Always watch the feet during Ghost of Tsushima's standoffs.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Now it's enormously satisfying to see your skills improve while playing a video game,
00:04where you've invested enough time and mental energy to master even the very trickiest gameplay
00:09mechanics. But sometimes, though, there's something other than mere time and effort
00:13that's involved, as the true key to victory may lie in a most unexpected of tactics or techniques.
00:18And that's what we're here to talk about today as Armtools, this is WhatCulture.com,
00:22and these are 10 Unexpected Ways to Master Challenging Video Game Mechanics.
00:2610. Remap Dash to a Shoulder Button – Mega Man X
00:32Now the Mega Man X games have been widely criticised by players for their tricky,
00:36fiddly dash mechanic, largely because the default control scheme requires players to
00:40press a face button to dash. This awkward placement makes it difficult for players to
00:44dash, shoot and jump at the same time, basically requiring them to contort their hands into an
00:49uncomfortable claw shape to play effectively. But this can be solved incredibly easily,
00:54so easily in fact that it may not have even crossed your mind. With most modern games allowing
00:58players to remap control schemes to their liking, you're free to just remap the dash to one of the
01:03shoulder buttons. Regardless of what type of controller you're using on whatever platform,
01:07this makes dashing so much more intuitive, and above all else should ensure that you're not
01:12left with a horrible hand cramp after a lengthy play session.
01:169. Exploiting Invincibility Frames While Rolling – Dark Souls
01:21Rolling may seem like a totally simple and straightforward movement mechanic in most games,
01:25but it's actually deceptively complex in Dark Souls. Whenever the player rolls,
01:29they are granted a certain number of invincibility frames, meaning that for a few frames they are
01:34effectively invincible to the enemy. This can often be preferable to using a shield to block
01:39an incoming attack, as there are many instances where it makes more sense to actually roll into
01:43an attack in order to take advantage of the iframes, rather than frantically attempt to roll
01:47away. It's also worth noting that the number of iframes is dependent on your loadout. If you're
01:52carrying a lot of weight, you'll perform a fat roll with just a few iframes, while a light on
01:56their feet player will receive a more generous allowance of iframes. But yeah, seriously,
02:00try rolling into the enemy when they're attacking rather than away, and you will get so much more
02:05out of these games, especially in the recently released Elden Ring.
02:098. Change Your Field Of View To 110 – Rocket League
02:13Though Rocket League is an extremely easy game to pick up and play,
02:16its manoeuvring mechanics are shockingly difficult to master. To perform mind-bogglingly
02:21precise acrobatic mid-air feats with your RC car can take hundreds of hours of practice,
02:26but you can do yourself a massive favour from the outset by adjusting the game's default
02:30camera settings. Though there's a lot of debate in the Rocket League community about which camera
02:34settings are the best, by far the most common change made by pro players is to adjust their
02:38field of view from a default of 90 to 110. This is a simple but vital adjustment as it will let
02:44you see far more of the surrounding area, allowing you to keep track of everything that's going on
02:48much easier and without needing to manually move the camera around quite so much.
02:547. Retrace Your Footsteps To Avoid BTs – Death Stranding
02:58For many, Death Stranding's central traversal mechanics are so damn relaxing and enjoyable that
03:03it's a shame that the game has to have any combat or stealth at all, and the enemies that you'll
03:07encounter most throughout the game are BTs, the creepy supernatural entities that will attack you
03:12if you're not careful to stealth your way past them. They can be a major pain in the ass to evade
03:17once they find you, and even the rigmarole of stealthing through a horde of them in a BT zone
03:21can feel a lot like busywork, but you can save yourself a ton of hassle in areas you've already
03:26successfully passed through once by scanning the area to reveal the footprints of your previous
03:31path. In some situations, you can also see footprints left behind by other players,
03:35which may offer the most aggro-like path through a BT zone. As simple as it might seem,
03:40given the sheer amount of information the game throws at players in the early going,
03:44it is easily the most missed, or just generally forgotten.
03:486. Build Reserves To Maintain The Blue Fire – Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled
03:53Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled's cute, colourful design belies the fact that it's actually one of
03:58the most challenging racing games released in recent years. Yeah, seriously. One of the game's
04:02most surprisingly tricky mechanics is that of turbo boosting, whereby players can chain skills
04:07together to achieve different coloured boosts, with a blue fire boost, also known as Ultra
04:12Sacred Fire, being the fastest. You can only achieve blue fire by driving over a super turbo
04:18pad, and while maintaining it is incredibly difficult, you can make life easier for
04:22yourself by learning about the game's hidden reserves mechanic. Reserves are built up by
04:26chaining together powerslide turbos, hangtime turbos, turbo pads, and turbo power-ups,
04:31allowing you to theoretically maintain blue fire for many laps if you're skilled enough.
04:35Reserves as a mechanic are never actually mentioned or explained by the game itself,
04:39and yet they're a vital skill to learn for anyone looking to get seriously,
04:42even professionally good at CTR Nitro-Fueled.
