I was playing Darkest Dungeon, for example, and it started with me innocently checking how some of its systems worked. If I then find out that I’d have reached a solution by myself with a little more effort, then that's disheartening, but it's far from the worst way in which wikis have undermined my enjoyment of a game. If I convince myself that I’m probably going to have to look something up eventually, very often my next thought is that I may as well save some time and just do it straight away. I have no qualms with reaching for a guide when my frustration reaches that point, but it’s something of a slippery slope. The only other clear-cut cases that spring to mind are those situations where I’m so completely stuck in a game that, without cheating, I’d get too frustrated to keep playing.Īlthough this brings us to our first grey area. Looking up a poorly explained mechanic or item seems equally fair, such as the Atlas Passes in No Man’s Sky. Crafting recipes in survival games is an obvious one: in most cases there’s no expectation that players should be figuring those out for themselves. So that we’re on the same page, I’ll start by ruling out some examples of when I think it’s harmless to seek a bit of external help. So, how do you decide when turning to external sources such as guides, FAQs, Wikis and search engines is worth the risk? The moment that door is opened, there’s a danger that any sense of challenge or discovery will be lost. Looking up solutions can quickly devolve into a paint-by-numbers experience, with almost as much time spent alt-tabbed as playing a game. They can also leach the fun out of games. Wikis and guides can replace hours of frustration with a few seconds of Googling, making up for an oversight on the part of a game dev or the occasional brain fart on the part of the player.

When you've committed to finding a game’s scattered collectibles and one proves a bit too well hidden. When you’ve been searching for the next bonfire in a Dark Souls game for hours on end. When a puzzle is so obtuse you can’t even begin to work out how to solve it.

Darkest dungeon game wiki