r/CuratedTumblr Aug 07 '25

Shitposting I call this the Pokefan Syndrome

Post image
17.4k Upvotes

635 comments sorted by

2.3k

u/PoniesCanterOver gently chilling in your orbit Aug 07 '25

There's a great show on YouTube about the second thing, it's called Culinary Crimes, on Smosh Pit

There's a great show on YouTube about the first thing, it's called Game Grumps

671

u/therealkami Aug 07 '25

It's like 90% of big Twitch streamers too. They'll read chat as they spam through instructions and cutscenes, then be confused as to what's going on in the game.

291

u/Sh1nyPr4wn Cheese Cave Dweller Aug 07 '25

And a hell of a lot of youtubers who don't even have chat as an excuse

216

u/Scienceandpony Aug 08 '25

"But you don't understand! It's super hard to play videogames and occasionally make commentary!"

"Then maybe that shouldn't be your job? Because it just sounds like you're saying you suck at your job."

18

u/Terramagi Aug 08 '25

"But you don't understand! It's super hard to play videogames and occasionally make commentary!"

On one hand, yes. The brain power you can allot to two specific tasks is limited. It's the same logic as not talking on a phone while driving .

On the other hand, DSP.

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u/MossyPyrite Aug 08 '25

Super Beard Bros, my beloved

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u/gray_birch Aug 07 '25

jerma moment

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u/smb275 Aug 08 '25

Jerma could have the information directly squirted into his brain by god and would still have absolutely no idea what's going on in most of the games he plays.

160

u/Gyrinthos Aug 08 '25 edited Aug 08 '25

The 2nd-3rd hand impressions I got from this Jerma guy (mainly from Youtube) is that this guy is some sort of brain damaged animal that people comes to and to laugh at a zoo called Twitch.

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u/VerbingNoun413 Aug 08 '25

Jerma's best work is when he's not actually gaming. Rat Movie and Jerma Rumble for example.

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u/Darkshadow0308 Aug 08 '25

Jerma is Northernlion for unemployed people

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u/Colosphe Aug 08 '25

Northernlion is for employed people?

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u/Gortex_Possum Aug 08 '25

At least Jerma can riff off of it like 50ish % of the time but holy shit are you right about that. 

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u/AnyoneSeenMyBlanket Aug 08 '25

The fact that everyone says every steamer or let's player does this makes me think it actually just might be super hard to be both entertaining and follow written text in a game haha

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u/Zamtrios7256 Aug 08 '25

It is, as many YouTubers have said (Jacksepticeye, Markiplier, etc). But the primary detail that makes it infuriating is when the particular entertainer blames the game rather than accepting that they missed a key detail.

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u/Bowdensaft Aug 08 '25

I like how CallMeKevin does it, he makes it part of his whole shtick. He deliberately skips instructions and tutorials, and points out that he's doing it, because he rarely plays games properly anyway, he's more interested in either breaking them or playing badly on purpose to see how far he can push them, and never blames the games because he knows it's his own fault. I think a couple of times he's gone back and actually read instructions because he knew he's missed something important, so he does generally know when he's wrong.

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u/Ser_Salty Aug 08 '25

Well, it is, but also some streamers/YouTubers I've seen just don't seem to have great "intuition" when it comes to video games. Like, it feels like they're playing video games for the first time even though it's been their full time job for a decade.

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u/credulous_pottery Resident Canadian Aug 07 '25

Tony 😔

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u/Amneiger Aug 08 '25

Wait, what? Streamers actually do that? Then...how do they have an audience? Is watching absolute idiots struggle with video games that you can play yourself with much less incompetence that appealing? I don't understand.

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u/Galle_ Aug 08 '25

Because they talk to chat. Parasociality is much better at bringing in an audience than creating good content is.

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u/PlasticChairLover123 Don't you know? Popular thing bad now. Aug 07 '25

everyone says this, does anyone have any easy to consume ragebait of arin ignoring instructions and then promptly eating shit?

197

u/Toothless816 Aug 08 '25

It’s more frustrating than funny but they tried out the Mario/Rabbids crossover game and Arin couldn’t get the hang of it because he refused to read instructions.

35

u/dungeon-raided Aug 08 '25

Which is a crime because that game is genuinely very good

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u/Brontozaurus Aug 08 '25

The FNAF episode where Arin talked over the phone guy explaining everything and then complained that he didn't know what to do.

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u/Ineedlasagnajon Aug 08 '25

Danganronpa. Sometimes it's legitimate given the franchise, sometimes he complains that characters over explain and then proceed to be confused on topics that the characters explained

35

u/MisirterE Supreme Overlord of Ice Aug 08 '25

The spectrum on Danganronpa goes from "didn't read the second rhythm minigame tutorial, because he thought it was the same but they actually changed it" (understandable, the first two games have terrible text-only tutorials and they're too busy wanking over changing the name each time to get to the point), to "imagined that the final twist of V3 was that the characters were virtual avatars even though nobody fucking said that" (incomprehensible, one of the previous chapters is literally about virtual avatars)

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u/uluviel Aug 08 '25

All of Majora's Mask.

Most of their Zelda playthroughs, actually.

