If I'm given the choice, my character will be female, every time. I'm a man. I don't know why this is, and I've put an unreasonable amount of thought into why this is at that. I have no attraction to men, I'm not a very feminine guy, and I never wear women's clothes or whatever (though I recognize those would be ignorant or simple explanations anyway). If the game has a pre-made protagonist you must play, I'm "fine" with it, I simply don't have the bothering in my mind that playing a male when I could be female gives. HOWEVER, said character is always lesbian if there's romance options. If I'm playing a game with a pre-made female protagonist and they seduce a guy, that's fine; but there's no way my crafted female goes after the D. It's all very strange.
If playing a new PC game for the first time, I always visit Pcgamingwiki to see if there's any quirks/bugs I should look out for, the best way to optimize the experience, whether or not I should use my controller for it, and to see if modding is possible and what mods I should get (this isn't just a graphics thing, it helps to know if the game natively accepts my Dualshock 4 or if there's PS buttons I can mod in if it doesn't). For demanding games, I'll run through a few different graphics config against my FPS to determine whether it's worth using V-sync or not. In all, I probably spend about an hour before really playing a new (3D) PC game; this is also why I like to wait until after post-launch as the community has had time to compile information about the game, and the devs have had time to patch what would have previously been issues. None of this is a problem to me, I've been a techy person my whole life and I actually enjoy this aspect of it. If I'm playing a console exclusive, I can accept the state the devs had to present me with, but I do wish I could make a Red Dead Redemption or Bloodborne have the presentation it deserves.
Like others here, I always save buffing items "until I really need them", a time which never actually comes until the final boss. Of all the Final Fantasy games I've beaten, the final boss has received insane random item use from me as I realize there's no more opportunities to save them for.
In games that have lore books like Oblivion/Skyrim/Witcher...I want all those motherfuckers. Probably my favorite thing about Skyrim was that I could have a house to use as a library, and I will always get sidetracked by my hunt for books I don't have for my library. It doesn't matter that all that lore is online, it's not the same as reading the lore books within the world.
Similar to the last one, I don't skip audio logs. I've played SS2-Bioshock:Infinite and know where all of them are, and if I'm replaying one of them I can't skip one to save time, I feel like getting that story and context is still part of the experience of actually completing the game. If I haven't played a new game that is similar in structure, I will spend a lot of time scouring to make sure I haven't missed one.
I used to always select "normal" difficulty because I figured it represented the intended HP/damage/enemy balance that the developer intended for the game experience, but in the last few years (and accumulated experience with Souls games) games have gotten easier or seem easier on normal and oftentimes normal doesn't pose enough of a threat to cause tension or provide a satisfying challenge. Now I always pick "hard" and drop to normal if I'm dying way too much or obviously need to learn more advanced systems.
There's probably more, but I've typed quite a lot that nobody will read anyway so that'll do.
If playing a new PC game for the first time, I always visit Pcgamingwiki to see if there's any quirks/bugs I should look out for, the best way to optimize the experience, whether or not I should use my controller for it, and to see if modding is possible and what mods I should get (this isn't just a graphics thing, it helps to know if the game natively accepts my Dualshock 4 or if there's PS buttons I can mod in if it doesn't). For demanding games, I'll run through a few different graphics config against my FPS to determine whether it's worth using V-sync or not. In all, I probably spend about an hour before really playing a new (3D) PC game; this is also why I like to wait until after post-launch as the community has had time to compile information about the game, and the devs have had time to patch what would have previously been issues. None of this is a problem to me, I've been a techy person my whole life and I actually enjoy this aspect of it. If I'm playing a console exclusive, I can accept the state the devs had to present me with, but I do wish I could make a Red Dead Redemption or Bloodborne have the presentation it deserves.
Like others here, I always save buffing items "until I really need them", a time which never actually comes until the final boss. Of all the Final Fantasy games I've beaten, the final boss has received insane random item use from me as I realize there's no more opportunities to save them for.
In games that have lore books like Oblivion/Skyrim/Witcher...I want all those motherfuckers. Probably my favorite thing about Skyrim was that I could have a house to use as a library, and I will always get sidetracked by my hunt for books I don't have for my library. It doesn't matter that all that lore is online, it's not the same as reading the lore books within the world.
Similar to the last one, I don't skip audio logs. I've played SS2-Bioshock:Infinite and know where all of them are, and if I'm replaying one of them I can't skip one to save time, I feel like getting that story and context is still part of the experience of actually completing the game. If I haven't played a new game that is similar in structure, I will spend a lot of time scouring to make sure I haven't missed one.
I used to always select "normal" difficulty because I figured it represented the intended HP/damage/enemy balance that the developer intended for the game experience, but in the last few years (and accumulated experience with Souls games) games have gotten easier or seem easier on normal and oftentimes normal doesn't pose enough of a threat to cause tension or provide a satisfying challenge. Now I always pick "hard" and drop to normal if I'm dying way too much or obviously need to learn more advanced systems.
There's probably more, but I've typed quite a lot that nobody will read anyway so that'll do.