Your gaming compulsions.

Go ahead. Tell everyone about those little things you feel you have to do in certain games. Hell, all games, even! We all know you have them. I'll start:

• In any given Assassin's Creed game, I simply have to get every last Viewpoint. Every other little sidequest means nothing, but leaving those Viewpoints unclimbed just feels wrong.
• Same goes for not getting all the Chaos Emeralds in a Sonic game. Eggman must not have them.
• I also want to say "recruit every character possible in a Fire Emblem game", but for some reason, I feel like that's a given.

If items can be found in breakable objects, I absolutely cannot leave even one unbroken. Especially games with drop rates. WHAT IF THERE IS A PURPLE GUN IN THAT LUNCHBOX UGH

If there is a chance to save an NPC from death I will continually reload my checkpoint until I manage to save them. Sometimes I do this with very stupid things, like the marines in the Halo games. My conscience won't let me just allow them to be killed, even if they are just video game people. I have to help.

Due to my experience with Skies of Arcadia: Legends, where running from battle impacts your Pirate Rating, I nearly never run from random battles in RPGs, specifically JRPGs. No matter how meaningless the battle (or the game), I just can't bring myself to run. What if it comes back to bite me? I need to be Vyse the Legend in every damn game!

In RPG's i often enforce stricter limits on myself to get more into it.

Like i'd only carry a knife, a rifle and a handgun in the fallout games, cus carrying around 15 guns ruins it for me. And i wouldn't pick up 4 suits of power armor to sell cus how the hell is someone going to carry all that? It's silly is what it is!

On the Assassin's Creed one, I absolutely have to do that. It bothers the hell out of me not having a complete map.

I can't think of any other ones right now. But if I do, I'll post them as I remember them

Also if there is a stealth section that, if failed, turns into an action sequence, I HAVE to complete it stealthily. I will reload my checkpoint tons just to ensure I get to the end without being seen.

- Open every box, locker and safe in Fallout3/New Vegas

- Hack every computer in Deus Ex: Human Evolution

- Steal from the shopkeepers in Spelunky

• In most RPG's I've played, whenever a character is close to leveling up (depending on where I'm at in the game, 20 or 100 exp points left, etc.) I just have to grind a bit more to have them level up. I don't know if that makes any sense though.
• Ratchet and Clank. Hella bolts. That is all. Oh and any collectibles floating around.
• XCOM: Enemy Unknown. EVERY soldier as to survive EVERY mission.
• Same with you on the Assassin's Creed Viewpoints. You'd be a fool not to synchronize with EVERY single one in any game.
• Borderlands 2. Can't. Seem. To. Reach. That. Part. Of. Map. Where. The. Black. Spots. Are. Son of a bitch.
• Skyrim. Loot too much items and end up going over the carry limit. I'll just walk the rest of the way until I reach a town. I just have to sell ALL my loot.

That's all I can think of right now.

If a stealth game gives me the option of knocking-out guards and hiding them in a dumpster, I will knock-out every one of those motherfuckers and hide them in a dumpster.

My main issue with Dishonored was the scarcity of dumpsters.

If there is the option to take people out non lethally, I will absolutely avoid killing people. The entire game, if that's an option. I do nothing BUT non lethal runs of MGS games and Deus Ex: HR.

• Open / Unlock / Hack everything for all games that have that.
• Save every person I can, unless I'm in a very large group scenario (like named people in Fallout 3/NV, Skyrim, or Marines in Halo, but not in like those Call of Duty levels where there's either a ton of people, or they respawn constantly). If I can either choose to go with a group into combat, or go in alone before them, I'll usually choose to go alone.
• Get every view-point type thing in every game.
• Take all the loot. Fuck encumbrance. In PC games I'll usually cheat/mod that to make it a non-issue, but even when I played Fallout 3 and New Vegas on my 360 (before getting something to handle PC games), I'd stuff all my loot in a damn body, cut off an easily carried part, and carry the body part back, and loot it right before going in town. Yes, I did that. All the damn time. Followers made that incredibly easier though, after I got them.
• In Half Life 2, I can barely go 10 minutes without using my many key bindings to spawn NPCs and other creatures to have giant fights. It's an addiction.
• Like Yahtzee says about Mercenaries 2, "I found myself hording all of my strongest weapons, because what if I used them on this giant enemy, but found an even larger enemy around the corner?" I did manage to break out of that in Mercs 2 though, but definitely not in Fallout 3/NV. Was surprisingly easy to break in Skyrim.
• I always end up trying to stealth. I've forced my self to go in swords swinging / guns blazing in Skyrim / Fallout, for instance, but after about 10-20 minutes, I'll suddenly realize that I'm now sneaking through a cave / building again with my bow / silenced weapon out. That sneak attack damage! It's weird though, I don't get that when I've played Assassin's Creed (unless it was a bonus objective, then I would reload a hundred times to get it).
• Always reload once the immediate area is clear, no matter how many bullets I have actually fired.
  • An addition to that, if a game allows infinite ammo, I will only use it if I can still reload or turn it off. Saints Row 3 has Infinite Ammo and Bottomless Mag I think, and I have only used the second one once or twice. I...I don't know why this bothers me.
    

