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Game walkthroughs are evil. There's no middle ground here, no shades
of gray, no exceptions to this rule. They are the
ultimate expression of our society's love for
soul-destroying, mind-numbing crutches. In the
pantheon of insidious things poised for humanity's
destruction (like cigarettes, or automatic
transmissions) the game walkthrough stands among the
highest ranks. They are the very antithesis of life
itself.
At least, that's what I used to think.
And I thought I had some pretty solid arguments in favor of my
position. I'm still convinced that there are
gamers utterly ruin their gaming experience
by playing entire games, start screen to staff
scrolls, with a walkthrough in their laps to help
them over every little problem. Some of these
scamps actually BUY these game-cheatin' slices of
perdition, which is crazy. Heck, one of my favorite
parts of buying a game at the video store used to be the
part where the clerk would inevitably ask me if I
wanted to buy the strategy guide for the game. This
gave me the opportunity to put an incredulous look -
a look that suggested that I could not have possibly
heard him right - and say "No sir! I am a purist.
And even if I wanted such information (and here's where
I would use a really condescending tone) I could get
it for nothing on the internet." Ah, those were
good times, at least until the clerks got to the
point where they recognized me, and stopped asking
me questions like that. All in all, back
then I could only see the negative uses of game
walkthroughs. I swanned though my days as a golden
gamer - well, gold-plated tin, anyway -
convinced that My Way was the right way, forever and
ever, amen.
But then I got a job.
It is written: "Whomsoever the gods would destroy, they first make
mad (i.e. employed)." In short, I graduated, got a job, and
started earning some money (when compared to
a graduate student's stipend). "But Astrid," I can
hear you say "how can more money be a bad thing?" Well,
at first it didn't seem like a bad thing at all.
For the first time ever, I could buy an RPG without
scrimping, saving, or waiting until Christmas or my
birthday. Suddenly, every freakin' day was
Christmas. But after a while, a new trend appeared:
I no longer finished every game I bought. Some of
the games turned out to be less attractive than
others, so they got less play time. Eventually,
they'd get shelved for months at a time. After a
while, I built up a decent backlog of games that I
couldn't get around to finishing, because newer
games kept intervening. Mind you, I was still
finishing games, more than ever before, despite the
fact that I was losing a full two-thirds of my
weekdays to work and sleep. But I wasn't finishing
all of them. And that just felt wasteful. (Poor
me, huh?)
Now, I recognize that some games aren't worth finishing, but I do my
level best to avoid buying games like that, so my
backlog of unfinished RPGs are either fairly solid
representatives of the genre, or examples of
"must-buy" games. But some of them just turned out
to be less attractive to me than some of the other
titles that I've been playing. And I'm attempting
to become even more selective with the titles I buy,
so that my backlog will grow more slowly. But I
have been struggling with what to do with my
remaining backlog. Should I just give up on them?
The compulsive completionist streak in my psyche
rebels at the notion, but that doesn't help me at
all (in fact, that's the root of the problem). I
was too stupid see the solution that has been under
my nose all of this time, and my prejudice against
walkthroughs wouldn't even allow me to think about
using one. But then a small miracle occurred:
Suikoden V was released.
Now, I know that Suikoden IV has practically nothing to do with
Suikoden V, but you have to remember that I'm a
compulsive completionist where RPGs are concerned.
I've been with the series since the first
installment, and I want to finish each one. But
Suikoden IV was a sticking point. There was no way
that I would let myself play Suikoden V before I had
finished Suikoden IV, and I wasn't able to get into
Suikoden IV enough to finish it. All of that
sailing around, looking for 108 Stars of Destiny was
too monotonous, even for me. The release date for
Suikoden V was looming, and I could only see one way
out: use a walkthrough.
So that's what I did. And an amazing thing happened: I actually started
to enjoy the game. That's crazy, because
there's just entirely too much sailing around in
that game for me to enjoy it. But using the
walkthrough allowed me to sidestep so much of the
rambling around you need to do when you're looking
for the Stars of Destiny; as a result, the game
was no longer grinding me down. I was able to
quickly finish the game and move on to playing
Suikoden V (which requires no walkthrough, since I'm
enjoying it very much).
The experience has been humbling. A stubborn fool like myself hates
to own up to being wrong. But I finally have to
admit that there are circumstances under which using
a walkthrough can be beneficial. This is a
take-home message that is probably obvious to some
of you audience members, but if you're like me
(i.e., slightly off-kilter) it's a bit of a
revelation. I'm now in the process of looking
through my RPG backlog and deciding if some of them
might benefit from a similar treatment. That way, I
won't feel like I've completely wasted my money, and
I might even enjoy some of it.
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