For example, I am terrible at Super Meat Boy, but just playing it has really improved how I play platformers and games that need faster imputs overall.
Red Dead Redemption 2 taught me once again to slow down and take all the time I want with these huge games. I’ve saved a ton of money since.
In relation to skill, playing a ton of the original Halo on Xbox at my friend’s house while being only a PlayStation owner got me really good at using arbitrary controls.
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Counter strike makes any single player shooter trivial. The best they can do for difficulty is make headshots not actually kill the target in 2 or 3 shots.
Platformers are easy after super meat boy.
The original Deus Ex will train you to explore and scrounge for every bit of ammo. Making your skills from counter-strike even more valuable.
Unblock Me taught me that even if you don’t see the solution yet, moving the pieces in the way that they can move will often illustrate the correct path.
Mass Effect made me far better at multitasking and not letting myself get tunnel vision on an objective.
Sure I’d played Gears of War, or RTS’s that used the traditional rock, paper, scissors method of unit dominance, and resource management.
I’d just never played a third person shooter that expected me to combine all of those skills into a single gameplay loop which required constant shifting from power/defense based problem solving to accurate shot placement and squad positioning on the fly.
Rhythm Games in general, but specifically osu!mania taught me that I can, like, actually get good at completely new stuff no matter how much I suck at it to begin with
It also taught me that I really like Hardcore EDM, before hand I wouldn’t really listen to music cuz I wasn’t sure exactly what kind of music I was drawn to
Exactly the same as you lol
I can’t n get into rhythm games but I just don’t think I found the right one. I am sure there is a rhythm game out there that will blow me away.
Yeah there’s a decent ton of them out there, each player can find the one that resonates with them!
Something I think worth doing is searching “in 40 rhythm games” on YouTube to get a quick compilation of a bunch of unique rhythm games , and importantly it gives a little preview of their gameplay, usually at a high level
Elden ring taught me that I had to be calm when playing games. It taught me to know that I will be able to clear content, its just a matter of when. I used to think of games in terms of, can I clear this content? Now I think of games in terms of, how long will it take me to clear this content? I also realized that single player games aren’t hard. They are literally designed to be beaten.
I also learned that I play a lot better when I’m more focused on my body than the screen. I started bringing the same mindsets I use for sports into playing games and it helped a lot. It used to be that when I played games the screen was all that existed. Now I focus more on the pleasure of my fingers gliding across the keyboard, or just the contentment of experiencing my body doing something it enjoys.
Margit the fell omen and Godric the grafted took me like 30+ tries each. I beat blood flower lady on the second try (with mimic tear) and the final boss in maybe 6 tries (with a less powerful tear). I was beating bosses on the first or second try pretty consistently, like the starbeast things, ancestor spirit, dragonkin soldier, magma wyrm, and some of the crypt dungeon bosses.
I had put 40 hours into hades back in 2020 or 2021 and I probably cleared the game with no heat 5 or so times in those hours. More recently I sunk my teeth into hades and put in another 60 hours. In those 60 hours I got 100% on steam and was able to clear the game on +17. I also got through the first phase of hades on +32. But, I realized getting good enough at that fight to get through all 3 phases would’ve been rough. But regardless the difference in skill level was really apparent to me. It was so much fun to actually get constant story progress because I was actually clearing the game.
spider solitaire for the windows 98
it thought me a lot about how to move the mouse around the screen and also built up my tolerance for horror games by introducing spiders into the solitaire universe
Nioh 2
Well, I can tell you this. I grew up playing Mega Man. People say those games are hard, but I have them all memorized, so they’re all pretty easy for me.
Sometimes I play platformers that people consider hard, and I’m just disappointed by how mind-numbingly easy they are. Celeste is one example. I kept thinking, surely it must get harder. Maybe when I do the B sides. Surely there must be at least one part I struggle on. There never was. I never found anything hard about the game. The story was amazing, though.
So anyway, my answer is Mega Man. Not Mega Man X. Those games are amazing - quite possibly my favorite platformers of all time - but they’re too easy to fit into this category. The classic, 8-bit mega Man games from the NES (Mega Man 2 excluded. That one is also too easy).
DayZ SA hardcore, my reactions have improved and I have become more cautious as a player, especially of people.
Elden Ring.
I didn’t love the learning/difficulty curve of Soulsborne games until this one, but it got its hooks in me hard.
I usually spammed most boss fights and played everything a certain way, but here I had to learn the boss’s moves and dodge, parry and use power ups to bring them down.
Worth it. While frustrating, it made me return to other genres and play them again but differently. Hitman, sniper elite, roguelites/likes, anything that rewards patience, really. These now had a whole new facet I didn’t see before, or I did and I was applying it to these games.
I’ve since tried other soulsborne games, and while I now appreciate the difficulty and find them a lot more fun, the exploration and world of Elden Ring was the difference maker for me. It was being able to forge my own path and choose my challenges.
Similar answer and probably cliché, but for me it was the first Dark Souls. I finally played it about 2 years ago after avoiding it for a long time and thinking it wasn’t my thing. I thought I hated games that didn’t allow animation cancelling because they weren’t “responsive”. If I hadn’t heard so many people insist it’s great I would have given up because the character doesn’t react to every wild button mash.
Boy was I wrong. Once I understood the combat it was like Zelda (my OG favorite franchise) but better. And brutal. Playing through it subsequently made Elden Ring much easier than it probably would’ve been otherwise. Exploring every nook and cranny and overleveling helped a bit too I’m sure.
On PC with mods for upgraded resolution and textures (and dsfix) DS1 was a quite good experience. There’s still a bit too much BS like hidden paths and even NPCs that are way too obscure, and the game falls apart near the end, but learning to navigate the platforms of Blighttown and besting all the different bosses sharpened my skills like nothing had in ages.
