What do you think is your greatest accomplishment in gaming?

For me, it's finishing Ninja Gaiden Black on very hard difficulty (and I made it halfway through on master ninja!). I have very fond memories of this. A friend was very enthusiastic about the game, and offered to sit with me while playing through basically the whole game, giving me advice on the best tactics and ways to deal with difficult areas and bosses. And he told me about the farming of course, which becomes very necessary on higher difficulties.

When I got to very hard after two playthroughs, I was on my own and fully ready to take it on. It took blood, sweat, tears and alcohol, but I managed to get through it all. There were moments of absolute despair, like the ghost fish and triple boss rush close to the end.. but I did it. And I don't think I will ever complete a game this difficult again. I just installed Ninja Gaiden 2 Black a few days ago, and I was immediately familiar with all the combos and gameplay. It will be a fun revisit to the series, as I never played the original NG2.

A honorable mention will be finishing Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 and Icewind Dale 1 solo. This was also done with advice from the GOG forums, and I had a lot of fun dealing with the games I had finished many times in a different way. It was brutal at times, but you get into a certain groove after a while. The last boss of the BG2 expansion sure didn't make it easy though.

The four weeks I was on a holiday in a place without any internet or electricity with my family. No screens, no phones. We did play a lot of games together - cards, boardgames, oudoor games. Spending times with the wife and kids like this, is the greatest gaming I have done.

Going from person who is aquainted with developer to official tester to somebody actually working creatively in the game in the space of a couple of months.

I am slow in finishing games, because I search pretty everything during a playthrough, and for that reason it takes me more time than others (and certainly more than that "how long to beat" thing). So, I would say I am happy every time I finish a game!

My greatest feat? Being able to manipulate the rubberbanding AI in Mario Kart Double Dash in just the right way to give a former partner of mine false hope that she would win, then crushing her feeble spirit. I could watch both screens simultaneously, so I could always get it just right.

Still in the making...... Conquering the Immortal Empires with Iron Zhao

This is the most wholesome thing I've read all week. I can understand that, but it's different for me. I usually always play at the highest difficulty, especially in challenging action games like Ninja Gaiden or DMC, I see it as a good way to really have to utilize all the tools the games give you.

One exception is the Ys-games. Choosing the highest difficulty there will really destroy the experience. I've had to start a new game in two of the games several hours in because I couldn't take the grinding and one-hit kills anymore.

It's hard to think of something. I don't mind admitting I mostly suck at games, despite all the years I've been a gamer, which is why I usually play at "normal" difficulty and stay away from trying accomplish anything other than finishing the game and having fun. And there are alway the "git gud" people who will tell you that they finished Dark Souls with their eyes closed and using an electric toothbrush as a controller.

So I'll list a few things, but it's not that I really thing of them as major, you don't need to tell me how lame it all is :D

Beating Desperados would probably feel like most of an achievement, because that game is difficult as hell, plus it cheats like Lao Che in the Temple of Doom. Guards will sometimes walk through walls, sometimes even on horseback, shit like that. Unfortunately in the very last mission I had to look one thing up in a walkthrough, because for the life of me I couldn't find a way to open one door, so that kind of ruined the "feat" of wining it.

I always feel like beating any point & click adventure without looking anything up is a big deal. And I managed it with quite a few, like Chains of Satinav, Memoria, Loom, The Dream Machine, Irony Curtain, Roki, Lost Horizon, and more (I think, with some others I'm not sure now if I looked up a hint or not). But what felt probably like the biggest accomplishment was figuring out the "marketplace music" puzzle in Deponia 2 on my own. I'm not gonna spoil it here, but if you know, you know.

But the funniest one is I recently learned that I've been playing (and beating) Max Payne on super difficulty all my life without knowing it. Apparently it has "adaptive difficulty" which makes the game easier if you die often, and harder if you don't. But it only registers the deaths if you let the entire death animation play out. And since I always hit the "load" button before that happens, the game basically thinks I'm the best player in the world and throws it's wort at me, even though I'm dying constantly :D And I never knew that untill my most recent replay last month around Christmas, when I read about it googling something else about the game.

That is quite something. I never played Desperados, but IIRC they are similar to the Commandos games, which are tough as nails. Puzzles is my achilles heel. I have a lot of trouble with this in every point and click, but I try as far as I can to not use walkthroughs. I think I at least managed the first Monkey Island without using the hints. And Syberia, But I used a walkthrough once or twice in the second one. Many playthroughs have fizzled out early on though when getting stuck on puzzles, like The Dig, Primordia, Deponia, Broken Sword, Grim Fandango, one of the Indiana Joneses.. That pretty much sounds like what I discovered about Resident Evil 4 too, after beating it a couple of times. That game also has a adaptive difficulty that adjusts if you die a lot, which I probably did on my first playthrough. Also a great game to replay around Christmas time by the way. I did so one year ago, but with the remake this time :)

I don't think I beat any Lucasarts adventure game all fair and square. The Dig and Sam Max have especially insane puzzles, which is kind of to be expected from Sam and Max, but the Dig is this rather serious sci-fi movie type thing, with great cinematic presentation, and then it just drops total nonsense on you in the actual gameplay. But even the Monkey Island games, although I love them, are tough to beat, at least without some time consuming "try everything" approach from time to time. But I did at least figure out the "monkey wrench" puzzle in the second game, and I'm proud of that.

Overall, I find the adventure genre got much better with its puzzles over the years. I love many of those classic games for their writing and characters, but I'm glad modern point & clicks tend to actually make logical sense in their puzzle design.

It's okay to cheat a little bit. Doing your best is enough. Some games in the past were designed in such a way that players might share advice by word of mouth, so it's really okay if you don't know everything and after wracking your brain could do with a push in the right direction. When I first played Monkey Island II I didn't even know what a Monkey wrench was, so I was never going to get it.

Oh absolutely. I don't think there's anything wrong at all with looking stuff up. Or even using cheats. As long the player is having fun that's all that really matters. It's just that having to check a walkthrough too often eventually starts to make the game just not feel fun for me. And if I do manage to solve the whole game myself that just feels extra nice. I really love the feeling I get in a point & click game when for a while I smoothly go from one puzzle to another, just flow for a while in sync with the game's puzzle design and the dev's thinking. Can't really explain it, it just feels good. And then eventually I get stuck again :D

Some that I can think of:
* Playing through a large part of Bard's Tale 1 mapless. I was even able to get through Kylearean's Tower under these rules. (Rules: No referring to a map wile playing, no drawing your own map. While I wasn't playing the remaster, if you are, you must use Legacy Mode to disable the automap.)
* I've cleared Chaos Strikes Back and Wizardry 4. (But note that I played the PS1 version of Wizardry 4, which has a free automap and doesn't kick you out to the title screen when you save.)
* Etrian Odyssey 1 (main game) without a Medic, and without over-reliance on healing items. (The idea is to use a Protector's Cure spells early on, and have a Troubadour get Healing and Stamina for mid/late game healing.)
* Guadia Quest Saga (sub-game of the JP-only DS game Game Center CX 2): I've cleared the game, except for the boss at the end of the secret postgame dungeon, with only initial armor. It gets quite difficult toward the end.

Huh?

I mean, that's your way of fun right?