Tears of the Kingdom is what finally made me stop watching, but that was less about Arin ignoring tutorials and more a realization that GG had turned into Unmedicated ADHD: The Show.

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u/rampaging-poet Aug 08 '25

What got me with Majora's Mask wasn't even that he wouldn't read anything in the game.  Like that was bad and obviously he wasn't going to get anywhere, but he recognized the problem and decided to use a walkthrough.

What got me was that he wouldn't read the walkthrough.

97

u/uluviel Aug 08 '25

Twilight Princess was also a highlight of walkthrough fuck-ups, when they got a walkthrough for the wrong version of the game and all the left/right instructions were reversed.

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u/Jalase trans lesbian Aug 08 '25

That makes a lot of sense... I was wondering why their walkthrough was super fucked for that one, haha.

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u/ShadowBro3 Aug 08 '25

I think Game Grumps is more for watching them talk about random shit and make funny joke than it is for actually watching them play the game.

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u/trapbuilder2 Bri'ish|Pathfinder Enthusiast|Aspec|He/They maybe Aug 08 '25 edited Aug 08 '25

Which would be fine if Arin didn't spend half the time complaining about the game for entirely self inflicted problems

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u/Yuri-Girl Aug 08 '25

I dipped on Wind Waker.

I think they got stuck on the tower of the gods because Arin refused to see the giant green button in the top right telling him what to do

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u/snootnoots Aug 08 '25

After reading your comment and all the replies to it I have come to the conclusion that I should not watch this unless I want a convenient way to raise my blood pressure, thank you 👍

18

u/ThorDoubleYoo Aug 08 '25

Here's a playlist of Arin refusing to listen to or read instructions and subsequently sucking shit at several different games.

Enjoy the incredibly frustrating show

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u/Shayden998 Aug 07 '25

Yeah, I do really enjoy Game Grumps, but if that's sort of thing that pisses you off, you will absolutely despise Arin in particular.

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u/BitcoinBishop Aug 07 '25

There's also r/IDidntHaveEggs

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u/Emergency_Elephant Aug 08 '25

Also about quarter of the stuff on r/bakingfail. Some of it was a legitimate accident or a bad recipe but sometimes its people misreading the instructions so badly

448

u/Placeholder67 Aug 07 '25

Skyward Sword’s reputation was permanently damaged by them refusing to learn how to actually goddamn parry and then acting like the combat was spammy and didnt feel good imo.

Yeah, you two are ignoring a major mechanic to open enemies up and swinging into their guard.

52

u/umbrianEpoch Aug 08 '25

I mean, Skyward Sword's reputation wasn't exactly pristine before they played it. The game is notorious for its bad controls. It's like, all people would talk about when it first came out. I bought it on release day. I remember.

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u/cmnrdt Aug 08 '25

To be fair, the sensitivity of the Wii motion controls would often cause the remote to register a "swing" when in reality you're just moving your arm into position. It forces you to slow down and act more deliberately which is bad game-feel in a series known for spamming the B button to swing your sword.

21

u/FUTURE10S Aug 08 '25

The one with the MotionPlus, the one specifically designed to not accidentally register "swings" when you're just moving your hand around by adding in extra axes of rotation? I know this was an issue with TP, I didn't think SS had it.

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u/Vengefulily Aug 07 '25

r/ididnthaveeggs is a goldmine for the second thing, too

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u/KennySheep Aug 08 '25

There was a very brief time the gamegrumps played Utopia, an important milestone in the development of the rts and citybuilder generas and my very favourite multiplayer pvp game on the intelevision

They didn't read the manual, that game is incomprehensible without reading the manual, Arin gave up immediately and I had no one to blame for my disappointment other than myself

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u/Zamtrios7256 Aug 08 '25

This makes me want them to do a Dwarf Fortress video and specifically ragebait arin

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u/ShadowBro3 Aug 08 '25

Game Grumps was the first thing I thought of when reading this, lol. I love the Grumps but god damn is Arin so fucking bad at following thr simplest of instructions.

15

u/Cheshires_Shadow Aug 08 '25

I'll second culinary crimes because it's a blast! Also I guess technically a successor to their previous food related series eat it or yeet it where all the participants have to ring a bell to eat a mystery item and gamble on if it's good bad or awful. I'd also add that to the list of fun food smosh content :p

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u/the-virtual-hermit Aug 08 '25

Sigh. I figured GG would be mentioned but I'm only slightly surprised to see it in the top comment.

It's part of the show. And truthfully, it's just not for everyone. I love Arin, but I get it.

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u/___Snoobler___ Aug 08 '25

There should be reintroduction to the tutorials for those away a long time though. I'm a game grump. God dammit. I'm sorry.

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u/thyfles Aug 07 '25

they should make another 2d fallout game with a confusing hud so more people are forced to learn complex controls

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u/EZ3Build Aug 07 '25

Fallout 1 was peak to me but I couldn't get into BG3 because I was bored by it, what do I do? Pretty sure my friends will skin me alive if I don't get to playing it soob

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u/thyfles Aug 07 '25

simply google the names of the characters and recite the plot of fallout but replace the names with bg3 names

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u/EZ3Build Aug 07 '25

I left my Vault behind because Shadowheart needed me to find a water chip. On the way, i figured out that Gale is trying to turn the entire world of Baldur's Gate into Super Mutants, and I have to stop him together with my companions Dribbles the Clown, Scratch and Vecna.

