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[skaldicpoet9]

I don't think that I am the only one. We all play games regularly here and I think that we all tend to notice certain things after awhile. Things like minute details within the game that others would normally not notice. By this I mean a sort of sixth sense. I noticed this once when I was playing the Super Mario Bros. once while I was over at someone's place. I was just sitting there playing the game and started to notice that something seemed off. Mario just wasn't responding like he should and it was bothering me. However, no one else took notice but I finally realized that on the television that we were playing the game there was ever the slightest delay between input to the controller and the output on the screen. It turns out that for whatever reason the VCR that the system was hooked into caused a tiny delay in the action on screen. Nobody else noticed it but I did. There are many other times where this sort of thing has happened to me as well. It got me to thinking what other experiences of that sort other people have had. So, what moment really stands out that has happened to one of you?

[Corpus]

Well, one thing common to many frequent gamers (and this is supported by Science) is that we have an above-average ability to process visual information, presumably because we're used to checking our health while looking out for pickups, all the while battling streams of enemies, etc.

In particular, I've noticed this while playing co-op with my brother on the Xbox 360, or even just watching him play. When we got the 360 at Christmas, he was somebody who played games only rarely, and I consistently was aware of things to which he was quite oblivious. For example, at one point on co-op Halo 3, we had an arrangement like this:
 __________
|  g B gg  |       g = grunt
|g      g g|       B = brute
|          |       X = rock
|XXX    XXX|       @ = Master Chief (mah brah)
|XXX   gXXX|
|     @    |

As you can see, a grunt was feet away from him, clearly visible on the periphery of the screen. However, my brother was so focused on the enemies directly in front of him - in the centre of the screen, in other words - that he ran straight past it without noticing it. Grunts aren't even difficult to spot. They're brightly coloured. I was amazed that he had run past it, and asked him about it. He didn't even know it had been there.

He plays games (well, FPS games, at least) much more now, so this is no longer the case. Still, I found it interesting that I tended to make myself aware of more or less everything going on onscreen, while he, as a then inexperienced gamer, was focused only on a small area of it.

Similar situations cropped up in the COD4 training, when he would be asked to perform some action and would have no idea of how to actually carry it out, despite there being a prompt displayed just below the screen center telling him, for example, to "Hold A to slide down rope."

(This is not just because my brother is stupid, by the way. He's really quite intelligent.)

[Hideous]

Wow. We gamers are smart.

Also scaldigpoet9, your postcount is 777. DONT POST.

[Seth]

I'm not sure you example proves anything, Corpus.  I have often watched my brother play video games, and vice versa.  It seems to me that the observer always notices things like that more often than the player--I think it's because as an observer you don't tend to get focused on certain aspects of the game like the player does--you're more free to let your eye wander around the screen.

[Corpus]

That reminds me:



And Seth, the Halo example was in co-op. I was playing, too.

[Pacian]

My game sense is severely lacking.  I keep getting stuck in Metroid Prime 3 because I never notice which rocks to blow up or whatever.  I'm useless at the whole high/low attack to avoid blocks in beat-em-ups.  I forget to strafe in FPS games.  My mind wanders when I play racing games and I crash.  And I fail terribly at puzzles.

Perhaps my lack of game sense is why I do best at games which limit you in some way -  stealth-em-ups, survival horror games and that kind of thing.  I have pretty good Thief sense, for a start: knowing just when to dart out of shadow, whack someone on the head and take their money.

And I guess that's kind of a useful skill for real life too.

[Bree]

I got hooked on games with the original Gameboy (chunky version ), so I've had a lot of time to hone my 'game sense'. I seem to do best at rhythm games- at least, better than most of the people I play with. Games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero I do pretty well because I can focus in on the notes, zoning out everything else, and planning each finger move ahead of time. Unfortunately, I'm still confounded by the orange button, so I've yet to master Hard or Expert.

Even non-music games have a certain rhythm to it; these I tend to do well in. Burnout Revenge, for example, I get into a groove finding just the right time to powerslide, the right time to boost, and the right time to bash an opponent into a brick wall.

I can give another example: A couple months ago I tried Halo 3 for the first time. I don't even own a 360 (I had an original Xbox for less than 24 hours, but that's another story), so it was a little awkward at first getting used to the controller. Pretty soon, though, I got into a rhythm- I won a couple matches just by using the machine gun and sticky grenades. I circle-strafed when I could, unloading the clip and working with its rhythm- ratatatatatatat- to make sure every bullet was spent properly. And when that didn't work, I ran over people with a Mongoose.

[shinygerbil]

soul calibur II: enormously long guardblock-chains between me and my mates. :D

(also just knowing every move and when to use it)

Also, lots of times, I look at a game and just go "OMG framerate drop" and my friends never notice.


Actually, a good example I can think of for "gamer sense" is the Mithalan Temple boss in Aquaria. (I think it's that one, anyway.) Just hitting it with regular attacks makes it flash yellow - whereas normally, when you damage things, they flash red. My girlfriend (along with many people on the forums) thought "well, it's flashing, so we're doing good" but those who were more observant noticed that the boss wasn't flashing the right colour, and so immediately knew that wasn't the way to damage it.

