Was there ever a time when you felt really dumb playing a video game because either you thought the puzzle was too hard...

Was there ever a time when you felt really dumb playing a video game because either you thought the puzzle was too hard or you missed something that was really fucking obvious?

In FF7 in the ancient city there was a screen that had a spire shell that you ran up and down with three ways out. You had to take the third way to progress the story. It took me fourteen hours over three days to find the third exit with the help of two Gamefaqs walkthroughs and the button that put pointers over the exits, and even then I had to grind against every single wall to find it.

In Wind Waker I thought you had to complete all the sliding tile puzzles in that one house to advance because I never bothered to look up to see the giant fucking hook you had to pull.

I played through this entire fucking game without knowing you can rotate code pieces when you're placing them on a page's grid.

You know what?

At some point, they go to the crater and get btfo through the life stream

FOR SOME REASON, I thought I had to go back to the northern city, go through the mountain, and into the crater. I saved at Schizo's boss save point after I completed the area and left and came back.

I had to fucking backtrack through all the snow again, including the blizzard bullshit, and only then realized "oh I just fly my ship into the crater lol"

In Legend of Legacy there's a staircase near the back of a ruin that I missed for no good reason- it isn't that hard to see. Ended up spending days running around trying everything before finding it by accident.

...

I was made for this thread.
I got stuck on the last dungeon of Zelda: Link's Awakening because I threw the big metal ball on a wall where I couldn't reach it, and fucked around trying to figure out how to get it for like 3 hours until I gave up on the game. Years later, I looked it up and discovered that I could have just played the fucking flute to reset it.

I didn't even feel dumb playing the video game. I felt dumb like 3 years later. That makes me extra retarded, I think.

I was 4 when I first played Link's Awakening. There's a part in the second dungeon where it says "Kill the pols voice first, last stalfos". I didn't realize what any of those were and was stuck until a year or two later.

There's a weight/scale puzzle in Twilight Princess soon after you get the magic wand that allows you to move the statues. There were a couple of statues in the room, big and small, but these weren't enough to complete the scale puzzle. Players were SUPPOSED to look on the walls and see a bunch of other statues that, when added onto the scale, made everything absolutely trivial. I never once fucking saw any of them. I made charts, I drew pictures, I did fucking algebra, assigning numbers to each statue's weight based on how much it moved the scale individually. I remember spending over 2 hours on this puzzle, and I even roped in my father, who's a puzzle nerd himself. I showed him the puzzle in the game, all of my notes, and asked him for help, and he went off to go solve it.

10 minutes later I had found that if you moved the biggest statue to a certain spot on the scale it would be perfectly balanced between both plates, preventing either from moving at all, allowing you to move all of the other statues around as you wished before placing the big statue where it needed to be to finish the puzzle. Basically, I never once saw those other statues you're supposed to use and I just abused the game's physics to let me proceed past the puzzle.

My dad came in 20 minutes later telling me not to worry, he was still working on trying to solve the puzzle. I told him that it didn't matter anymore, I glitched the game and got past it. He looked kind of crestfallen.

This happens all the damn time for me.

You should "get stuck" on another part and need his help, to cheer your dad up.

You were slow even when feeling dumb?

all the time

Fucking Carnival Night Zone. Not the barrel section, I figured that out when I was twelve. The entire level is seemingly designed to waste your time; on a good day, I'm at 8:45 on the timer when I reach the boss. It makes me feel stupid because there has to be a faster way through the bullshit that is Act 2.

First game I played for the SNES was Final Fantasy 4, and coming off NES games (and being a dumb kid) I had no idea that some solid-looking tiles were actually meant to be viewed as a ceiling from above. So I got stuck in the starting castle with no idea that the stone tiles above the bridge could be walked through.

I was stuck on Majora's Mask until a friend came over and showed me where the entrance to the swamp was. To me it just looked like a wall so I never thought to walk into it.

The earliest instance I can think of having these moments is when I was four or five years old playing Pokemon. I still remember the time I was in the eastern gatehouse of Ekruteke City and I couldn't remember how to leave the buildings. I tried things like pressing A on the rug while facing the blackness and shit wouldn't work. I don't know how long it took me to realize you just continue walking to exit. And that wasn't even my first time playing a Pokemon game and I've done that shit before, so it's extra bad.
I'm braindead retarded in some ways that even casual gamers would think I suck. That focal point of light that hints you how to solve a puzzle? Completely missed it. Friends have a hard time playing games with me since I get lost easily even with maps. It's even worse when they say something and I end up doing something completely opposite because I can't understand. Part of me thinks the problems I have is an issue with coordination and spacial awareness, but I'll probably never know. Kill me.
I still play vidya, even with friends on occasion, but I end up designing and programming games more than actually playing these days.

Took me over an hour to get past Merlin's Cave in KH because I couldn't see the fucking platforms. Turns out years later there's a setting on TV's called contrast.

Several years ago I noticed that I spent weirdly large amounts of time in small video game levels and developed an irrational fear that I was constantly blacking or spacing out and forgetting about it.
I'm generally better at completing video games faster now, but sometimes I still get the nagging feeling that I've been standing still for several minutes and simply don't remember.

That is a strange irrational fear. You'd hate this story

Don't know where those 2 or so minutes went.

...

I've done that same shit.


