[General Discussion] Playing with a walkthrough

I'm playing Jak & Daxter right now, and am about 65% of the way done. I haven't used a guide yet, but I'm going to because I'm stuck on a part. I find that with action/adventure games, using a FAQ is difficult because it breaks up the action so much. For example, I used a FAQ for Silent Hill 3. I would never have made it through without one, especially during the "burning walls" part toward the end. However, it made the game super slow going. However, on RPG's I almost always do use a FAQ now, because if you miss one stupid secret 20 hours in it can keep you from getting the good ending after playing for 80 hours. Do I really want to waste 80 hours because I didn't bother to look in a FAQ for some stupid secret?

I truly feel that in this day and age, there should be NO secret in an RPG or any other game, for that matter, that you can't backtrack to complete later in the game. That's a pointless function of the game from a by-gone era...

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Unfortunately, since I only have time to play each game once, unless the game is one of my top 3 or 4 titles of all time, I usually am forced to reference a walkthrough on my first playthrough. Otherwise, trial and error, searching for hours on end for something I *might* stumble upon based on some useless clue that isn't even correct because the devs couldn't be bothered to use logic in their design, grinding, and loading saves to replay the same area would turn me off to video games completely. The whole industry is moving away from this sort of thing as games get shorter with bigger production values, fortunately...

How ya doing, buddy?