5 Pro Tips for ALL Games

Most movies follow a three act structure, and most modern music is set to a 4/4 beat. Naturally, there are commonalities in video games. While I can't assume knowing these things means I can teach you how to make a game (unless you actually have a job making games, in which case I will pretend to know more than you do) I CAN use this knowledge to bestow you goobers with fundamentals that will allow you to have a kind of video game "Spider Sense" and also give you strategies on how to avoid things like "dying constantly."

Because these are fundamentals, they are incredibly basic. But if playing games with online modes has taught me anything it's that people have no freaking common sense. Or, at least, have not developed a common sense for video games. So listen up, you damn dirty children!

5. Unless There's a Timer on the Screen, There is No Time Limit

The one exception that immediately comes to mind is the recent Max Payne 3. And most modern games will give you some visual to indicate if something is getting away from you like a villain you are engaged in a foot chase with. But most of the time the absolute best thing to do when slapped with a deadly ultimatum is relax. It's actually quite stupid because developers will try to trick you by making the shiniest goodies only available during this time. These goodies are usually entirely missable if you follow the story and hurry to the objective.

FF7 is probably the best example. In the late game the main villain, Sephiroth, summons a meteor that will destroy the planet if the player doesn't hurry up. But it doesn't matter! What matters more is finishing up that Chocobo training and getting Knights of the Round!

4. Go the Wrong Way First

Nowadays, just about every game has collectibles in it. And games like The Last of Us and Bioshock Infinite have tons of items that are actually useful secreted away in obscure locations for clever players to find. Want to know how to find 75% of them? Go the wrong way first!

Level designers don't like making things that the player won't see. So if the game tells you to go one way but there's definitely a second way to go, you can bet that the second way will have some stuff stashed away like ammo or power-ups.

3. Bad Guys Don't Like it When You Do Objectives

Plain and simple. Is the room empty? Is there a generator or switch you need to hit? Brace yourself. The second you touch that thing the bad guys will straight up teleport right behind you and en masse. It doesn't matter what the rules are of the game or the game's universe; they will teleport!

It also doesn't matter how smart they are. I've noticed that even the most brainless zombie-type enemy will know EXACTLY when you are doing something critical to your survival and will strategically decide to bum rush you to stop you from doing it.

2. Fire Explosive Weapons at Your Enemies' Feet

The Halo series requires this knowledge to this day.

Have you ever noticed how hard it can be to hit a moving target with a fully automatic machine gun? How is it that most people then do not calculate how much harder it will be to hit the same target with a projectile that flies at half speed that can only be fired once? Stop trying to land a direct hit! The blast usually gets the job done. Get that blast to go off kinda near them by shooting the ground. The blast is a lot bigger than the rocket!

The worst offender I've come across are players of Mass Effect 3's multiplayer. The Missile Launcher (which is a misnomer, because the rockets are not guided) has a blast radius the size of a living room and does an amount of damage that's enough to one shot EVERYTHING. This is a valuable consumable! Think before you waste it!

1. Diligence!

At first I thought this idea was going away; that you should do every side quest and explore everything in order to beef up your character. Developers now fear putting in content that players will refer to as a "grind." They want players to feel like every action is immediately important and pushes the story forward. But now that "free-to-play" games are here, it's more important than ever.

Plants Vs. Zombies 2 came out for iOS recently. It constantly offers the player ways to skip through the game to access new levels or items. But if you play the game like it's old school by going through EVERY level and doing EVERY little mission and task then you can play the game entirely for free (unless you want a few extra pricey power-ups).

What is this? Diligence in a game like BioShock Infinite or The Last of Us will allow you to make your character stronger. That's still true of free-to-play games... sometimes. But designing games to work this way means that only impatient people have to pay while the people who play way more will be doing so with no cost. So you pay money to get LESS game? I can't help but call this concept an "idiot tax." Sorry if that's rude. But you should worry more that game makers are trying to trick you out of your cash. Don't let them!