Have you ever played through a game and completely missed a game play feature?

[Furyaki12]

Picked Terra first when playing Birth By Sleep, and made it through the entire story without knowing how to Meld Commands. Essentially meaning I went through the entire game with no abilities except for Scan.

Played through the original Digimon World on PS1 without realizing that fatigue counts as a care mistake, fuming everytime I got Tyrannomon.

Didn't know that repeated use of Mario's Jump in SMRPG made it stronger.

 

[Dr. Dice Lord]

I habitually rebind the keys of 90% of the games I play to a general layout I prefer. So this is honestly not an issue for me most of the time, but I do fail every now and then. Played through most of ARMAII before realizing how to laser-guide bombs onto target. (major fail)

 

[Risingblade]

Digimon rumble arena, I didn't know learn how to digivolve till after I beat single player with every rookie :/

 

[ButanicXpandA]

Went through all of saints row the third without knowing how to switch grenade types until a mission had me throw a 'fart in a jar'.

Also mass effect 3, i have only just figured out that Geth heavy melee sends out a continuous shock wave if held down.

 

[Hawk eye1466]

For skyrim I didn't realize that if you blocked with the shield at the right time it would deflect the blow and do no damage to you, I thought you could just hold it and take less damage or try to dodge out of the way entirely. I know next Patton over here.

 

[Snake Plissken]

I did a 100% playthrough of Red Dead Redemption without ever realizing that you could quick-travel...

 

[Rheinmetall]

In Tomb Raider 1, 2, 3 for years I hadn't discovered that Lara can make a precision running jump, simply by going to the edge of the ledge, take a step backwards, then run, press the jump button and she makes the perfect running jump at the exact spot she needs to be. I can't describe how many hours, and frustration moments it could have saved me if I knew this trick.

 

[Gennadios]

Yeah. Im surprised how many other ppl had no idea, Bioware fucked up somewhere.

No. Banshee, Phantom, Brute and Atlas grabs are not QTEs, you can't escape them by button mashing. If you're quick, you can escape them by detonating Tech Armour or Barrier, but that's it. If you don't have either of those or don't hit the button in time, your only chance of escape is if your team mates kill or stagger the enemy before the animation completes.

Only the Husk grab is a QTE.[/quote]

I cut out the earlier comments to save space, but the discussion was purely about the singleplayer. In fact, Shepard CAN escape a banshee grab by mashing, s\he's just that badass.

 

[Terry Diamantis]

Not sure if it counts since my friend mentioned it on Facebook before I even bought the game but going to the Citadel to refill your fuel for free in ME3 would never have occurred to me if left to my own devices.

 

[Domenic Recchione]

It wasn't until the final duel with Vergil in DMC 3 that I realized you can pay to increase the devil trigger bar.

 

[El Dwarfio]

Holding A in Fallout 3 & NV allows to drink continuously.

Wow really? Mindblown.

As for me, the Attack Periscope on my Sub went untouched throughout my entire first campaign of Silent Hunter 5, I could't find the bloody thing on the ship, and only using he observation scope made life much harder for me :L

 

[R5-Reject]

Another skyrim one here! But not the sprint function this time.
It was unlocking/upgrading shouts. I couldn't immediatly figure out how to do it so I assumed the greybeards would teach you at some point.
But when I suddenly found myself standing in front of the final boss and I still hadn't unlocked anything but fus ro dah I was starting to feel some doubt...
Facepalmed pretty hard when I saw it says push R to upgrade right in the friggin UI!

This is impossible. I know because for some reason when you need to trap Odahviing in Whiterun I derped up real bad and forgot I had just gotten Dragonrend and thus it's effect. I stood there for about 20 min. going "wtf do I need to do" while he flew around trolling me. Then I went about reloading my saves to see what was wrong and about 40 min. later I redid getting dragonrend. I then facepalmed.

So you had to have had Dragonrend or you wouldn't have gone piggy back riding on our buddy dragon.

 

[scorptatious]

Well I played Oblivion for a good while before I found that I could fast travel to places. Could have saved me a lot of time but I didn't mind to be honest. I enjoyed riding on my horse around the countryside. Poor guy, I still remember the day we got ambushed by both a black bear and a troll. :'(

 

[kommando367]

I was halfway through Fallout before I figured out out how to reload (I was reloading from the inventory).

 

[Mr.Pandah]

Mr.Pandah, you'd be surprised at how many people don't read the manual and just skip forward to the action.

I can understand that...but basic knowledge such as reloading...? Or having the game literally tell you "hit this button for this" (in dead space it clearly tells you to ht the right stick in, I remember it for a fact, to navigate) and not realizing its something in the game? It boggles my mind. Like, you wouldn't think you could sprint in a game nowadays? I just don't understand...

 

[katsumoto03]

Holding A in Fallout 3 & NV allows to drink continuously.

And this just blew my mind. After hundreds of hours in both games, I never knew you could do that until right now. o_0

Well, at least this'll make getting irradiated for Moira in Fallout 3 go a bit faster from now on...

Wow.
Just Wow.
How did I not know that.
I'm going to go and rethink my life.

I know how you feel.

Shit, I'm just now realizing that I've wasted about an hour of my life.

 

[SwiggleDyl]

First time I played Resident Evil 4, I walked everywhere. I was after I defeated the final boss that I realized that I could run.

I did exactly the same thing :/

 

[Altorin]

I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I know that I've discovered key gameplay mechanic in a couple games very late into the game. It's not exactly the same, but one thing I can remember is discovering how silly grenades are with VATs, at least in New Vegas. I played through the game 3 times, then finally decided to make an explodey character. And hilarity ensued when I saw that a 3% chance to hit with dynamite is pretty much a 100% chance to kill whatever you're aiming at.

 

[Amaror]

I just restarted Risen again and noticed for the first time, that you can, well i call it "dash" when you double click in a direction.