"YOU CAN STEER THE TORPEDO?" moments

[Edible Avatar]

BattleTanx: Global Assault (N64)
YOU CAN STEER THE MISSILES!!??

I never before held down the "A" button while launching those suckers.

....

Yeah i'm a old fart.

 

[Atomic German]

YOU CAN GUIDE THE AT ROCKETS???!!!!

In battlefield 2142, whenever you fired off a rocket from either faction's rocket launcher, the rocket would disengage you from the view finder. I was a little depressed about that since in previous BF2 installments you could guide the rockets via the viewfinder. It wasnt until the last days of the game i discovered by holding down the LMB you could guide them until they went out of sight or hit something. As an older Bf player i still look back and chuckle about such moments. Im a hopeless romantic in my video games, shut up.

 

[Darren716]

In Fallout New Vegas- YOU CAN REPAIR ITEMS USING OTHER ITEM?!
I felt so stupid when I figurered this out, every time I had played before I never used the repair skill and my armor was in extremely bad condition but and my most recent New Vegas play though I had two 9 mm pistols and while scrolling over one I saw a prompt saying Y-Repair. I was in party chat with a friend who was playing Fallout 3 and when i told him about this it blew his mind too.

 

[Warachia]

Mass Effect, I beat the game at least once before I found out how to fire the Mako's canon.

 

[Warachia]

This whole thread could be about Deus Ex with every new find on subsequent playthroughs.

My first was "YOU CAN KILL

Spoiler

ANNA NAVARRE IN THE AIRPLANE?!

"

Agreed. Mine, and not until my third playthrough, was:

Spoiler

YOU CAN SAVE PAUL?
(I just figured those enemies were overpowered and an instant lose.)

You don't need to kill the enemies, in fact, even if you do it doesn't matter (just let Paul do it since he's invincible), what does matter is where you leave, if you leave through the window, he dies, if you leave through the door, he lives.

Deux Ex is a game that doesn't really read what the player does, it just has certain triggers in certain areas, like the very first area, even if you don't kill everyone, so long as you go through the front door everyone will act as if you were a bloodthirsty killer.

 

[Auninteligentname]

That claw seems to mentioned a awfully lot. I too used some time to figure out that you could sprint and turn items in the inventory. I managed to open the first claw door by luck. I thought that the animal claws actually meant something to the puzzle, and went with smallest print (or something like that)closest to the centre. I lucked out and opened that door on my first try.

There is also one part in the entire Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, where you have to close the DS to solve a puzzle. That problem I weren't able to solve, so I closed the DS before going to sleep, with the intent of solving the puzzle the next day. And, well, it solved itself.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Tribes 2 had one of those, but in reverse for me.
"Wait...missiles don't lock on without a heat signature?"

 

[waj9876]

I believe my first one was "I CAN HOLD THE Z BUTTON WHEN I JUMP TO GO EVEN FARTHER!?" Mario 64. I had spent a good long time playing, had half the stars. Learned I could do that, beat the game in a week with nearly every star.

A more recent one was "I CAN DIG A HOLE BEHIND ME TO GET MORE MONEY FROM THE MONEY ROCKS!?" Animal Crossing.

 

[Fasckira]

Discovering you can throw banana peels/drop turtle shells in the first Mario Kart. As a kid this blew my mind.

 

[Callate]

I just found out in Don't Starve that you can apparently catch the boomerang by using the space bar.

It's kind of stupid, frankly. To elucidate: The boomerang does what you'd expect a boomerang to do, it goes out, hits the target, and comes back to you.

But if you don't click on the boomerang to catch it, it damages you. Rather a lot, really. This is a game where four hits are frequently enough to kill you, and dying destroys your saved game. It's sort of funny the first time it happens; after that, you're cursing as you try to click on a moving object a few pixels across before it whacks you, doing difficult-to-recover damage and reducing an expensive weapon's durability, just to add insult to injury.

...But apparently you can catch it using the space bar. I don't know yet whether it has to be a timed "tap" or if you can just hold space down (what I've read seems to suggest the latter.) But it does beg the question- why didn't they just make you automatically catch the boomerang like virtually every other @#$% game featuring a boomerang in the history of games and boomerangs?

-Ahem. Pardon my rant.

 

[RealRed05]

I HAVE TO KILL THE CREEPERS FOR GUNPOWDER!?

Yeah, I play on peaceful a lot just so I can build. I deserve whatever flak comes my way.

 

[SonOfMethuselah]

Alternate title: "YOU CAN TONGUE UP?"

Ever play a game so often, and feel like you know it so well, only to discover some major ability you never noticed before?

