I'll start the thread with the story of mine that made me give some thoughts about this topic. It's rather lengthy, but nonetheless interesting (I guess).
[StartRant]
When I was a kid, me and my father spent months playing Kirby for the N64. Every time our file got deleted, we just went and did it again. If you're not familiar with the game, aside from the standard kirby platformer, you had those crystal shards to collect. Some of them were found lying on a higher platform, others were obtained after you defeat a boss and others were trapped in segments that were locked with color patterns.
Each of the powers you can swallow have a color and you also have the ability to combine two powers to generate a completely new one. Since they carry over stages, we often found ourselves on quests to obtain the specific combination to crack a door and get a shard.
However, there was this one door, right after an underwater segment on a beach level that we simply couldn't get the shard. You had to open it with a Stone + Cutter (it allowed you to take shape of an stone owl, bird, fish and some sort of rabbit) and the shard... well, lemme show you:
![[Image: kirby0530.jpg]](http://thedailypos.org/content/imagefests/kirby64/sk/kirby0530.jpg)
![[Image: kirby0531.jpg]](http://thedailypos.org/content/imagefests/kirby64/sk/kirby0531.jpg)
If it's not clear:
Imagine it as a U shaped tube. The door was at the bottom of the U and it had a small segment of water and a platform up to 20% of the way up. We spent days trying to use the fast but weak bird and the slower but resistant owl to get up there. It let us a kirby-away from the shard, but nothing more than that.
We had finished the game countless times, defeating what we thought was the end boss, but we ALWAYS left that shard behind. Our save files had a frustrating 99,9% after it.
On a random weekend I was spending at my family's house last year, my sister decided to get the 64 so she could show me for the 72638723th time how she would fail beating the Elite Four on Pokemon Stadium (Yes, I haven't finished that game after all these years. The standard pokemon moves suck and my friend that used to lend me the Pokemon Red Cartridge sold it.).
I then realized I could search the internetz on how to get that shard. And so I did. To find out that the rabbit was a squirrel. And squirrels can climb rock walls. *sigh*
I got the shard and went to the most epic nostalgia boss I had in the past years.
[/EndRant]
Sooooo, after remembering that little story after I finished playing Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (actually, I'm on the last boss as I type this) I've made up the following thoughts about walkthroughs:
1. Walkthroughs are helpful, no doubt about that. However, where's the limit (or.. is there a limit?) between using a walkthrough and having fun with the game?
I have friends that only play games with walkthrough open while they run. They stop at every segment in order to know what to do next (one of them linked me to a 300 page + walkthrough on OoT he was using). Heck.. even I had to do this while playing Legend of Grimrock. For some weird reasons, the dungeon style made me take scares at each corner. So I had the need to know if something was going to pop up.
And I must say, even using a walkthrough entirely, I found the game to be extremely fun. It might be because the fights were mine to decide, and so was the character upgrades, but I don't really know.
2. As I grew up, I found myself with less and less time to spend on games. I still spend a lot of time, but I just won't let myself stare at 'x' point in a game where I'm stuck and try to find out how to progress. If the answer isn't clear, and if the game doesn't get me that involved, I will simply hop to gamefaqs and get the answer. However, if the answer is too obvious, I will feel bad, seeing as I could've find out if I had tried a bit more.
3. To what extent is acceptable for a game to require you to use walkthroughs? I mean, you could tell me 'Heck, walkthroughs are for lazy gamers. I don't use walkthroughs' but the point is (unless the game is ridiculously easy) you can't get 100% of the game by yourself (and I really mean 100%. With every-fucking-thing available).
For me, old games like the Kirby I mentioned, even though the game itself was fairly easy, lacked some sort of explanation on how stuff works. I would've never figured out I could climb walls with that rabbit if I hadn't read. IMO, if the game is making you use alternative sources to find out how their stuff works, it has failed somewhere.
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So, what do you think about them?