I guess it's like a language that developers have, one that is passed one-way onto gamers, who have to figure it out. Or some kind of cypher which needs to be unravelled. I dunno.

[Problem Machine]

 

[Radnom]

I find that in adventure games I often click on stuff FAR before I'm supposed to (because of their slight palette differences or whatever) and it often means that I don't bother clicking later when I need to, after assuming that it does nothing...

[Xion]

Me and my bro have about the same game-sense, though he's better with sounds. There was this one time when we were playing Smash Bros (melee) and he KO'd me and I was flying super-fast off the screen but right before I died he a starman appeared right on my trajectory and I hit it and was invincible for maybe a fraction of a fraction of a second, like, a single sparkle appeared, a tiny part of the invincible song played, and then I died. We both couldn't stop laughing for like ten minutes and everyone else was like "what's so funny?" They didn't see or hear anything.

And,
Both my dad and sister love the 3d Zeldas (zeldii?) but they're not so hot on figuring out how to beat the bosses or when to block given the tiny preemptives given off by the enemies and such. I rocked at Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. The enemy's hints were like a big flashing sign. Whenever we played Sonic everyone was like how can you see that when everything's going so fast? and we were like how can you not?

However,
While my ability to perceive the subtleties is okay, I think. My ability to act on them is not so great. I have terrible reflexes. It's like my body doesn't act according to my minds accord.  I often strafe into the line of fire or dodge the wrong way or after the fact.

uh.
yeah?

[Lazer]

Playing Rockband on HDTV drives me nuts half the time, and I'm always the first to notice little imperfections like sound quality reduction, low frame/refresh rates, and vertical tearing amongst other things.

Also I can very clearly hear the high pitched squeal most tube based sdtv's put off.

[Stij]

Playing Rockband on HDTV drives me nuts half the time, and I'm always the first to notice little imperfections like sound quality reduction, low frame/refresh rates, and vertical tearing amongst other things.

^This. I was playing GH3 with my friend and I noticed that somtimes the guitar sounds drastically louder or quieter right in the middle of a solo for no reason. I tried to point it out to my friend but he said he didn't notice anything. I totally hear that squeal noise all the time too, drives me nuts when I'm trying to sleep and my dad has the TV on downstairs.

Also, like Xion said, sometimes I notice little things but don't act on them. I'm a pretty good Super Smash Bros. player, but sometimes I'll notice a fast projectile coming at me and I'll just freeze up for a split second and be like "duuuah wut" instead of pressing a button. Then I die. :/

[deadeye]

I've noticed that whenever there's any kind of maze in a level I tend to automatically go the right way the first time.  Often times I don't even realize it's a maze until later when I go back and find I'm suddenly lost.

Also I can very clearly hear the high pitched squeal most tube based sdtv's put off.

I totally hear that squeal noise all the time too, drives me nuts when I'm trying to sleep and my dad has the TV on downstairs.

This will eventually go away.  When I was young I heard high-frequency whining from all sorts of electronics, now I can't hear shit.  I haven't been able to since my early or mid 20's.  The older you get the less you are able to pick up on high-frequency noises.  That's why those fancy ringtones work for high-school kids in class... the teachers can't hear them.

[Stij]

Yeah, I've heard about those. Of course since pretty much all cell phones have a "vibrate only" function it seems sort of pointless.

[Alevice]

I hardly ever pay the attention I should to HUDs, particularly on RTS games, which is why I rpefer to play recent games, where they give you nearly all the feedback you need on the game field. This is also why I love HL2. The suit emmits a particular noise whenever I am running low on ammo and I need to reload; interestingly, you can enable a helath and ammo meter on the crosshair, which I never ever pay attention.

I am one of the few persons I know IRL that can tell that ZSNES has a siginificant enough input delay that prevents me from pulling any combo at all, where on a real console i can pull them quite effortesly, and can tell there is a delay tolerance, which is useless on the emulator because the fucking input delay is quite drsatic, at least for the game. Custom U64 arcade emulators for KI games do not suffer from that.

[Chris Whitman]

My game sense is uncanny. I can correctly tell whether or not something is a game one hundred percent of the time given only two guesses.

[William Broom]

From playing too many platformers I notice very subtle differences in the control schemes. For example Ratchet and Clank 1 has a tiny warmup time when you start moving, just a little longer than in the later games. Similarly, the platforming in Psychonauts all felt 'off' to me.

Another extra 'sense' I discovered while watching "The Triplets of Belville" was that I could tell the difference between the flat animation and the cel-shaded 3D whereas my dad couldn't.

[team_q]

Certain FPSs are off for me, I can't play them because of how the guns fire, Bioshock is like this, I think I don't like the delay when you pull the trigger.

[joshg]

This will eventually go away.  When I was young I heard high-frequency whining from all sorts of electronics, now I can't hear shit.  I haven't been able to since my early or mid 20's.  The older you get the less you are able to pick up on high-frequency noises.  That's why those fancy ringtones work for high-school kids in class... the teachers can't hear them.

Yeah, except that teachers notice the moment you pull your cell phone out of your bag and start pressing buttons, so what's the point anyway?

Also, those ringtones make puppies cry.  You should all be ashamed.