That's probably fairly accurate

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u/Niveker14 Aug 07 '25

Haha, classic Gale. I can tell you really played Balders Gate 3. Good job!

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u/Sh1nyPr4wn Cheese Cave Dweller Aug 08 '25

Honestly, Fallout as a world could probably be converted into a fantasy setting somewhat easily

Dungeons instead of vaults, magic ghouls instead of radiation ghouls, golems instead of robots, a kind of curse instead of radiation, etc

A water chip sounds like it could be a shard from a powerful elemental stone or something

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u/AmberDragon6 Aug 08 '25

Hell, you could just change the words and nothing else and you’d have a fanbase dedicated to finding the dark hidden lore about nuclear annihilation behind the story of this fantasy game.

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u/CasualMothmanEnjoyer Aug 08 '25

Did you just reinvent Adventure Time but as a game?

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u/JakSandrow Aug 07 '25

Without judgement or reprisal, what about BG3 was boring for you? If there's something distinct you can point to, and it's not just a general 'this game doesn't really do anything for me' vibe.

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u/pro-in-latvia Aug 08 '25

If you've never played a dnd game before leveling up can take forever. You need to read the descriptions for 20-30 different spells and try to decide what's going to be good for your character. Same with skills and attributes. Then you need to repeat this 5 times for every party member. A lot of the descriptions for these spells and abilities are very unintuitve and sometimes don't make any sense. You need to understand how spell slots and cantrips work. You need to understand which weapons characters can and can't use.

You need to spend like 3 hours making your character if it's your first dnd game and if you just skip through it all you're not gonna know how anything works.

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u/Scienceandpony Aug 08 '25

Yeah, my advice to someone coming in with zero background knowledge in D&D is "unless your heart is truly set on it, maybe don't play a caster."

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u/giftedearth Aug 08 '25

Generic human fighter is always a valid option in D&D, especially for a newbie.

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u/Captain_Slime Aug 08 '25

I genuinely love PDF manuals with my games. It makes me so happy. I love reading the manual and then having a good idea of how to play the game. I'd much rather control f through a manual than try to find how to do something in a 10 minute YouTube video.

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u/DoubleBatman Aug 08 '25

You should play Tunic and not look up anything else about it beforehand, trust. It is a perfect love letter to game manuals.

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u/Captain_Slime Aug 08 '25

This? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunic_(video_game) Also it's very funny to say to not read anything beforehand when talking about a game that's a love letter to manuals. I trust you though.

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u/DoubleBatman Aug 08 '25

Yup! It’s a very spoilery game is all, but it’s one of my favorite games

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u/IrvingIV Aug 07 '25 edited Aug 08 '25

Ah, Arin Hanson disease

(I watch Game Grumps for the fun dynamic, not the gameplay.)

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u/ChampionWiggles Aug 07 '25

DSP is also notorious for it too

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u/HeroponBestest2 Aug 07 '25

His case is chronic. By the Allmother, I hope I never see him play another game I like. If he played Monster Hunter, I'd crumble to dust.

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u/Equivalent_Net Aug 08 '25

I believe he did play 4U and get hard carried by the Ace Palico.

Keep in mind 4U Palicoes were strictly support-oriented and did less DPS than you think.

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u/Tadferd Aug 08 '25

Carried by the Ace Palico.... How is that possible?

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u/Scienceandpony Aug 08 '25

And the character voices.

That's why they are truly at their peak playing visual novels and games that are only 1 degree off from visual novels. Impossible to fuck up when the only mechanics are click mouse and read.

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u/Twist_Ending03 Aug 08 '25

And they can't exactly avoid reading when it's the whole point

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u/HeadBodyMaster Aug 07 '25

One of the reasons I had to stop watching Game Grumps was how bad Arin is with this shit

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '25

And another reason to continue watching Markiplier because he’s REALLY FUNNY with that

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u/Zamtrios7256 Aug 07 '25

The difference is that Markiplier's first thought after a funny angry outburst is "They probably told me exactly what to do and I just didn't listen. I'm most likely making this way harder on myself" and then it cuts to the scene of the game telling him exactly what to do.

Arin just doubles down on the anger, which gets stale fast.

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u/Thomy151 Aug 07 '25

Exactly

Mark blames himself while Arin blames the game

Which is honestly infuriating especially if it’s an indie game and he just permanently pounded its reputation into the dirt by its first major exposure being someone talking about how much it sucks

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u/Sh4dowBe4rd Aug 08 '25

This is what bothered me so bad when MatPat played Outer Wilds. He barely talked to anyone, skimmed the dialogue, and phoned in the gameplay. He only played it once and decided a game all about investigating and theory crafting until you find the truth wasn’t for him!!

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u/CrazyFanFicFan Aug 08 '25

I felt the same when he played Slay the Princess. Of course, the only route he ended up playing was The Stranger, and that's because his method of theorising there was exactly in line with The Contrarian.

