Predictability and Repetition

Sometimes I feel like a lazy and uninventive* idiot when I play through video games I like. No matter how many times I play through certain games, I always wind up doing it the exact same way, no matter how hard I try to convince myself to do otherwise. You've probably done this, too, even if you're sitting there telling yourself that you don't and that you're much more creative and prone to diversity than I am.

A good example came when I was playing through Final Fantasy VI lately -- "Final Fantasy III" to the layperson, though the real Final Fantasy III is a very different (and also incredible) game. I set out to play through this masterpiece differently than I had before, using new characters and abilities to try to add to the challenge. But I got about ten hours in and realized that I was just using the exact same strategies I'd used to dominate the game many times over, and I stopped playing.

And this is all over the place. Even in games that purport to have great replay value due to the ease of diversity! I seem to always end up in the same ruts.

I remember sometime last year, a friend and I were hanging around watching my brother play Pokémon -- first generation, none of this elemental+color crap like "DIAMOND PURPLE" -- and he was slogging through the game for the 10th time that summer with the same old predictable crew: starting 'mon, Abra/Kadabra/Alakazam for most of the heavy lifting, Gengar, an Eevee evolution, and Gyrados and whatever feel-good benchwarmer he kept at the end of his lineup that happened to be able to learn Fly. I asked him what the point was of playing through this game for the hundredth time with the same exact strategy, knowing full well that after 10 or so hours (or less on TURBO MODE), he'd beat the game just like every other time.

He didn't know what to say.

My friend and I then gave my brother a challenge: use Game Genie codes or catch some 'mons and try to beat the game outside his normal formulaic approach to the game. He looked up the codes but balked and never did it. We, of course, suggested 'mons that were well outside the norm, like Muk and Mr. Mime and Rapidash and Seaking. Because that would be fun, right? Of course, we never did it either.

I think part of this is just a question of personality. My litmus test would be the Dynasty Warriors** games -- or at least the PS2-era incarnations of it. In these games, you walk around, and you kill everything. You do this until everything is killed, and then the board level is beaten and you move on to the next one. There is a certain comforting, reassuring aspect to a game like that. You know that there is a clear goal, and with a reasonable amount of skill, you know you're going to get there. If you hate Dynasty Warriors or other similarly goal-oriented games, you probably wouldn't be the type of person who would like to play Pokémon 30 times with the same lineup, either.

I fall victim to this. I often like games that might be classified as being "too linear" because you don't have to think as much, and that might make me sound like a dullard but so be it. So I can see how my brother (and I) can fall into this trap. Going through something familiar with a familiar strategy is an almost guaranteed sense of reward.

So I don't know what to do about this.

I did pass off one of my devious plans to my brother: an "ultimate low-percentage run." A common game to fall into the old trap of beating it same way a zillion times is Mega Man. Of course, there's a lot of Elemental Rock/Paper/Scissors going on that forces your hand, but you can beat the stages in any order you want, really.

I told my brother that he had to beat Mega Man X au naturale, with no powerups or robot weapons or even dashing, thus making the game ridiculously, unnecessarily difficult. It took him ages to do, even with emulator savestates, but he eventually did finish the "ultimate low-percentage run" using only one weapon other than the X-buster -- the Rolling Shield, required to beat the last boss. It was awesome and, of course, added some of the Spice of Life to his gaming experience that would have normally begun with Chill Penguin and ended with an anticlimactic final battle.

I think I would be well-served by trying some more ultimate low-percentage runs in life.

* - That's not a word? Really?
** - I will, if possible, from now on, link to things that the audience might not be familiar with via tvtropes rather than "the other Wiki" in order to try to get the world to realize how amazing tvtropes really is.