For example, Mega Man 2 is my number one favorite game. It was the first game I ever played, and I was raging over Air Man before I could read. Just a couple of days ago, I found out that you can shoot Metal Blade in any direction. WHAT? I had no idea. All these years. I thought the main advantage was just the bigger projectile.

Also, to a lesser extent, I was four hours into Fallout 3 before I found out you could jump.

So, how about you?

I have possibly the supreme on here.

I got all the way to Guadosalam in Final Fantasy X, my first RPG besides pokemon, without knowing how to open the menu.

So as a result I didn't know how to level up or anything. Never occured to me that triangle would be the menu, since Start was always menu in everything else I played. Try getting that far without levelling up I frigging dare ya > >

Also when I first played Sonic 3 I didn't know how to charge up a spin attack but that was when I was like 4.

A few incidents in RDR or something like that where I just had no clue how to do something.

I'll see you Guadosalam and raise you Home. I knew how to open the menu, but I didn't understand how the Sphere Grid worked. I thought the number was your level, and not the number of nodes you could move, so I was always trying to move to a node that raised the S.LvL, which, of course, wouldn't work. I actually got a little bit further than Home, to that fucking dragon that attacks you on the airship as you near Bevelle, and he absolutely wrecked my shit with one or two attacks every time. My friend told me what I was doing wrong a few days after I had given up on the game. Ahh, youth.

Other than that, I played Star Wars: Battlefront II in first-person mode for a long time before I realized I could change it to third-person. Then I realized I hated playing the game in first-person, so I never changed it again.

 

[Another]

Was playing Metal Gear Rising last week.

The last boss was kicking my ass, when I accidentally pushed a and x at the same time, and discovered that there is a dodge move. WHAT!?!?!? This entire game I had a dodge move!!!!

...you had to BUY that move, dude

I just move spam. I basically just went to the move purchase section and went "buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, out of BP" I didn't actually bother reading I just figured the game was all about blocking, and never figured they would hand me a dodge move.

 

[kailus13]

Metal Gear Solid for the PS1:

THE CODEC FREQUENCY IS ON THE BACK OF THE BOX.

What box? This cardboard one? I thought they were just for hiding in? Oh, it would appear it is as there's nothing written on the outside, even when zooming in. Oh well, time to try every single frequency until I find the right one.

Weeks later, casually looking at the box...

WHAT THE FFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU...!

I'd actually read about the frequency/box thing in a magazine before I played it, so when I platyed the actual game... I'd completely forgotten and just went through all the frequencies. (-_-* )

 

[snappydog]

I played through most of Enter The Matrix before I figured out what the Focus ability was for. That's like playing through Spider-Man 2 without web-swinging.

I set myself the challenge of doing a play through Spider-Man 2 without swinging except on timed segments once. It did not last very long.

OP: It took me a VERY, VERY long time to figure out the use of soul gems (stones? Whatever they were called, it's been a while) in Oblivion.

 

[Treblaine]

TF2: "AUTO RELOAD DOESN'T INTERRUPT FIRING?"

Bioshock: "STUNNED ENEMIES TAKE 4x MELEE DAMAGE?"

Resident Evil: "YOU CAN JUST RUN PAST THEM?"

 

[Murrdox]

In Final Fantasy 8:
Magic drain too fast. Wait... WHAT IS DRAW? YOU CAN ABSORB MAGIC ?!?

Another Final Fantasy 8 one for you. YOU CAN CONSTANTLY BUTTON MASH TO INCREASE THE POWER OF SUMMONS?!?

Seriously, you summon things pretty much constantly that entire damn game. I was sick of all the animations before getting out of the first area of the game, but if you want to solve Final Fantasy 8, you're gonna watch those suckers for about 20 life-hours worth. Happy Birthday.

Found out in the last area of the game that you can hit a button to increase the power of the summon, which didn't do a whole lot at that point, but at least it gave me something to do while I was doing all that summoning.

Thank god I never have to play Final Fantasy 8 ever again...

 

[Jimmy T. Malice]

For me, I completely forgot you could kick in Dark Souls until I got to my second playthrough. After the tutorial the first time through I completely forgot it existed.

The exact same thing happened to me. I ended up kicking a few times at random while attacking, but I never figured out how to do it reliably until my second playthrough. It would have really helped with those spear-wielding Hollows with the shields early on...

 

[Phuctifyno]

Deux Ex is a game that doesn't really read what the player does, it just has certain triggers in certain areas, like the very first area, even if you don't kill everyone, so long as you go through the front door everyone will act as if you were a bloodthirsty killer.

Now that I did not know.

Fuck you, Paul, you're on your own next time.