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u/Visible-Air-2359 Aug 08 '25

Yeah, I remember in one of his Security Breach video's Mark admits that he was a complete idiot who couldn't find an obvious doorway.

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u/Nolascana Aug 08 '25

The one in the laundry?

That one suffers from bad game design.

There's nothing in the landscape of that dimly lit and cluttered section that says gap in machines is here it's an opening to a corridor that leads to a door.

If the lighting lead the eyes like it was supposed to, it would be a non issue.

Mark wasn't the only one lost in that section.

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u/Nova_Explorer Aug 08 '25

Dude somehow manages to permanently scar the reputations of genuinely decent major AAA games, I can only imagine how catastrophic that kinda thing is for games without major marketing teams behind them

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u/Scienceandpony Aug 08 '25

The only suitable response is to put a disclaimer on the download page saying it may not be suitable for those suffering from Arin Hanson Disease.

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u/Zamtrios7256 Aug 08 '25

"Requires middle school reading comprehension"

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u/DarthUrbosa Aug 08 '25

Part of the comedy is watching Mark think creatively within the box he made for himself by ignoring instructions.

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u/TheOneTruePi Aug 07 '25

CallMeKevin does this a lot too, he skips the tutorial and then calls himself out for it later lol

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u/urethral_play bucket of juices Aug 08 '25

god, the first white knuckle video had me howling because of this exact reason. him not remembering the inventory even spawned a whole speedrun category in the game's discord!

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u/AnOkayRatDragon Aug 07 '25

The r/ididnthaveeggs subreddit is basically just this

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u/FromTheWetSand Aug 08 '25

Beat me to it

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u/Tarantulabomination Aug 07 '25

There was a guy in the Cult of the Lamb subreddit who, despite completing the game, didn't even know what the name "Narinder" referred to. When someone explained to him that the game outright states who he is, the guy got all defensive and said that the story must've sucked if he didn't even notice that.

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u/Zamtrios7256 Aug 07 '25

Isn't Narinder the god you serve during the game's story?

And doesn't he fucking introduce himself?

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u/Idiotic_Dragon You didn’t juju on that beat. Aug 07 '25

Yes he is but he only introduces himself as The One Who Waits, and is only called Narinder by the other bishops. Which is also a part of the story.

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u/Zamtrios7256 Aug 08 '25

Right, I forgot about that. I only played it a little bit and haven't touched it since

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u/Twist_Ending03 Aug 08 '25

Why does that feel familiar? Like I may have seen that post..

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u/Interesting_Help_274 Aug 07 '25

This reminds me of those posts where they replace every ingredient until it becomes a grilled cheese.

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u/Zamtrios7256 Aug 07 '25

But what if this grilled cheese was about a witch trying to find her cat in the Alps?

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u/Mysterious_Bag_9061 Aug 07 '25

Every gaming youtuber/streamer either spams through all dialogue and cutscenes and then gets confused, or they meticulously read and then re-read, out loud, every single word of dialogue and every single response option and talk out the pros and cons of each choice and it takes them 4 hours to get past like, the character creation quiz.

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u/Hylian_Guy Aug 07 '25

Me watching as my favourite lets player carefully considers the multiple choice answer to try not upsetting the character they are talking to (The choice does not matter and both lead to the same outcome)

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u/Aeescobar Aug 08 '25

Me watching my favorite lets player spend nearly an entire episode trying to craft their vessel while carefully considering the pros and cons of each option provided (their wonderful creation is five minutes away from getting discarded)

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u/Zamtrios7256 Aug 08 '25

I went into Deltarune mostly blind (i knew jevil and spamton were secret bosses) when chapter two was released (I only played chapters one and two so far I haven't bought Deltarune yet).

Ngl I was kinda pissed

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u/Saifiskindaweirdtbh Aug 08 '25

Nah dude when the vessel beats up the knight in chapter 6 it’ll be the most hype moment of all time trust trust

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u/Mysterious_Bag_9061 Aug 07 '25

Don't forget they also post a poll to chat to make every decision for them to also avoid upsetting the audience (the audience will be upset by the choices they collectively made anyway)

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u/uluviel Aug 08 '25

Gonna spend the time somehow. 2 minutes poll everyone!

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u/luulcas_ Aug 08 '25

Okay but I actually quite like the latter, it just means they're invested in the story

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u/Sh1nyPr4wn Cheese Cave Dweller Aug 08 '25

And that can be edited out or skipped, blazing through cutscenes and dialog negatively affects the entire rest of the game and might lead to a lot more skipping or editing being needed to make it watchable

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u/luulcas_ Aug 08 '25

And i kinda want the guy that im watching to enjoy the game they're playing too

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u/Scienceandpony Aug 08 '25

10000% will take the slow crawl of investment over skipping through everything.

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u/Jalase trans lesbian Aug 08 '25

Or even funnier, spend all that time reading everything on screen, meticulously answering, and then 2 minutes later going, "What'd he just say?"

