I would like to introduce this topic with a little story, the type of game I'll be most referring to is RPGs, Action, and Adventure Games. I will mostly discuss how my gaming style has completely changed from what it used to be, and why.

Old Days:

Back when I was much younger, I would approach a game focused purely on improving my power. In most cases I would make sure my character reached his/her/their full potential before I continue on to the next area, and often feeling pure satisfaction at how powerful I was. I would remember beating bosses in RPG games with relative ease, and than use that to feel personal satisfaction of feeling like a pro, it's hard not to when you put alot of hard work spending hours in one location leveling up, and than watch your hard work pay off when you demolish the challenges ahead, and continue until you find another good spot to farm experience points. In Ocarina of Time I would never become adult Link until I had 10 1/2 hearts completed, all my upgrades, yadda yadda yadda.

In most cases, whenever I am faced with a game that provides limited amount of survival benefits I would stop playing and say that the creators surely didn't understand what makes a good game and that the limited healing items were a technical flaw I couldn't forgive. I counted out all survival horrors as bad games because of this reason, and strongly argued my case that they were not fun or worthy of playing. If I felt the game didn't provide the option to guarantee my survival, it wasn't a worthy game.

Today I see that play style as an anxiety to dying. It was like I had myself convinced that dying should not be part of the game, and if we see a game over screen more than 20 times in one play through, the game certainly had bad programming.


Today:

I guess my opinion changed somewhere. Perhaps after beating Ninja Gaiden Black on Master Ninja mode, and the three NES Ninja Gaidens, and Contras and Castlevania for NES and all that, the game over screen has burned an imprint in my mind.

Ever since tackling such difficult games I appreciate survival horror more, and actually believe Zelda spoils us with bottles.

My playstyle now can be described as a strategic survivalist who pushes forward fast. I don't take interest in doing speed runs in games, but I don't wait around for anything anymore. If I find secret upgrades, great!! But if I miss an upgrade, don't care.

In RPGs now I'm always pushing forward to more challenging areas and let the leveling up happen naturally as I just tackle the new area. I actually find bosses challenging and it feels the way it should be. I find myself using items I never used before! "You mean 'attack up' can actually be a useful item???" It can be if you wanna beat a tough boss on a lower level.

I try utilizing everything I have now that I no longer focus on upgrading to god like potentials before moving ahead. Also, I take more interest in learning obscene command coding mortal combat like attacks too when presented in a game, most notable examples is Alucard's magic spells in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, or Sabin's special moves in FFVI.

Gone are the days when I level up to lvl 20 in an area infested with lvl 6 monsters and feeling prowess in my immortality, in are the days with fast thinking tactical thinking utilizing only the items I stumbled upon.


What play style do you most prefer? Challenge oriented, power focus, strategist, speed run specialist, or simple play and quit when you get bored and seek new games just to try, or other approaches I haven't listed.