How Do You Start Playing Video Games: An Ultimate Beginners Guide
How Do You Start Playing Video Games: An Ultimate Beginners Guide
Table of Contents
From time to time, you may come around video gamers that talk about exciting new adventures, fantasy worlds, and new game releases, and even earn some money on their hobby. And now, when Metaverse is providing new gaming experiences and opportunities, even people who aren’t interested, can decide to start gaming.
Video games can be fun and enjoyable, but if you’re a beginner, you will definitely need some instruction. Knowing how to play video games will allow you to fully enjoy the process from the very start. As you have to start somewhere, we have prepared instructions to guide you.
Decide on Video Game Genre and Types
Before investing in expensive gear and buying video games, let’s understand your preferred video game genre and type, as the gadgets and devices you buy will hugely depend on it.
So, how do you determine the game type you will like? Firstly, it depends on your personality, age, hobbies, temperament, etc.
If you are an active person, you will definitely love action games. If you love planning your every move, then you should go with strategy games.
To help you choose, here is a list of the most common game genres and the personal characteristics you may need to have to play them:
- Fighting/shooting/arcade/racing/sports/survival – highly active, attention to detail, quick thinking and decision-making, time management, fast reaction, and coordination.
- Puzzle/strategy/adventure/roleplaying/simulation– logical thinking, creativity, problem-solving, team management and organizational skills, long-term planning.
If you haven’t decided yet what you want, explore the full list of video game genres and types.
Choose the Platform and the Budget
Now it’s time to decide how much do you want to spend on the gaming setup and, based on that, the platform you will play on.
You have three options:
- Smartphone or tablet – the latest smartphone or tablet models are powerful enough to ensure a great gaming experience. For starters, it’s enough for a beginner. Sometime later, you will be more sure if you want to dive deeper or not.
- PC – professional gaming computers will ensure more advanced and powerful experiences and feelings
- Console – you can go with the console as it already comes with preset games and outstanding graphics.
Now let’s start your very first steps into the video gaming world.
First Steps
How do you, a person who has never played a game, react when you start playing? First and foremost, you will panic when you see the controls and the buttons on them, as you don’t have any idea what’s going on and what you need to do. And the funny thing is, that when you start playing, you will not take your eyes off the buttons instead of looking at the screen looking.
So, how do you choose a video game for beginner players? I went through a bunch of articles advising popular games that absolutely anyone can play. It really surprised me when I saw games from Telltale or David Cage out there because they are not the ones that I would recommend to beginners.
But, on the one hand, it’s understandable, as they’re very interactive games with an emphasis on the storyline.
Before starting, be aware these games require quick reaction and high concentration. So don’t be disappointed, as an untrained person is sure to make a lot of mistakes.
My advice is to start with side-scroller games.
Gaming Process
You need to remember that there are different side-scrollers and some of them are really difficult, so it’s important to make the right choice.
Let’s start with a game called Inside. The most important thing is that this game is really simple to learn. The player controls the characters that can move only in two directions: to the left and to the right. A beginner player will have lesser trouble with navigation. In addition, the small number of keys and buttons will simplify memorization.
There are only three functions available in the game – walking, movements, jumping, and action. Although, the set of features is small, but it’s compensated with good graphics, and interactive tasks the player needs to solve and combine the game features in different ways.
Many people, when they first start playing, are afraid to fail; they are afraid of jumping over an abyss or attacking an enemy. So it’s a common fear that the death of a character means you are not good at this and need to start over or even quit.
In many games, the death of a character sets the player back and deprives them of progress. Be prepared that in this game you are going to lose a lot and your character will often die, but thanks to a great checkpoint system, progress is almost never lost. This will make a newcomer feel more confident and not afraid to make a mistake.
Warning Note: Be aware that this game and other similar games are only suitable for adult audiences and because of the oppressive atmosphere and brutal display of death, not every adult person will want to play it. In this case, there is a good alternative in the form of Unravel.
The game captivates with its lamplight and charming colors. But most importantly – it can teach you the basics of time management, hone your skills and train your attention. This game offers a bit more options, and, therefore more buttons to interact. But they are all as simple as possible and easy to remember, allowing the player to get used to the process quickly.
Gris
I also recommend the recently released Gris, which has a great art design, but because of it, some people may have difficulty understanding the conventions that are incorporated into any video game.
In this case, most players won’t be able to figure out where a character must or can jump, and, consequently will often have trouble navigating. But the game consistently empowers the player to not give up.
In the beginning, only the jump is available, which allows the player to focus only on applying this skill. Then there will be a weighting, which can be used in solving various puzzles and alternate these opportunities among themselves. Because of this approach, the game is at least worth paying attention to.