I know my mind is going. I hope nobody else notices.

Same problem here.

For the life of me I don't know where those 17 hours went. Thought I was the only one with this issue but guess not.

How about the opposite

I had to look up the solution to the opening puzzle of VLR because I was totally overthinking it

i'd sooner shit on the game than admit i'm retarded

Same

When you mentioned pokemon it reminded me of my first instance of being stuck when I was young. I started playing games before I knew how to read. So, when I played Pokemon I kind of just got through it by memorizing what worked and only trying other things if I couldn't figure it out. So while I had figured out the mysterious "HM" symbol gave certain Pokemon moves you could use outside of fights for certain things, the game had eventually stumped me.

I was in the ghost tower, I find what looks like a trainer who won't fight me, just says some stuff then pop up the yes no question then just stand there. Never once occurred to me for a few days to try saying no. Everyone else in the game wanted a yes answer, so why would I ever say no?

You're a girl in her period, aren't you?

I got completely stonewalled near the end of Okami at this snowy area with cannons shooting at you from across a chasm. For some fucking reason it never occurred to me to just hit the shells back at them to clear a path until I came back at least a year later. I never did finish the rest of the game, either. Go me.

It took me a couple playthrough to figure out that in PS2 era AC the speed at which your energy comes back is directly affected by how much of your generator's EP output you're not using

Recently in EDF, for the first few hours of playing alone I didn't know the armor and weapon boxes gave upgrades, I thought they were just field replenishment for your armor and weapons.

The first puzzle in Skyrim

I really felt stupid then. Beyond that, I took forever at some points in the Ace Attorney games because I didn't press the witness twice for the same thing, or didn't present the "right" evidence, even though it comes up later anyway.

In old WoW, I was a horde player who wanted to learn how to use polearms, but the guy who taught them was in the Undercity on the other continent. So, starting from the top in the orc capital, I ran on foot the entire way down the continent I was on to reach the docks, where I could take a boat to the other continent. Then I ran all the way back up the other continent, just barely avoiding enemies a much higher level than me the entire time. It took me hours to reach the Undercity, and when I did, I realized I could have just taken a zeppelin from where I started to get there in a couple minutes.

I spent a entire month of my life trying to kill this boss with no avail, you had to hit his head, but it's way too high for you to reach, and there are some boxes in the arena where you fight it.
I exausted every single tactic and strategy i could think of and nothing worked, then, after getting killed hundreds of times to it i decided to look a walkthrough.

You just slide near his foot and he will fall so you can hit his head, it's also one of the easiest bosses in the game.

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in majoras mask
wtf, there are ramps leading into these blocks that are part of the central pillar, nothing normal link form can do moves them and I needed goron form to get in so why dosnt the goron form special power do anything?
later I found out through a guide that you are supposed to punch them in goron form and I was absolutley pissed
GORON FORMS POWER IS ROLLING, THERE ARE RAMPS LEADING TO THE BLOCKS, WHY WOULD I EVER PUNCH IN GORON FORM WHEN I CAN ROLL

I beat FEAR without ever realizing there was a bullet time feature
I just thought the game was really fucking hard

Didn't know how to learn Deathblows in Xenogears, didn't get to use higher level Deathblows in gears thanks that . Managed to beat the whole game with level 1 Deathblows (some bosses were a real nightmare).

In Arkham Asylum I thought you only get XP if you don't get hit even once so I did a perfect no hit run for 3/4 of the game on highest difficulty.

Never figured out how magic and magic protection works in Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 I beat both games and killed every optional boss.

Thought there was only real time mode in Fallout Tactics (saving every ghoul in that ghoul town under attack was such a bitch).

I never finished Turok 2 because there was a feather I couldn't find for weeks and I gave up on it.

I bruteforced every door until I realized that you could zoom and rotate items and look behind the claw.

Got to one of the Dragons in FF6 while looking for Cyan, and ragequit for a while after getting annihilated. I found out a few weeks later that the Dragon was an optional boss and I'd just walked to the wrong part of the cave.

The final boss in this game is the big "really dumb feeling" when you discover how OP even the weakest shield possible is.

Majora's Mask fucked me up too, at snowhead. I was trying to get past the wind with the magic goron roll, and it took me forever to realize to play the lullaby.

What would ever lead you to believe this, especially with how casualized games have become ?

I swear I'm putting them in the right places and they're the right colors and I've checked the golden domes and the grid locations like three times now, why is it not working?

I forgot to press the button

My friend who's a pretty smart guy said that it was probably exhaustion. I'm sure just being here means you don't sleep terribly well or get the sleep you should, I know that's my deal, so at some point we just sorta shut down for a minute when it was safe… that or it was the moth man.

I thought the hardest difficulty was different.

Had a similar issue with The Dig. At one point you have to activate a console to extend a bridge, but clicking the button just makes it flash a bit. After a lot of messing around it turns out you have to hold the button down.

I never knew how to Devil Trigger in DMC, so I played through 3/4th of the game on the hardest difficulty available out of the box without it. Bosses were hard as hell and took forever to beat. Then my cousin started a game (he never beat it), flailed like a moron on the controller, and ended up figuring out how to do it.

The game instantly became a million times easier for me at that point.

Ocarina of Time 3DS remake

All the lore in the Dark Souls games.
I'm a bit of a simpleton.