Too Much XP?

Recently I returned to the fabulous, apocalyptic world created by Naughty Dog in The Last of Us. I went back to play the Left Behind DLC, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It is a relatively short piece of content for £12, but I felt it was well worth it. Better value than watching JJ Abram’s latest, “Lens Flare 4” at the cinema, anyway.

As I was playing it, though, I was suddenly struck by the strange behaviour that I was employing in the game. Rather than entering one of the exquisitely detailed areas and pausing to enjoy the thought that Naughty Dog had so obviously put in to the game, I was “gaming” the game. You see, years of gaming experience have led me to play games in a very particular way.

Take the example of a shop, there might be an aisle that leads right down through the middle of the shop, and that would be the obvious way to pass through that shop. But a gamer will zig zag up and down all the shelves, rubbing the player controlled character  against the walls in the hunt for collectibles or other items. You’d better hope those wall textures look good up close, because that’s all us experienced gamers are going to see.

You’d better hope those wall textures look good up close, because that’s all us experienced gamers are going to see.

Gaming also teaches you that you should always go the wrong way, too. Say you drop down a hole and find yourself facing a corridor that stretches off into the distance. The natural thing to do is to head down the corridor, but an experienced gamer will always turn around first and head the wrong way, and will frequently be rewarded with an ammo pack, first aid kit, or collectible trinket. In fact, this behaviour is so ingrained into my playing style, that if I find myself faced with a choice of left or right in a game, my thoughts go like this: I never think “Which way do I want to go?” but rather “Which way is the right way?” and then deliberately head the other way. This way of thinking led to me become quite lost in a recent playthrough of Bioshock Infinite, where it seemed that I really should have gone the right way.

These clichés are so deeply embedded in gaming’s DNA that they can actually cause some disappointment. A waterfall I found in Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag did not have treasure hidden behind it; a disappointing blow that was luckily rectified several hours later by one that did. In GTA Online, there are some missions where the baddies hide behind barrels, but the barrels don’t explode when you shoot them. A great shame as, let’s face it, everyone knows that everything is better with huge explosions.

It made me think that I would love to see someone new to gaming play through these modern gaming experiences; to see how a gaming newbie would take it all in without years of extensive gaming baggage being dragged through every title. I’m sure it would be a breath of fresh air to see, but who knows if they’d get anywhere fast with only half the health packs and ammo of us wily older gamers?