Tutorial, hint, walk though, cheat
sheet, spoiler.
“Wax on wax off, the discipline of
gaming Grasshopper.” Okay that was a reference from two different
movies/shows but it seemed to fit. In my gaming entertainment over
the years I have often found myself hitting the proverbial “brick
wall”, especially if it was a puzzle based game. “Where is the
damn key located to unlock this step?”
Struggling with clues or the strategy
within a game can be frustrating. Not being able to advance means we
play that scene or sequence over multiple times. I can see the Game
character that we are playing, finally stop and stare at us through
our monitor and scream “THE KEY IS OVER THERE DUMMY!”
This of course would creep me out so,
as not to a ire the little person I am moving around in game I would
look for, “Dun..dun..Duh!” the Spoiler. This of course would give
me the answers I needed to advance to the next section of game-play,
but was very anti-climatic. In my early days of gaming spoilers were
hard to come by and I was actually glad. Now we have an abundant of
spoilers for almost every game. It is too easy to cheat. A disciplined gamer will achieve their
gaming goals without the need of “Spoilers”, and I have found
that to be very rewarding.
 |
| Keisuke Miyagi (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
I am not the Mr Miyagi of gaming, not even
close but I have learned a valuable lesson. Patience is the key. When
we accomplish the hurdles that most games set for us, it means that
we have fully savored and enjoyed what it had to offer.
I have spent literally weeks at a dead
end trying to figure out what I needed to do and when I finally
figured it out, I woke the whole house up with “Eureka, I have
found it!” . ..okay, I never say eureka, but it was a scream of
excitement. Several deep breaths later and as my heart settled back
into my chest, all I could think of was “Damn, what a rush.” This
game lasted longer than any game I had played. I felt like I truly
experienced the game as it was meant to be instead of fast forwarding
to the end.
Our entertainment purchase is wasted if
we fast forward to their conclusions. It is like buying a movie to
just fast forward to the good parts. That moment of entertainment
becomes just that, a moment.