The Second Level
Journey and Abzu are two very similar games and aren’t like anything else. They tell the story in a very interesting and interactive way, focusing entirely on various metaphors and allegories without saying anything specific, letting the player figure out for himself what he sees as he goes along.
By now, you must have noticed that I’m presenting the type of games that exploit great storytelling. I intentionally decided to go with them because people, who are not familiar with the video game controls, will focus on buttons instead of following the story’s clues. So, when an action is needed, the player will be absorbed in thinking about which button to press and will miss the plot clues, plot details, and hints for further actions. On the contrary, people who have been playing games for a long time already know it on a subconscious level.
You can’t say that Journey or Abzu don’t have a dialogue with the player, they do, but they don’t do it intrusively. Aside from the peculiar narrative, which, I admit, may not be appealing to everyone, I took the risk of betting on these particular games because they are very easy to master and are perfect for beginners.
Abzu
Abzu is a slightly different kind of game. You will explore the ocean’s depths as a scuba diver, which means that the control itself will be set up a little differently. The basics remain the same, there is an interaction button, and the jump button is replaced by acceleration.
The main difference is in the way that the character moves. The right button makes the character swim forward; the left stick is responsible for the direction of his movement, while the right stick, as usual, is responsible for the camera’s rotation.
In a game like this, the control and feel of it are important aspects. It is meditative work, where the player is required to exert a minimum of effort, explore the seabed while solving simple puzzles while enjoying great visuals, and listening to mesmerizing music.
Journey
Journey is very similar to a previous game. There are two essential functions in the player’s assortment – jumping and interacting. These two buttons form the main core of the gameplay, on the alternation of which the entire passage is built. But in addition, the player can learn different ways to use the same jump.
In the game, you can collect improvements, which are responsible for the length of the character’s scarf, which determines how high he can jump and, as a result, soar. The player is offered a way to control the distance he is able to cover. In a way, it teaches the player how to properly control a character who is completely in three-dimensional space. This is also affected by the very smooth control, which, even on a gamepad is as intuitive as possible and allows the player to comfortably both rotate the camera and move the character around. It’s hard to call it responsive because of the slight lag, but it allows you to feel the weight of your character and get used to it.
Level God
First-person shooters are probably one of the hardest video game genres for beginners to master. In addition to the fact that you need a quick reaction to aim at the enemy, who can appear anywhere on the screen, you need to be able to aim correctly, and learn how to feel and control the speed of the character.
In most shooters, training can be called a convention, where the player is introduced to the basics of management and is given a couple of minutes to assimilate them. For someone picking up a gamepad for the first time or using a mouse in such a strange way – this will not be enough. The player will immediately be thrown into combat, where he definitely is going to make mistakes that will be perceived as his personal failures because the game has not properly taken care of how to avoid such situations.
This, of course, is not the fault of video games; most of them are designed for people already familiar with the genre. After learning all the basics and honing your skills, it’s time to check the most anticipated video games or the most popular video games of all time.
Superhot
Superhot is one of the most innovative shooters I’ve played in a while. This game manages to train the player to properly control the character on the keyboard with the mouse and most importantly on the gamepad. So, you can control the walking speed of the character and the rotation of the camera with the force exerted to deflect the sticks. Many first-time gamepad gamers may find this control uncomfortable, but it just takes some getting used to.
Superhot is not your standard first-person shooter. In this game the time moves very slowly, the action occurs in slow motion, and the faster you move, the more normal the time flow becomes. In such a situation, controlling it with the gamepad, where you can regulate the walking speed of the character, is a great choice. The faster you start to move your character, rotate the camera or perform some actions, the faster you move, but your enemies also speed up.
If you take things slowly, you have time to look around and think about what action you need to take to pass the level correctly or trivialize what button you’re going to press, or carefully aim at the enemy before you shoot.
Warning Note
Death is a frequent occurrence in this game, but while in normal shooters it is a way to punish the player for wrong actions, in Superhot it is perceived as part of the game itself. Death does not act as an irritant, but rather as a teacher. Dying instantly takes you back to the beginning of the level, but because the levels themselves are small, most of them being two or three themed rooms that can be completed in a couple of minutes, you get the feeling that you’re trying to solve a puzzle or assemble a puzzle.
A perfect comparison would be assembling a Rubik’s cube. You rotate the faces many times to arrive at a certain result, but when you rotate one of them and you can’t immediately assemble the cube – it’s not perceived as a failure, you keep spinning it, looking for the right combination. Spinning is part of the puzzle, just like death in Superhot.
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