"Wait, I can do that?"

[lacktheknack]

There's a sprint button in Skyrim! O.O

This blew my mind when I first realized.

IT BLEW MINE TOO!

I noticed that there was a blocking perk that mentioned sprinting, so I checked the control menu and nearly yelped. This was 50 hours in.

 

[Emperor Nat]

I won't bore you with the entire story, only the end: I came into the possession of morrowind with no manual or any pre-existnig knowledge about it whatsoever.
So figuring out pretty much ANYTHING (besides wasd = move) was a glorious moment.
Bear in mind that morrowind was nowhere near as user-friendly as oblivion or skyrim. You pretty much just pick a race and some favorite skills and than you're thrown into the streets.
And you know what? Looking back, I wouldn't have had it any other way.

Several hundred playing hours later, I get this novel idea to check this odd new system called the interweb for some info on enchanting in morrowind and stumble upon some site called the unofficial elder scrolls pages. Today it's known as the elder scrolls wiki.

My mind was blown so many times that day, it never quite recovered.

The elder scrolls wiki is actually quite bad. The unofficial elder scrolls pages is however amazing and still exists at www.uesp.net

OT: Any complicated puzzle in any game ever. I always end up leaving the game for AGES before caving and looking it up. At which point I promptly realised that the puzzle isn't hard, I'm just a moron. :/

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

Fallout 3: Hotkeys. Spent most of the game awkwardly using my Pipboy to switch weapons around.

Minecraft: Shift-click

Mirror's Edge: Aerial take downs. The achievement for doing so is called "Its-a mi!" or something like that.

Fallout 3/any Elder Scrolls game: Inventory sorting. I shat a brick when I found clicking on the title changes it from "Everything" to "Weapons", "Armor", "Food", etc.

 

[MrShowerHead]

Took me 40 hours to realize there's a sprint function in Skyrim

Yes, you can start laughing now

 

[Genericjim101]

I went through most of the Riddler object challenge...thingies in Arkham City without even realizing that you can hold down the pressure plate with exploding gel.

WHAT!? Oh holy shart XD Thank you.

 

[Baron von Blitztank]

In Batman: Arkham City, I didn't know you could perform attacks with the wire-gun until I got stuck on the Mr Freeze boss fight and the hint menu came up. Same with flying remote batarangs through electricity to power up generators, being able to detonate gels one at a time for Riddler challenges and using ice grenades on the ocean...

Jesus I was an idiot at this game.

 

[Rhymer]

I've never facepalmed quite as hard as when I discovered how to mass dump/forbid in Dwarf Fortress. If you've played it, please imagine trying to clear stones out of a newly-dug, 40x40 stockplie room. One at a time.

Also, building a Viking and a Medivac at the same time with a reactor in sc2.

 

[Whateveralot]

A lot of the skyrim features. Seriously, the game leaves you in the dark about most of its features from the start. It barely explains how the favourite system works. That said, it wasn't that much of a nuisance.

 

[mrF00bar]

I thought Jedi Outcast was an unnecessarily difficult game when I found myself with 2hp and no ammo in the very first level. Then I found out by coincidence that the canisters you pick up throughout the game can heal you and the glowing green and orange box thingies which casually stand around all over the place replenish your shield and ammo respectively...

Oh man you just brought back so many memories. I rage quit that game so much before I realized I could heal lol.

 

[ABLb0y]

from Siren Bloodcurse I didn't realise you could sightjack Shibito not in your immediate line of sight until the fifthteenth or so time I failed at the hospital level.

 

[Mr Pantomime]

In the beginning of Skyward Sword, after diving my bird into the ground like an idiot for a few minutes, I realised you had to press the "Down" button on the remote to jump off. I felt pretty stupid, as you might imagine.

I did this too. I did find that pressing a button works better than slamming the bird into the ground and swearing at it.

For me, Bioshock, Z is zoom. Never actually learnt that ingame, someone mentioned it on a similar thread.

Edit: You know what I really hate about these threads? Now im going to be super paranoid about missing things when I play something for the next week.

 

[irani_che]

My friend genuinely thought portal ended when glados puts you in the oven

 

[MetalDooley]

I went through most of the Riddler object challenge...thingies in Arkham City without even realizing that you can hold down the pressure plate with exploding gel.

What??I never knew you could do that.I'd given up trying to get those.Might go back and try again now

OT:I was around 12 hours into Fallout 3 before I found out that holding down the B button activated the light on the Pip-boy.Had just been stumbling around dark tunnels before that

 

[Patrick Buck]

I went through most of the Riddler object challenge...thingies in Arkham City without even realizing that you can hold down the pressure plate with exploding gel.

SHIT REALLY?
That'll make the game easyier then..... THANK YOU!

 

[Farson89]

In fallout 3 it took me a million years to realize that holding down tab (the pip-boy key for me) would activate a flashlight.

In my defense, "hold down the main menu to activate a flashlight" is a pretty stupid way to do it.

...

WHAT.

I put about a hundred hours into that game and I never realised you could do that. Well, now I feel fucking stupid.

 

[Jamash]

There's a sprint button in Skyrim! O.O

This blew my mind when I first realized.

IT BLEW MINE TOO!

I noticed that there was a blocking perk that mentioned sprinting, so I checked the control menu and nearly yelped. This was 50 hours in.

I discovered something awesome about the Shield Charge perk and sprinting yesterday... you can sprint and shield charge whilst sneaking but most importantly... it doesn't break invisibility!

If you cast Muffle then Invisibility, you can remain completely undetected and shield charge your way through a town or hideout like an angry gust of wind, knocking everyone out of your way without them having a clue what just happened.

As a combat tactic it's slightly broken, but as a mischief tactic it's the best.

I suspect it probably won't work on certain scripted events (like interrupting Roggvir's execution), but I'm going to test it out and try to find the biggest concentration of people I can find and see how many I can knock over with one charge whilst remaining undetected, kind of like Phantom 10-Pin Bowling.

I can't wait until I next encounter a nice orderly line of 3 Thalmor and their prisoner...

 

[MahMahnator2992]

When I was first playing MGS3 several years ago, my no kill/alerts/continues would have been SO much easier if I had known about the soft reset. I didn't find out about it until I gave up on the escape from Groznyj Grad on Extreme and looked for a guide online.