but barely visible at all from the view of the massive tank.

 

[[HD]Rob Inglis]

Lufia 3 or 2 for the gameboy color. I lost about 10 levelf from 59 to 49 when the game got turned off once and I wasn't able to save in time.

 

[hasam]

There was this bit in the shadow temple in ocarina of time master quest where you had to hit a switch that was not only invisible but about 10 feet up in the air! Some Nintendo designer got a longer lunch for that one...

 

[OneHP]

It's weird I never seem to get lost. I have awesome game direction sense, if a corridor splits in two I always seem to make the right choice.

 

[Blayze]

I once got lost in Final Fantasy 8, the second time you go to the Lunatic Pandora. I wandered that place for *ages*, and I even mapped it out. Could I find the area I had to visit next? Could I arsecakes.

 

[L.B. Jeffries]

Killer 7. Plot, gameplay, your abilities....they really don't explain anything to you. I don't think I realized I could change characters outside of a Harman room until halfway through the game.

Though looking back, that was probably the point.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

It happens to me inside the caves and buildings on uncharted planets in Mass Effect.

 

[Count_de_Monet]

I have the worst memory and am too lazy to write things down so I am constantly getting lost in just about every game I play.

I got lost in FFVI multiple times. In towns I used to have to figure out the correct sequence of talking to people to advance the story line by speaking to everything in the entire town multiple times. I think there was one time when you were supposed to find a hidden door in a wall and I think I clicked on every square foot of wall in that town trying to find it...

I used to completely forget what I was doing in Chrono Trigger and just wander around until I figured it out. The worst was when the time traveling was opened up and I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. I remember bumbling through a few periods then just giving up because I didn't have the energy to go forward anymore.

The original Half-Life was murder on my brain energy. Besides just getting lost in the facility I remember a couple puzzles completely confounding me and I ended up completing them by sheer dumb luck. It's been quite a few years but if I remember correctly there was a monster in a lab or something and you had to shock it or something like that... I think I circled that area a dozen times before figuring out what I was supposed to do.

Yeah, I love games but I'm no good at them.

 

[Necrohydra]

I have a pretty good sense of direction. I've never gotten lost in a video-game. Even the old first person view games where every corridor look like the last.

But, I also have a good sense of direction in the real world.

...oh, getting lost PLOT wise? Erm...once in a while I don't know exactly what to do or who to talk to. But I usually figure it out quickly. Happened to me most often in adventure games.

 

[Dudemeister]

assassins creed
the game just stopped giving me missions about halfway through for no reason