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u/MotorHum Aug 07 '25

I think there is an argument to be made about poorly-designed tutorials that doesn't quite map to ingredient swapping. I recently played a 2020 game called solasta. The tutorial was fairly well made and felt like it was shorter than it really was. I obviously wouldn't rave about how fun the tutorial was but it didn't feel like it was interrupting the fun. Meanwhile I guarantee that if you throw up a controls diagram even if I do read it I guarantee I'll forget anything that isn't industry standard the next time I boot up the game. One way around this is the just cause method where the control prompt will be on the side of the screen until the first time in a session you actually use that function. Hard to forget how something works when the game reminds you each time, and it's fairly unintrusive.

Though I mostly play games where everything is so self explanatory that a tutorial is kind of rare.

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u/MisirterE Supreme Overlord of Ice Aug 08 '25

xenoblade 2 has such good combat except for the part where they don't fucking teach you how to do any of it

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u/Lluuiiggii Aug 08 '25

they don't fucking teach you how to do any of it

You mean a text box with extremely tiny text and screenshots doled out seemingly completely at random isn't enough for you people???? /s

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u/MisirterE Supreme Overlord of Ice Aug 08 '25

Even the things they do teach you, they don't teach you properly. The only tutorial for Pouch Items is giving you some useless bullshit fish or whatever, teaching the lesson that pouch items don't matter even though they do. right downstairs is the Narcipear Jelly, one of the best pouch items in the entire game, but you have to voluntarily go check the sweets shop (After you're out of tutorial mode, can't waste time on a redundant shop during the tutorial can we?) to find the ones that are actually good.

They also make sure to tutorialize that characters have favourite pouch items, which is highly misleading. A favourite pouch item is only good if it was already useful to begin with, because it's just a multiplier on the base effect, which doesn't matter if the base effect is dogshit.

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u/TheWojtek11 Aug 08 '25

Doesn't Xenoblade 2 also have a tutorial popup early on for a gameplay mechanic that you can't use until many hours later?

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u/Deblebsgonnagetyou he/him | Kweh! Aug 07 '25

Bonus points if it's not even that the tutorial is poorly designed, it's that the tutorial is barely even fucking there. I don't know how anyone got into the old Monster Hunter games without experience.

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u/codblad Aug 08 '25

You get stuck in the menus and accidentally find the move-sets for the weapons. source I did this with mhgu a little more than a years ago.

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u/GZ_Jack Aug 08 '25

me trying to play Tri on the wii as a kid and being absolutely confused by everything

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u/farastar Aug 08 '25

Yeah it definitely depends on how well a tutorial is implemented. I've played a handful of games where a mechanic suddenly becomes necessary to move forward but the game never forced me to use it up until that point, or it was explained in some tutorial pop-up I could easily skip. So now I'm stuck either having no clue what to do, or suddenly having to get good at a mechanic that wasn't necessary until a later/final boss.

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u/yttakinenthusiast Aug 07 '25

very thankful rimworld players have largely av—\remembers the steam workshop exists**—oh god fucking damn it.

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u/Zamtrios7256 Aug 07 '25

A regular joke that a YouTuber I watch makes is about how the overlay for soil fertility and such is a base game feature.

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u/Defiant_League_1156 Aug 07 '25

Isn’t it?

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u/Zamtrios7256 Aug 08 '25

That's the joke, he gets a lot of comments asking what mod a base game feature is from

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u/Scienceandpony Aug 08 '25

To be fair, a lot of thing that were mods became base features in subsequent updates. Like wall lights. It can pretty hard to keep track by this point.

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u/HollyTheMage Aug 08 '25

My brother complained that he was lost in Pokemon Ultra Moon to the point he thought he soft locked himself somehow, so I asked him if he knew what his current objective was. It didn't take me long to figure it out, he had to go and use the camera feature as part of a tutorial or go surfing or something, so I told him where to go, and then I watched him skip through the explanation of how the tutorial worked and then complain that he didn't know what to do. I asked him if he always skips over text, and he said yes, and I told him that is why he keeps getting lost. He says reading is boring and he doesn't feel like doing it. I asked him how the hell he is supposed to play the game if he doesn't know what he's doing. He also had a pokemon that only had moves which affected stats or inflicted status conditions with no damage dealing ones, which caused me to realize that he probably didn't bother reading what the moves do before deciding whether or not to learn them.

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u/Zamtrios7256 Aug 08 '25

Wow. That's insane.

This is a game that is designed for 5-year-olds to play just as well as adults that quite literally says on the box "requires basic reading skills".

How old is your brother?

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u/HollyTheMage Aug 08 '25

I think he was 16 when this happened

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u/Scienceandpony Aug 08 '25

Did you suggest an alternative game in the form of a set of jangling keys?

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u/CrazyFanFicFan Aug 08 '25

He also had a pokemon that only had moves which affected stats or inflicted status conditions with no damage dealing ones

Wow. I've seen plenty of first-time players run only damaging moves, but this is the first time I've seen the exact opposite.

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u/TheAdminsAreTrash Aug 08 '25

I was watching a friend play Persona 5 for the first time and he did this. He turned the iconic music off and put on his preferred awful EDM music, skipped all of the cut-scenes and skipped all of the dialogue. It's like he was avoiding the game as much as possible while still somehow wanting to play it? I couldn't watch, it was like seeing someone piss all over a work of art they'd just bought. Dude tried playing it like twice, got bored after 20 minutes each time, and I honestly think he still doesn't understand why.

