Leaderboard

If the story is compelling, I tend to do the main goals just to stay in character; Link wouldn't play with chickens if he just saw his sister get kidnapped. If the story's just average, I'll go back and forth between the story missions and dicking around. If the story is absolute shit, I'll name my character something like F****tAss Clemens and dick around for hours. I also do this if I'm stuck on a frustrating part of the game. A quick random tangent: Escapist's article "Grinding to Infinity" was pretty good. I had no idea why I put 100+ hours in Disgaea.

I still play games like that. Me and my mate often stick a game and see how much stupid shit we can do to make ourselves lol. That's why I like GTA games as much as I do because, even though they are exceedingly violent, I can do amazingly stupid things in them. Like crash fire trucks into Air Force fighter jets. Haha wow.

But it took me forever to appreciate goal-oriented direction. I was finally starting to make a habit of looking for and going for what the designer intended instead of frustrating myself over all the lack of freedoms imposed by the directed design. And now you're telling me all that time, I was just losing my childhood? ;_;

That's how I played Sonic Adventure. Game took me forever to beat because I talked to every NPC possible, touched everything, and rotated through characters so they all finished at about the same time. Haven't actually played a Sonic game that way since, really.

Though I've usually played a game with the intention of meeting a goal since I was small, more and more as of late I may just end up playing around with the engine or take a look around the environment marveling the graphics and minor details that most people would never know existed.

Hey dad, why don't you take your son out and throw around the ole' pigskin around? Well... when I was younger all the video games I played consisted of side-scrolling levels. Not much observation to do there. ;P Just heaps of repeated background tiles and enemies. It became a formula, and thusly that's how I play games today. (Side Note: This younger generation of gamers are spoiled. 3D? Online Multiplayer? No, we've got 2D Sonic the Hedgehog 2, with offline multiplayer... but only if you can convince your buddy to come over... Oh wait, he wants to be Sonic? ...and why can't Tails fly?) *Face Palm*

I've always went for the goal even as a kid. I honestly was a very fast learner in games like Sonic where I would see other kids mess up on the first and second levels, getting Game Over. The only thing that gave me trouble was Carnival nights Zone Act 2 (You know what I'm talking about.) Anyways, a Dad observing his son like an animal in the wilderness? That's pretty cool and I haven't seen it done at all.

It's funny, I play like that all time. I think it comes from testing stuff in my own games. Moving around, marveling at what's achieved on the screen type deal. Of course, it's usually after I've beaten a game for the first time Sonic Unleashed for example, I pretty much rushed to get the bare minimum of coins to complete the game, and now I find it's enjoyable just to pick any daytime level or hub even and just cruise around for novelty.

Heh, that IS true. I remember when i was younger, I would always just mess around, never really playing the game just to finish it. As I grew older, I gradually just started going for the goal more and more. Although, I wont lie, I kinda liked the unleashed engine, and i spent more than my share of time running on water and slopes in cool edge, lol.