I'm just kind of curious how some people compare to me with the time they give up and look up the solution to a puzzle or a difficult part of a game you are stuck with.
Sadly it's usally, oh, about 2 hours before I go hunting at gamefaqs.
I'm such a wimp. The funny thing was before the internet, back in the early 90's, I would go days trying to solve a puzzle. The internet really has a way of breaking down my resolve to get past something with no help.
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle."
I'll usually give up on a puzzle after 45 minutes. Maybe 30 if it seems like a really dumb one. I do try to solve most puzzles, whether they're jumping or thinking or whatnot.
Hell, I spent 3 hours trying to solve what I thought was a puzzle in Ninja Gaiden before figuring out that there was just a hard to see door next to one of the paths.
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle."
I'm pretty much in the boat with ChrisGwinn. When it stops being fun I'll start looking for help.
Or if I already beat the game and am playing it through a second time. Just so I can find all the secrets and cool stuff.
But I definitely don't want to spend days. I think the biggest difference between now and 'the old days' is that I have a huge backlog of games that I want to play and beat. Back then I might only have one new game every few months. So I had more time to spend. Also I was younger and probably didn't get frustrated as quickly. Now, instead of feeling the thrill of the challenge, I just find myself thinking that the time I'm wasting could be better spent on a different game.
As soon as I stop having fun would be the right answer.
On the other hand, I usually use the "wimp" mode first, then maybe later I play on normal and tough modes.
Puzzles are only fun if there are clues planted way ahead of time, and you need to assemble them (either in the game or in your head). Just a puzzle out of nowhere with no clue is no fun at all, unless you're clearly meant to experiment as much as you want.
One of the decent adventures recently: Darkfall The Jounal falls into this trap. The first truly devious puzzle you ran into is a puzzle box in one of the female character (or should I say, ghost?) room. The problem is... You're not given ANY ideas on how to open this box. There are a couple buttons along the lower edge. One of the buttons makes a different sound, but otherwise there were no other clue as to how to open this puzzle box.
Turns out this puzzle is a sound puzzle, and you basically HAVE to try different combinations. If you hit the RIGHT button, you get that "different" sound. If you got the wrong one you got th eplain sound. So... Hit the right button, then try one of the other three. When you got the right sequence, the box pops open.
Gee, thanks. You could have left us a bit more of a hint!
My game FAQs | Playing: She Will Punish Them, Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius, The Outer Worlds
ChrisGwinn wrote:Once I'm not having fun trying to solve it.
Absolutely. I used to feel guilty if I weren't playing on at least medium or if I went looking for a hint. Then, at some point, I realized that I was playing games to have fun, not to prove something to the Powers That Be.
If I'm succeeding, but not having fun, why would I keep playing?
If it is an adventure game, I am not quick to hit the FAQs. After all, that is the entire point of an adventure game and I want to enjoy the puzzles, not just the story. So I will spend several days on a puzzle in an adventure game. If I'm not in the mood to solve puzzles, I just don't play adventure games.
One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was using an FAQ to get through Grim Fandango. It was a great game and I should have just spent the extra time working through it. Instead I didn't have as much "fun" with it as I could have. Happily, I rectified that mistake and so The Longest Journey and Syberia were both much more satisfying. I would also recommend playing through any adventure game with a friend, assuming you have someone around interested enough.
Any game that isn't an adventure game ... I look up the FAQ as soon as I feel "stuck". This can be as little as 5 minutes into a puzzle, as others have noted above. Usually it's more like an hour into a puzzle. My least favorite types of puzzles are trial-and-error and searching puzzles (it's somewhere on the eastern continent ... uh, yeah. Gamefaqs.com here I come).
ChrisGrenard wrote:Hell, I spent 3 hours trying to solve what I thought was a puzzle in Ninja Gaiden before figuring out that there was just a hard to see door next to one of the paths.
I always check the FAQs under the assumption that the problem is something trivial like that. If it is, I feel good. If it was something I could have figured out myself, I feel bad. But I get over it quickly, so not a big deal.
I play games to have fun, not be frustrated, and my gaming time is limited. I work on puzzle-like stuff (programming, analysis, troubleshooting) all day at work.
So if I'm in a game and there's a puzzle, and it seems to make sense, I'll try it for a while, 20 minutes or so. If i don't get it, I'll look it up.
OTOH, if I'm in a game like KOTOR, where there are silly and annoying puzzles, I normally don't even bother trying to solve it. Oh, Tower of Hanoi disguised as a pillar puzzle, time to look it up. On to the next battle.
To my mind Jedi Outcast was a refreshing counterexample from LucasArts; I almost never looked up any of the puzzles because solving them was entertaining. I'm not likely to play it again, though.
If the puzzle is integrated into the game very well, I might spend half an hour on it. If it feels artificial or tacked on, I'll give it about five minutes.
DCL wrote:2 hours into the part I'm stuck with I meant.
That's my usual threshold, too, though occasionally I'll go for a "no-hinter." I'm pretty proud of myself when I succeed, as I have with Trinity and Grim Fandango (and that's about it). I've been struggling to complete Infidel without hints for months. I believe I'm just one puzzle away from winning, but it really has me stumped.
I've only ever used the FAQs a couple of times to solve puzzles, but I use them extensively for big strategy games or RPGs. I was never really into D&D when I was a kid, and so the concept of d20, ATHAC0 etc just baffles me. Getting an idea of what these things mean, and how they apply to games, are what I use the FAQs for. I could never have enjoyed BGII, for example, without understanding what Intelligence and Dexterity means in an RPG (I kept wondering why my stupid thief couldn't pickpocket, or hit the side of a barn door with a shotgun). Similarly, I would never have got into Morrowind, let along finish, unless I had a FAQ to suggest potential character combinations and how the magic system works.
I have also found FAQs to be very useful for R:TW, in that they explain the basic mechanics of a game and how to get through what is quite a daunting game.
ChrisGwinn wrote:Once I'm not having fun trying to solve it.
Yeah, that's pretty much my rule of thumb with the proviso that I try ten more minutes before saying the hell with it.
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I somehow knew that I'd figure out the puzzle in Infidel after posting about it! Turns out that I wasn't reading carefully and missed a room. Cool game, cool ending. Glad I stuck it out, but that's probably the last time I struggle so long with a game.
ChrisGwinn wrote:Once I'm not having fun trying to solve it.
Yep. It really dedpends on the game too. Take Call of Duty for example, I never cheated through it. Sure some parts were REALLY hard (especially on hard difficulty) but it was still fun retrying it and seeing what worked and what didn't.
Other games like FarCry, I cheated when it got so hard it wasn't fun. This and the lack of "save anywhere" made me resort to cheating.
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