[General Discussion] Playing with a walkthrough

2006? What on Earth were you searching for when you found this thread?

As a rule, we tend to discourage people from reviving threads that are more than 3 months old unless it's something like a new game announcement thread and there's been a new development.

Who knows though, this might get some attention after all this time so I'll leave it open. Just bear the 3 month rule in mind in future please mate.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I always thought basic racing theory was fairly common knowledge. Do you really need a walkthrough to tell you to brake in a straight line then accelerate smoothly through the apex of a corner, shifting down to slow you faster and keep the revs up? Beyond that, all you need to do is learn the brakeing distances for the corners and that'll be different for every car amd no walkthrough will tell you that. I suppose you could use one for the car setup but it's all explained in-game as you go.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Heh, I can see how one might need a guide trying to play something in foreign, fair enough.

Gran Turismo is actually a pretty great game to learn racing theory on as the physics model is pretty spot on and the other cars never leave their racing line, meaning provided you pass them in sensible spots, they won't go out of their way to fuck you up afterwards (Like they would in GRID or something similar). Also, the various driving aids and being able to fuck about with the suspension settings means you can make even the most powerful MR cars pretty driveable, so long as you don't brake whilst turning.

I think the thing that's always put me off Gran Turismo FAQs was that I was looking at one to see what races unlocked what cars when the first one came out (Oh look, there is a point to them after all, silly Shin) and noticed the author suggesting to people they stay on the X button and tap the brake button round corners. Given the game shipped with the first analogue controller and given that the analogue sticks allow you to properly control smooth acceleration, pressing buttons at all, other than to change gear in GT is retarded. That's the ultimate problem with gameplay guides rather than factual guides. If it's just telling you where to go in an rpg then you can't go far wrong. If it's telling you how to control a racing game then it could be teaching you a stupid way to do it or at any rate, a way you might not get the best results from.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I rarely play games more than once these days. As a result, if I've spent a long time playing a game and got what I think is most of the stuff out of it on my own (RPGs this is), I'll normally look over a guide or more likely these days through a message board just to see if there's anything special I'm on track for at which point I'll use the guide sparingly to get it.

Case in point, I spent a shit load of hours on Last Remnant up to what I assumed was the end of disk 1 then checked to see if you got anything for doing all the side quests, found out there was an achievement, checked which ones were missable then played the rest of the game by myself, only making sure I spoke to Duke Ghor between each bas battle. I also spent a bit of time reading message boards towards the end of the game but they were mainly full of idiots asking obvious questions over and over again.

I find myself going to message boards more than FAQs these days as you get discussion about optimal character builds and so on. I often disagree with what people say but it's interesting to see how other people approach a game and people do occaisionally discover useful tricks (like Solo-Rush grinding in Last Remnant). Most games though I'm not bothered enough about getting everything to care about a guide, I'll just have a look if I think I've done most of the stuff so might as well do it all.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?