For example, I am terrible at Super Meat Boy, but just playing it has really improved how I play platformers and games that need faster imputs overall.
Elden Ring.
I didn’t love the learning/difficulty curve of Soulsborne games until this one, but it got its hooks in me hard.
I usually spammed most boss fights and played everything a certain way, but here I had to learn the boss’s moves and dodge, parry and use power ups to bring them down.
Worth it. While frustrating, it made me return to other genres and play them again but differently. Hitman, sniper elite, roguelites/likes, anything that rewards patience, really. These now had a whole new facet I didn’t see before, or I did and I was applying it to these games.
I’ve since tried other soulsborne games, and while I now appreciate the difficulty and find them a lot more fun, the exploration and world of Elden Ring was the difference maker for me. It was being able to forge my own path and choose my challenges.
Similar answer and probably cliché, but for me it was the first Dark Souls. I finally played it about 2 years ago after avoiding it for a long time and thinking it wasn’t my thing. I thought I hated games that didn’t allow animation cancelling because they weren’t “responsive”. If I hadn’t heard so many people insist it’s great I would have given up because the character doesn’t react to every wild button mash.
Boy was I wrong. Once I understood the combat it was like Zelda (my OG favorite franchise) but better. And brutal. Playing through it subsequently made Elden Ring much easier than it probably would’ve been otherwise. Exploring every nook and cranny and overleveling helped a bit too I’m sure.
On PC with mods for upgraded resolution and textures (and dsfix) DS1 was a quite good experience. There’s still a bit too much BS like hidden paths and even NPCs that are way too obscure, and the game falls apart near the end, but learning to navigate the platforms of Blighttown and besting all the different bosses sharpened my skills like nothing had in ages.
It’s not really in the spirit of the prompt, but learning the NMG speedrun of LttP has really improved my movement efficiency in games simply because I’m always thinking about it now
Rocket League. If I can reach my fast moving targets without having to adjust pitch, roll, yaw, and thrust, all at once, from a third-person view, there’s just no challenge.
World of Warcraft. 12 years of playing and raid/guild leadership helped me learn how to play, not just play. How to:
- Theorycraft
- Research how to improve
- Maximize output and/or efficiency
- Take advantage of class synergies in games
- Understand the importance of area of effect, burst damage, sustained single-target damage, etc.
- Understand damage mitigation vs avoidance, and where each is valuable
- Play to my/my team’s strengths, rather than simply doing what is “best”
- Better recognize trends in game mechanics to anticipate what may come
- Recognize the valuable portions of a game’s user interface and maximize its visibility while avoiding clutter
I had learned portions of these things in other games, but my leadership role in WoW pushed me to truly understand many things that aren’t a major focus in most games.
Not that it’s much of a benefit today as RTS games are barely nonexistent. But StarCraft 2 taught me all about macro management. Spending them resources and building an economy.