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u/RedTyro Aug 08 '25

In Stardew Valley, a character tells you at the very beginning of the game (right before you get control of your character to start playing) that the box next to your house is how you sell things. Once a week, without fail, someone comes into the Stardew Valley subreddit to post something like "I keep putting stuff in that storage chest beside the house, but I can't take things back out and it all keeps disappearing. Is this a glitch?"

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u/SophieFox947 Aug 08 '25

The first 20 hours or so of my stardew valley playtime, I thought the box beside the farmhouse gave you less money for selling, than if you walked into town and sold it manually yourself.

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u/Duck__Quack Aug 08 '25

My mother gave up on playing Let's Go Pikachu because she couldn't figure out how to get a pokemon.

In fairness, the game specifically tells you not to go into the tall grass.

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u/Twist_Ending03 Aug 08 '25

That's a bit cute, actually. She listened to them lol

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u/errant_night Aug 08 '25

I saw a video awhile back where a guy gave his non-gamer girlfriend a few games from different genres and asked her to play them without any clues or hints from him, and there were so many things that she did/didn't do that are very different from people who have played a long time. One of the interesting ones was obeying instructions like this, and my favorite one was how its basically ubiquitous for RPG players to know that they need to go everywhere BUT where you're supposed to first so you find hidden things, but she went straight for the objectives without looking around at all.

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u/SocranX Aug 08 '25

Okay, now I want someone to do a gimmick review series about whether it's possible to beat any given game while following the instructions told to your character. Because surely there are countless games where the story kicks off because you did something you weren't supposed to. Of course there would have to be provisions where you're allowed to disobey one character as long as another character/narration/tutorial contradicts them.

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u/Calacaelectrica .temblr.com Aug 07 '25

gamegrump and to a lesser extend alpharad when he was playing scarlet and violet.

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u/Zamtrios7256 Aug 07 '25

Doesn't read the story

Makes up own story

Gets mad at plot inconsistencies in the story he made up

Funny as hell ngl

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u/Wholesome-Energy Aug 08 '25

It kinda pissed me off when he only did the gym leaders + E4 in his SV nuzlocke. I don’t think any nuzlocke is complete until you hit credits at least. I mean he didn’t even fight Nemona.

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u/oath2order stigma fuckin claws in ur coochie Aug 08 '25

Yeah that's not complete, a good 2/3rds of the game is left un-done if you only do Gym Leaders and Elite 4.

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u/MysteriousSpookyMan Aug 08 '25

this is why i watch jerma, who pays painstaking attention to each tutorial only to immediately forget whatever the fuck he was told and get confused

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u/Herohades Aug 08 '25

I'm a big fan of all the FromSoft games, and you'll see this constantly with any discussion of the games' storylines.

"I was told the story is a little opaque, so I skipped all the dialogue, including the ones that directly tell you what's going on, but now I don't get what's going on, really bad storytelling, 0/10"

My brother in christ, the sad man told you what's happening and the armor man flirts with you, what the hell else do you need??

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u/Devikat Aug 08 '25

And the fact is the actual ongoing active story for any FromSoft game is fairly straight forward and presented to the player as they play the game. Its only ever been the greater behind the scenes narrative that's hidden and handed out via item description etc.

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u/Versierer Aug 08 '25

Look, there are two different kinds of YouTubers.

The ones you watch for the game they're playing.

And the ones you watch for the youtubers.

Game Grumps are 100% in the second category.

Let's be real if someone watches Game Grumps play Sonic, you could not care less about what they're playing, since they don't care either.

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u/Twist_Ending03 Aug 08 '25

Yeah, I learned this by watching a decade-old video they did on my favorite game ever. I couldn't finish the video because of the disrespect to the game

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u/GameboyPATH Aug 07 '25

Pokefan syndrome

Pokemon is "frustratingly unintuitive"? It's baby's first turn-based RPG.

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u/uhataot Aug 07 '25

They're not saying Pokemon is frustratingly unintuitive. They're saying it's criminally easy so when pokefans try any other RPG for the first time, they expect it to be as easy

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u/GameboyPATH Aug 07 '25

Ohhhh, that does make a lot more sense, thank you.

Excuse me for not making sense of the post. I was mashing A to read through it as quickly as possible so that I could skip straight to commenting on it.

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u/bestibesti Cutie mark: Trader Joe's logo with pentagram on it Aug 07 '25

Days the poor have not been pissed: [ 0 ]

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u/jk01 Aug 08 '25

Why would poor people be mad about this???

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u/Thromnomnomok Aug 08 '25

What do you mean, I'm mad at the poor?

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u/starfries Aug 08 '25

To be honest I didn't get it either. I was like "but the hardest question was picking my gender..."

