Everyone needs a helping hand sometimes. How often do you find yourself consulting a guide of some sort to help you clear a game? ? How extensively do you use guides, do you use them for the whole game or just difficult sections you get stuck on?

Are there certain types of games or particular series you find yourself using guides more with?

Do you prefer using text or video guides? What about official printed guides that were more prevalent back in the day?

Personally there are certain games and series I find myself falling back on guides on. I am an adult gamer of sufficient skill so that I thin I should be able to clear most games in a straightforward manner. However, nothing irks me more than getting stuck on a game where the solution is unclear or not intuitive. I don't feel guilty about resorting to guides in those cases. Its a level design critique of mine.

Games I mostly play with guides are Zelda, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, and the like. I mostly stick to text guides. Shout out to GameFaqs. Watching a video walkthrough sometimes spoils the fun because I see what happens in the video before I experience it in the game. 

For platformers and other games where I find myself stuck on an annoying bit I might just do a quick Google search or pull up a Youtube vid to help out.

How about you?

It's rare for me to get through a game without using a guide at least once.

I have no patience for games wasting my time by being cryptic or obtuse about what I'm supposed to be doing next, if the next step isn't clear, I just look it up.

Same story if I get stuck on a difficult encounter, my game time is limited and I'd rather spend it having fun than being frustrated.

I use guides more for organization and efficiency than difficulty; complex open world games or rpg's with lots to keep track of. I'd generally rather figure things out for myself if the game is fairly linear and/or straightforward, but I don't want to waste a bunch of time on a bad character build in an rpg or searching hours for that one item in a big open world.

I haven’t for many years. Granted I also don’t play much of anything these days, but even back when I did I hardly used any. I do have a bunch though, pretty much all Nintendo. I used to buy the official Zelda guides, but wouldn’t look in them until after I completed the game. In fact I still did that with Breath of the Wild. It’s a cool book. I would usually look at them for the art and the maps. Just to wonder. This started all the way back with the ones I got for Warcraft 2 and SimTower.

The last game I actually remember to have used a guide (a walkthrough as it was called rather) for being stuck was all the way back in 2000 with Majora’s Mask. I don’t remember what part of the game, but I do remember I wanted to get the guide from somewhere, but they didn’t sell it anywhere. Lo and behold there was this new thing called the internet, and people would write and put game walkthroughs on it. So I found one for Majora’s Mask. It was the time when they’d just be plain text, and people made maps with these symbols; |, /, -, + and whatever else kind of happened to fit.

Needless to say, it helped me beat the game, and then I beat a whole bunch more in the years to come.

When I'm stuck after a long time and I don't see any way out.

Recently, it happened with Hollow Knight: Silksong. I reached an area called The Slab (well, more like I was thrown in there). It's an area where you need different keys to navigate it. These keys are found in this area and only work in this area. Well, I found 2/3 keys and I started looking for the third one. I spent like 1-2 hours looking. And the key was nowhere to be found.

I decided to look for it on a guide. Turns out, the last key was in a completely different area (like, not related or close to The Slab AT ALL). If I didn't look this up, I would have wasted even more time looking for something that wasn't even there. After looking it up, I just left The Slab and ventured to another area.

In my defense, I think the whole Slab key situation was very poorly designed, but oh well...

Fairly often. Internet and adulthood killed the magic of exploration.

When I got stuck as a kid, eventually figuring things out would get me all excited. When I get stuck now, it feels like I'm just wasting my time. I still appreciate well designed games that reward exploration, but I no longer have the patience to get stuck for hours.

I generally use a guide for after I beat the game. I check a guide for trophy clean up or superbosses or postgame recommendations.

In my Persona 5 Royal playthrough I've almost finished, I only used a guide for all the classroom questions, and looked up the requirements to unlock the new content.

I very rarely use guides unless I'm very stuck/confused or need tips to unlock a certain achievement.

If it's a game where it's possible to completely miss stuff, I'll use a text guide. I don't want to spoil myself, so I try to finish a section of the game first and then look up if there was anything I missed before moving on to something I can't return from. I'm not the multiple run type at all, I want to see everything while the whole thing is still fresh for me.
Sometimes when I'm lazy, I'll cheat on a riddle or that kind of stuff. Like if you need to do something that you absolutely could do given enough time, but can't be bothered to spend that time doing it, I'll just look up the answer so I can move on.

Never on a first play. After that, I mainly see what I missed as some games can be very in-depth and you'd never know about some of it unless you looked it up or literally clicked on everything.

Also however, depends on games. I generally didn't have to look up a guide in Horizon games at all, most of progression, leveling or upgrades are easily shown and obvious. Meanwhile Baldur's Gate 3, I only found out about the Festering Cove because people on reddit kept talking about it and I was like "what the hells is that" even after 400 hours into the game.