04:475. Use Num Lock To Auto-Cast Skills – Diablo 3
04:51One of Diablo 3's most vital skills involves being able to juggle the sheer amount of logistical
04:56chaos that can flood the screen at any one time, and also use your hands' muscle memory
05:00to efficiently cast skills without developing a nasty cramp. Well, Diablo 3 shipped with a bug
05:05slash secret feature that allowed you to auto-cast a skill repeatedly by using your
05:10keyboard's Num Lock key. By setting the secondary key bindings for your action bar skills as number
05:15keys on the numpad, you can then simply press this key at the same time as the Num Lock key,
05:19and the game will auto-cast whatever skill was bound to said number key. Better still,
05:24you can even auto-cast multiple skills at once by simply pressing the respective keys at the
05:29same time along with Num Lock. Pretty magic, right?
05:334. Use Switch Stance To Maximise Combos – Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 & 2
05:39It's absolutely vital that you learn to rack up skill combos while playing the Tony Hawk's
05:44Pro Skater games, but it's possible for players to gloss over the fact that they can do themselves
05:48a simple favour to quickly score more points, and that is by using the Switch Stance. Even the most
05:54casual Tony Hawk's player will have realised that tricks depreciate in value the more they're
05:58repeated within a short window of time. But by swapping to Switch Stance, that is the opposite
06:02stance, the game treats even repeat tricks as entirely different. Switch Stance comes with
06:08the caveat though that your stats are given a bit of a nerf, because it is your non-dominant
06:12stance and all. But because point acquisition is the name of the game, it is a great way to
06:15combat the diminishing returns of sticking to a single stance.
06:203. Letting Go Of The W Key While Rocket Jumping – Team Fortress 2
06:25Since the release of Quake some 25 years ago, Rocket Jumping has been a popular technique
06:30in FPS games for players to achieve ridiculous feats of speed and movement. Typically speaking,
06:35Rocket Jumping involves looking down at the ground, jumping upwards and firing your rocket
06:39launcher which, depending on the game, can cause you to fly absurd distances, albeit at the possible
06:44cost of a massive health loss. 2007's Team Fortress 2 opted to include Rocket Jumping as
06:49its own well-defined and totally intentional mechanic, but it's also safe to say that
06:54mastering it is no picnic. Players using the Soldier class can Rocket Jump, but controlling
06:59your movement during the flight is much tougher than you might expect, and that's because there's
07:03a hilariously simple knack to it. To control your path through the air, you need to rely on the
07:07strafe keys A and D, rather than the forward key W, which makes movement and control much
07:12more challenging. Not pressing a key might seem like the simplest, silliest tip ever,
07:17but breaking entrenched muscle memory is incredibly difficult, so some players have
07:21even resorted to rebinding the forward movement to another key entirely, or even creating a macro
07:26for Rocket Jumping. 2. Watch Your Enemy's Feet During Standoffs – Ghost of Tsushima
07:32Ghost of Tsushima's standoff mechanic can be tremendously satisfying once you have it nailed
07:37down, as it allows you to dispatch a foe with a single strike, but figuring out the particulars
07:42is trickier than you might expect. Basically, when you initiate a standoff with an enemy,
07:46you have to hold the triangle button until they move to strike. If you time the release of your
07:50triangle correctly, you'll kill them, but if you time it wrong, you'll end up badly wounded.
07:55Later on, foes begin feigning their strikes to try and throw players off-guard, which can make
07:59it immensely frustrating if you don't know how to spot a fake-out. Except, every enemy in the
08:04game has an extremely easy tell for standoffs, and that's their feet. Basically, don't release the
08:09triangle button until you see an enemy's feet move, as even when they're feigning a hit,
08:13they won't move their feet. This is a note-perfect way to win standoffs every single time, and yet
08:19it's not remotely obvious to even players who've put many hours into the title.
08:24At number one, visual clues tell you when to deliver a knockout punch.
08:28Punch-Out. Punch-Out is an infamously tough boxing game where battling some of its trickier
08:33opponents feels as futile as trying to punch smoke. While it's been known for many years
08:38that there are brief windows of time where players can deliver knockout punches to bosses
08:42Bold Bull and Piston Honda, only more recently have the precise tells been discovered. In 2009,
08:47Nintendo themselves revealed that when battling Bold Bull for the first time, you should keep an
08:52eye out for the camera flash in the right-hand side of the crowd, as this will signal when you're
08:56able to throw a knockout punch. Additionally, in 2016, Redditor MidWesternHousewives discovered
09:01that during the rematch against Piston Honda, there's another tell in the crowd. Wait for
09:06the bearded man on the left-hand side of the front row to flash his mug. Then, and only then,
09:10is it time to land a KO punch. It's simply astounding that both of these tricks went
09:15unreported for more than 20 years, and in the latter case, almost three full decades.
09:20Pretty incredible, right?
09:22And there we go, my friends. Those were 10 Unexpected Ways to Master Challenging Video
09:26Game Mechanics. I hope that you enjoyed that, and please let me know what you thought about it down
09:29in the comments section below. As always, I've been Jules, and if you want to chat to me further,
09:33you can do so over on Twitter at RetroJ with a zero, or you can swing by Liv and Let's Dice,
09:38where I do all of my streaming and Warhammer battle reports outside of work, and it'd be
09:41great to see you over there, my friends. But before I go, I just want to say one thing,
09:45and that is a few tips on how to master the challenge of being kind to yourself,
09:49because you deserve the best things in life. Trust me, my friend, you do, and do not let
09:53anything or anyone else tell you otherwise, all right? You're a massive ledge, and I want you
09:57to go out there and absolutely smash it today. I believe in you. As always, I've been Jules,
10:02you have been awesome, never forget that, and I'll speak to you soon. Bye.