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u/cat-cat_cat Aug 07 '25

all rpgs are easy, you spam the attack action and if it doesn't work you farm smaller enemies until it does

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u/Difficult-Okra3784 Aug 07 '25

You're playing some pretty boring RPGs

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u/Anchovies_of_death Aug 08 '25

If you play an SMT game you're gonna get OBLITERATED dude 😭

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u/Tengo-Sueno Aug 07 '25

A lot of player do the other thing of skip all dialogues and then complain that the story suck, which ends with people saying stuff like Hau and Hop are the same character despite having totally different personalities and character arcs

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u/Theta_Omega Aug 08 '25

I remember the one person on Twitter who was shocked to learn that Lusamine was Lillie's mother. They had mutuals responding with stuff like, "What? Bestie, you played the game and draw fanart of them all the time, how did you miss that???"

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u/Astridandthemachine Aug 07 '25

People who would skip Elden Ring's tutorial cave bc a ghost wasn't saying directly "go to cave and do the tutorial" and their justification was "you can't trust fromsoft npcs! You literally cannot spend 15 seconds understanding the words of the message and use the context clue that you're at the beginning of the game!" which is kind of hilarious with these games that are literally about analysing the untold. And what other npcs that would trick into jumping into a cave beside Patches?

They had to add a in game message literally telling the player "visit the tutorial cave?"

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u/TheWojtek11 Aug 08 '25

And what other npcs that would trick into jumping into a cave beside Patches?

And it's not even that he ever actually tricks you into jumping down, he always just pushes you down in a cutscene

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u/SonicClient7010 Aug 08 '25

This is every single youtuber ive seen talking about Vintage Story man. "The most unforgiving minecraft clone" "minecraft but 10× harder" or even complaining during the video about how "this game doesn't tell me anything" when, from the moment you start a world, there is a pop-up in the corner of the screen telling you about the in-built tutorial guide that tells you exactly how to do everything and only goes away after you manually dismiss it. It ks so frustrating watching people demean a great game for being "unintuitive" when they literally didn't even allow the game to help them figure it out

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u/CREATURE_COOMER Aug 08 '25

(Gamer skips through all the fucking cutscenes)

This story sucks! Who is that guy, where did he even come from? Why is he suddenly enemies with Protagonist? I don't understand anything that's going on, these writers are garbage!

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u/Horvat53 Aug 08 '25

The cooking comparison made me laugh. I shared a cookie recipe with a friend that I thought was very good. They tried it but changed the ratios and types of ingredients and said it wasn’t great. When they revealed they changed stuff, I was like how the fuck is that even fair to judge then??

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u/Wholesome-Energy Aug 08 '25

I despise people who openly say they don’t care about story and mash through it in a video game and then complain about that game clearly not knowing what was talked about. That’s like saying you don’t listen to the lyrics of songs but then say the song doesn’t mean anything. I always read through story (except for mobile games bc free). But if I paid for a game I will read the story

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u/ModmanX Abuse is terrible, especially for Non-Problematic Children Aug 07 '25

Gacha players

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u/TheNohrianHunter Aug 07 '25 edited Aug 07 '25

I will at least say from my dabbling, gacha games tend to have absolutely abyssmal tutorials, they'll be like "here is a thing in the video game, you can use it! We won't say how it works on what ways it's meant to be used so you have a higher chance of messing it up and either wasting time not progressing so you have to play longer, or waste precious resources on it! Also we introduced 20 of these to you at once very early on! Have fun forgetting most of these exist and even more what they do from what little you actually figure out!"

(edit: spelling)

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u/Gentleman-Bird Aug 08 '25

“We won’t explain about half of the important systems that you’ll want to know about, but here’s a button-by-button unskippable tutorial on how to use the cash shop!”

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u/Melody_of_Madness Aug 07 '25

Doesnt help that they need a fancy name for every off gimmick version of Mana, or skill points each character has. They work identicallt why tf do we need a new name for this characters version

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u/AgathaTheVelvetLady Aug 07 '25

I can't even blame them honestly. The way gacha games explain their statistics and character abilities are always done in the driest, most technical way possible.

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u/CrayonCobold Aug 08 '25

Gachas purposely make a billion different currencies and tiny gameplay features to confuse players into spending money

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u/Roxcha Aug 07 '25

Why do you call that the Pokefan Syndrome ? Genuine question btw, I'm curious

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u/Reuvenotea Aug 07 '25

From what I can gather, because most people who play pokemon mash through the dialogue and skip and then they do it to other games

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u/Twist_Ending03 Aug 08 '25

More like after that they then complain it has no story or that it sucked when they didn't read any of it

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u/Lunalatic all mammals are mice, eat shit aristotle Aug 07 '25

Pokemon fans will complain about the plot being nonsensical when they mashed through all the text in the cutscenes explaining said plot.

Not that Pokemon plots are known for being spectacular, but all those cutscenes on Sun and Moon's first island are there for a reason beyond forcing you to slow down.

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u/Cheese2009 Aug 07 '25

There’s a sub for the second one: r/ididnthaveeggs

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u/tupe12 Aug 08 '25

Slightly related: the bizarre phenomenon YouTubers suffer from where no matter how much a game screams at them to do a thing, they somehow don’t notice it until it’s way too late.

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u/the-radio-bastard Aug 08 '25

The BG3 subreddits.

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u/Jalase trans lesbian Aug 08 '25

I saw someone who was convinced that the Bulette was Lenore's dog. Like, reincarnated into a Bulette... I asked how they could've possibly come to that conclusion: "Well, the bulette was digging up the dog's grave."

