Why are you shit at games?

[Barry Admin]

What are your weak points in gaming? What holds you back form true greatness?

For me it seems to be general inattentiveness and clumsiness. Get distracted far too easily, and also just don't really have the physical coordination to be as great at shooters as I wish I was.

I worry also about my reflexes these days. Think they're still actually pretty good for an ageing bloke tho tbh, and I attribute that to gaming.

[Bronzy]

Please note that all responses will also answer the question of "why are you shit at sex"

[beanheadmcginty]

I refuse to use the brakes in driving games (except the handbrake)

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I have the reflexes of a sleepy sloth. I'm not going to claim that certain, highly overrated, developers are being discriminatory by not including difficulty options in their games, but I do think it's rather inconsiderate of them.

[Chollis]

For me it seems to be general inattentiveness and clumsiness. Get distracted far too easily, and also just don't really have the physical coordination to be as great at shooters as I wish I was.

get on the Adderall ASAP, you'll be an Apex pro in no time

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

I refuse to use the brakes in driving games (except the handbrake)

Brakes aren't needed. You just crash into the cars in front of you as you approach the bend, giving you the necessary deceleration to get around safely.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Certainly never did my career any harm.

[Barry Admin]

get on the Adderall ASAP, you'll be an Apex pro in no time

Can't get diagnosed for ADD unless I go private, the doctor just knocked me back again.

I actually get worse when on voice comms as I get so distracted. Something to do with the lack of executive here apparently.

At least I still do pretty well at Torn, that's become part of my life, I adore it.

[druss]

I am a bald old man.

[Barry Admin]

I refuse to use the brakes in driving games (except the handbrake)

Yeah I do this too when I play them.

Brakes aren't needed. You just crash into the cars in front of you as you approach the bend, giving you the necessary deceleration to get around safely.

...and this.

I spent most of my life scoffing at the whole concepts of brakes and gears and shit. Getting addicted to Ridge Racer on the PS1 likely didn't help.

[Shaxberd]

First person can fuck off. Irl you have peripheral vision and other sensory cues, first person games are like running around wearing a bucket on your head with a slot cut out for your eyes. I can handle it if it's low pressure, your Stanley Parables and Satisfactory and whatnot, but anything involving running and jumping and shooting is a nightmare.

Love it when a game lets me actually choose between first or third person perspective instead of insisting you can only experience it in motion sickness mode.

[popcorn]

To me, fighting games like Street Fighter are as alien and unknowable as video games are in their entirety to my mother. There's a mismatch in my brain between seeing this character moving around on the screen and the controller in my hands - it feels like I ought to be able to manoeuvre them as I would in a platform game or third-person action game, but instead it feels like operating highly technical machinery.

As a kid my brain scanned over fighting games in the same way it did with snooker on TV. They barely registered as video games and looked suspiciously close to sports. Boring! Put Sonic on.

Apart from that, I can complete any game on max difficulty.

[FredNurke]

First-person games give me migraine, I lose patience with strategy games, and I don't have the time to learn how to play anything properly.

Although I've astonished myself by getting a respectable world ranking (top 250) in Pacman 99. So my reactions must be decent.

[Pink Gregory]

I've never won a single game of Civilization, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6.  I think my problem is that I always try to avoid warfare because it's the least interesting part of the game, and what I'm probably doing is engaging with the game that I wish it was rather than the game that it is. 

The one chum I play with (if anyone on CaB wants to play Civ 6...) just automates everything and seems to just steamroll across the map every time.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

First person can fuck off. Irl you have peripheral vision and other sensory cues, first person games are like running around wearing a bucket on your head with a slot cut out for your eyes. I can handle it if it's low pressure, your Stanley Parables and Satisfactory and whatnot, but anything involving running and jumping and shooting is a nightmare.

I've don't generally a problem with First Person Shooters, since they're designed around the viewpoint and colliding with the scenery isn't usually hazardous (that said, some of the platforming bits in Doom Eternal were complete crap). The lack of peripheral vision does make it terrible for driving/flying games though.

[Neomod]

I think I'm pretty good and then I see Limmy playing Overwatch and I don't have a fucking clue what is going on.

At. All.

[ImmaculateClump]

My crippling self doubt usually does for me.
I'll see an opening and instead of just going for it, I'll dither, decide against it, then wait for the next, smaller opening, panic and run face first into the nearest bullet.

My memory is pretty shit as well. In games that require memorisation, I'm like a goldfish, being surprised by the same things each time I play, my reactions are still (thankfully, touch wood) alright and they take up some of the slack in that regard.

I have shaky hands, so I'll be lining up a shot delicately and then just as I'm about to fire I'll throw the mouse across the room.

I don't think I can concentrate on too many things at once. I'm not into real time strategy and things like that. Anything where you have to be constantly zooming back and keeping an eye on the the big picture. I'm more a conveyor belt worker than a factory manager, I think.

Those long combo moves in fighting games. When we'd all sit around playing tekken 2 when we were younger, I'd get them eventually just through playing so much, and I'd get good with one or two characters, but it's just too much. I don't think I could do that nowadays, or enjoy it.

[Pink Gregory]

If anyone's interested in fighting games but finds them impenetrable, have a go at Skullgirls.

It's got a really good tutorial that introduces quite a few common fighting game character archetypes and general concepts.