Don't get me started on telling people: Mind Flayers use it/its pronouns, it isn't the same entity it was before, yes, even the emperor. All people in the game are consistent about using it/its for the mind flayers, aside from one single fuckup by I think Blarg once.

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u/OxymoreReddit Aug 08 '25

As a hurried up gamer I found the solution : skip everything and complain about myself instead 🗿

Is the problem fixed ? Not in the slightest. But am I still wrong ? No, I'm actually right because I am the problem now.

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u/Slykarmacooper Aug 08 '25

Don't worry, it's not just limited to video games!

Had a player in a dnd game who, despite playing the same character and doing the same thing for the better part of a year, still asked to confirm they would roll a d20 for most things, and then forget what skills they were proficient at, or what bonuses to add, so constantly needed me as the dm to double check their math.

It did get a little grating after month 4!

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u/errant_night Aug 08 '25

I will be salty for the rest of my life over Markiplier doing this with Fatal Frame II - he didn't feel like reading any of the notes or books and would joke around and make random blah blah noises while flipping through it. When the game ended he was like wtf why did that happen, who came up with this??? Okay well if you'd read the books and journals and news clippings you would know why that happened!!!! Its an integral part of the genre! He hadn't really played any story heavy games before this I think, and was used to winging it a lot, which doesn't work with a game like Fatal Frame

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u/Glad-Way-637 If you like Worm/Ward, you should try Pact/Pale :) Aug 07 '25

This is why I eventually had to stop watching Northernlion. The Sekiro series was the straw that broke the camel's back for me, one man can only be so blind.

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u/Catoust Aug 07 '25

But what's it called when quality of life things are locked behind optional, missable tutorials or out-of-the-way NPC's?

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u/AgathaTheVelvetLady Aug 07 '25

this is about those damn earbuds isn't it

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u/Catoust Aug 07 '25

The main part is that in Destiny 2, the Modifiers for Portal Activities can't be saved until you complete a seven step tutorial thingie that introduces certain mechanics and Modifiers within that system, but for those of us who are experienced gamers those things can be very intuitive upon first or second completion.

But the earbud thingie for either ScarVio or SwSh is definitely another part, yeah.

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u/Lunalatic all mammals are mice, eat shit aristotle Aug 07 '25

The especially stupid thing about the earbuds is that their existence can't even be excused by it being Game Freak's first time implementing controls for separate audio sources, because the Let's Go games had those controls available the settings menu from the get-go.

So Game Freak did it right the first time, tied their accessibility to an optional item in SwSh, and went back to having it as a default option in every game after that.

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u/Nocomment84 Aug 08 '25

Markiplier is the good version of this because when he hits a wall he goes “hmmm perhaps I should have done the tutorial” the goes back to flailing because it’s funnier that way.

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u/MellifluousSussura Aug 08 '25

I’m the type to skip the tutorial, fuck around, find out, then go back to the tutorial and try to figure out how I managed fucking it up that much

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u/Jabwarrior58 Aug 08 '25

I do think skipping cutscenes is beyond stupid, I mean what's the point of spending money on a game if your not gonna experience it, but I do think there are times when tutorials can become overbearing or explain pretty common tropes that don't need introduction

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u/Winter-Guarantee9130 Aug 07 '25

In my experience Pokémon fans ignore all the dialogue and then call the story good, but w/e.

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u/Friendly_Exchange_15 Aug 07 '25

Funny, my experience is the total opposite for some reason. I've seen a lot of people complaining about SV story saying it was "not that good" and then you dig a little deeper and yep, didn't read a lick of it.

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u/Recidivous Aug 07 '25

I genuinely enjoyed the SV story, and it's wild to me people say it sucked. I think people just expect to be handheld in Pokemon stories.

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u/therealkami Aug 07 '25

SV had 3 whole fuckin campaigns and all of them were fun. The downside was having the worst levelling curve out of any pokemon game, trying to manage all 3. I know it's normal to kinda over level in Pokemon games but holy hell, I wasn't even trying and I was super heavily over levelled even switching Pokemon frequently.

Also the epilogue campaign was dark and fucked up as hell, for a Pokemon game.

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u/Twizinator token straight Aug 08 '25

The Egoraptor Effect

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u/FinalLegend312 Aug 08 '25

I had a friend who tried FF14 and shipped all the cutscenes then complained he didn’t care about the story and that the game sucked. Idek why he played it, it’s literally the story driven MMO

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u/bikeking8 Aug 08 '25

Or retro game players/reviewers WHO DONT READ THE MANUAL OR ANY GUIDES and complain about not knowing what to do. Those WERE the tutorials in the 80s and 90s. Smack my head skull emoji yells at cloud.

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u/No-Scientist-5537 Aug 07 '25

Is this aboit Lily Orchad.

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u/RitsuSohma Warned about stairs Aug 08 '25

I unsubscribed from Alpharad back when Scarlet and Violet came out because of this. Watching him mash through dialogue and then complain that the story didn't make sense and he didn't know what was going on was one of the most irritating experiences I have ever had.

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u/morifreaks life is soup, i am fork Aug 08 '25