Also apart from yer usual 6 buttons the inputs are generic for special moves (e.g. quarter circle and punch will always do *something*)

[Martin Van Buren Stan]

The only game I've played seriously for years is fall guys, and I've never won a final. There's a couple of rounds, like the one where you have to jump onto a button quicker than your opponent and I've never even won that round once. Usually get trashed like 17-4. I always wonder why I'm so particularly shite at that one.

[Mister Six]

I've got bugger all competitiveness, determination or discipline, so any games that require proper skill/learning to get good at - basically any one-on-one fighting games, shmups, stuff like that - I tend to sack off pretty quickly. I'm very story-focused, so I'll struggle through really tough/repetitive bits if there's a plot nugget behind them, but I'm also liable to bin the game and just watch the story on YouTube if I'm close to the end and it's a massive ballache (the only reason I completed Psychonauts on PS2 was because YT hadn't been invented yet; I absolutely threw in the towel at the last bit of the Meat Circus on PS4 and just went to the internet, because fuck that, especially as the PS4 version is just the PS2 one running on an emulator, and not the less punishing Xbox adaptation).

I also really like exploring and poking around, but dislike too much challenge that comes with that, which is why I tend to love Civilization in the early stages, when you're finding settlements with treasure or research goals tucked away in them, but get bored in the later stages, when the world has mostly been conquered and you're just chipping away at other superpowers, or grinding your way towards a non-violent win.

[oggyraiding]

Short attention span. I see people commenting on Elden Ring bosses on YouTube and suchlike, saying it took 50+ tries and/or hours of grinding. I can't do that. If I can't beat a boss in five tries I will either reduce difficulty, or play something else. I find there is little fun about getting destroyed by the same boss dozens of times, and the more I lose the worse I get at the game as I get frustrated and sloppy. I'm fine in fighting games, where each round is like 90 seconds, but some of the Soulsbornekiroring bosses go on quite a long time and I simply can't remain focused and competent for several minutes.

[Noodle Lizard]

Yeah, greediness/short attention span for me too. Getting into Elden Ring/Bloodborne has forced me to curb that somewhat, but I still find myself going on tilt with some bosses/areas. Towards the end of both games, I found myself just rushing through the mobs because it's frustrating to get your arse kicked over and over again by the same five dickheads who aren't especially satisfying to overcome, but I'm aware they're there to teach you to become better at the combat, so I'm doing myself a disservice by skipping over them.

I also don't like bothering to learn complex game systems, like upgrades, skill trees etc. Again, Elden Ring/Bloodborne has forced me to do so - and I've grown to enjoy it somewhat - but I still don't use probably 95% of the options offered to me.

[Kelvin]

I can never tell whether I'm good, bad, or average at video games, because so much of it seems to come down to persistence and patience; trying the same bit over and over again until you finally push through to the next checkpoint or save. Do I complete every game I play, pretty much, yes. And I usually 100% every game I love. But I also lose at most multiplayer games - and am downright hopeless at online multiplayer.

So I'm not sure, really. The feedback from developers seems to indicate that most games don't get completed by the majority of players that buy them, so I suppose just completing games makes you better (or more committed) than average. But I'm useless at FPS games, sport games, rocket league, anything where I can't learn it at my own pace and am being humiliated by human opponents before I can get into it. Even Splatoon, which I've played for hundreds of hours, I'm still fairly useless at.  I think I just lack experience of playing online.   

[Glebe]

First person shooters/sport games, forget it.

[Mobius]

I just play on Easy Mode

I love games like Control that have a 'one hit kill' option in the settings.

[Mister Six]

I just play on Easy Mode

I always start on Normal, but I think every game ought to have adjustable difficulty settings on the pause menu. Bollocks to getting halfway through then having to smash my face into a brick wall 30 times in a row before I'm allowed to see the rest of the game that I paid actual money for.

[Wonderful Butternut]

Lack of regular practice and/or not practicing the finest intricacies of the game.

In sim-racing, my limitation is that I'm not willing to go into the really, really, anal stuff like: "Ok, I need to brake exactly where that tree is, and then turn in at the marshal's post and then I have to get back on the throttle crossing the third red stripe on the apex kerb and..."

Yeah, fuck that. The whole point of my expensive steering wheel peripheral is that I can drive the car by feel. So I'm gonna drive this fucker by feel, tyvm. Like obviously I know what the correct racing line is and that a braking point is somewhere between the 150m and 100m marker (or wherever), but no more specific than that.

Sim-racing is obviously somewhat niche, but that sort of pattern is repeated across most of my gaming. I'll play it to the point that it's fun, but I won't try and hone my skills to be mad competitive.

[Dickie_Anders]

I can't get past the first level of Gradius 3. I know it's meant to be a hard game but fuck me

[ProvanFan]

I'm not very good at mining for ore. Just not built for it.

[Pink Gregory]

I always start on Normal, but I think every game ought to have adjustable difficulty settings on the pause menu. Bollocks to getting halfway through then having to smash my face into a brick wall 30 times in a row before I'm allowed to see the rest of the game that I paid actual money for.

Custom difficulty is a rare treat; Dishonored 2 springs to mind but also Sniper Elite 5 - I like to play on hard if it's not just a matter of e.g. more health for them, but being able to turn off the most tedious bits or keep some, but not all, of the HUD, waypoints etc means that you can retain a challenge without it feeling like you've got an arm tied up.

Dishonored 2 is a real standout actually; being able to adjust minutea of enemy awareness in a stealth game, what a trip.