I just tend to be very obsessive with collecting as much as I can. If a quest/mission has an optional part, I'll do my best to get it. Like the Wasteland Survival Guide in Fallout 3, I have never finished it without getting every optional objective completed.

Edit: I've also never been seen in Dishonored (though I haven't finished that yet), and I think Human Revolution.

I always do my damnedest to get the best possible ending, no matter what. I replayed about three hours of Mass Effect 2 when I realized I had put the wrong people in the wrong positions during the suicide mission, leading Legion to bite the dust.

Play any Fenno-Scandinavian-Baltic country in Paradox games. Finland/Norway/Estonia preferred, because sweden is way too OP. Or any basque country. Really, any country that's a underdog.

I've got to break the collision detection. I want to see outside the invisible fence. Games that don't have a jump ability or some other vertical movement ability make me sad. On the other hand, games like Mass Effect 1,2,3 with vehicles with thrusters, a class with an essentially free-movement charge, and some super janky physics make me SO HAPPY!

I've got to read all of the in-game logs, texts, terminal emails, wall writing, notes, scraps of paper on the ground etc. Dues Ex really delivered on this. A pure joy.

If I don't end an RPG with 100% of elixir type items unused, I am doing something wrong.

that reminds me of a bug in ME3 where you can go down to an area below the... place with Udina's office, that area? you can glitch your way to the bottom of that square hole, where everyone is just 2d cut outs and it's awesome.

In action RPG games I have to fill in the whole map, every map.

I could have 99% filled in and be across the map from the remaining 1%, but I gotta trek back and fill it in.

I've yet to play a Pokémon game without a walkthrough or guide.

Also, I obsessively read up on mechanic-heavy games (RPGs, strategy, etc.) prior to playing. Actually they don't even need to be that heavy on mechanics; I looked up builds for ME2 ffs.

I have to keep playing until I die.

Literally.

I played Torchlight 2 until 10 AM this morning, I was on the brink of death.

I need to explore everything before going the right way. If I go the right way first by mistake, I get really pissed.

I need to finish visual novels I start or I wont be able to think straight

The first thing I do when I start up a new Yakuza game is go into a convenience store and buy some things, and a can of Boss black and Rainbow Mountain Blend are the first two things I buy every time. Then after that I equip my sunshine belly warmer.

Climbing the towers is the best part of any Assassin's Creed game. Anyone who doesn't climb them all is a bad person.

Also:

Yep. Going the right way sucks.

And I'm an ammo/weapon/health/item hoarder. This is particularly annoying in Fire Emblem, when I'm still using iron or steel weapons in the endgame, even though s-ranked weapons are going unused. And elixirs are piling up in my storage convoy.

Oh, right. I like hearing all the dialogue options I can. For example, I just played a mission in Red Dead Redemption, and I missed some small bits of dialogue you get when you're traveling with someone because I stayed behind a minute to loot some corpses (perhaps another compulsion) and now I'm considering replaying the mission to hear that dialogue, or loading up that mission on youtube and finding it there. (And don't remind me that each mission has a bunch of alternate dialogue should you die or replay it or in some cases depending on what other missions you've done you might get a completely different conversation, because I force myself to forget that, lest I play all the missions twice, or die intentionally a bunch)

This. It leads to full inventories all the time. If it weren't for inventory limits in some games, I would finish them with half of Middle Earth's resources in my back pocket. It also made the Ratchet and Clank games occasionally hellish because you can break every lamp post, floating camera, and giant stairway knob for currency in that game.

It doesn't help that I also open literally every chest that I come across. It doesn't bug me if it's locked, but if I can get in it then I take all of its contents. I'm completely baffled at the meager amount of gold that shopkeepers in vanilla Skyrim hold, mostly because they never had enough to buy all of the shit that I'd picked up between this town and the last.

I also have to mine every ore that I see in Minecraft. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - I am generally overflowing with coal and iron - but it does mean that I'm really slow at getting deeper.

EDIT: And if I know that a certain way is the path to press the game forward, then I turn around and go explore all of the other ways before taking it.

I would always do this, but it's always "You can't buy these in the store, they're special items, I'm going to need them later so I won't use them now." ...then I'd never use them. I've actually been breaking that habit, lately

I don't give a shit how full my wallet is, if I see a rupee, I'm grabbing it.

When I see I'm about to screw up a barrel roll in Burnout Paradise, I twist the controller upside-down.

I used to be a wall rubber. Meaning: enter area, push my character against all surfaces in search of collectibles whilst mashing the pick-up thing button. I have successfully stopped doing this in recent years, probably because games don't really hide things in the way they used to. Like old Resident Evil games, wall rubbing sometimes mandatory to find something at all.

In similar category to that tendency, I would usually identify the central path the game wants me to take, then search the divergent paths first before proceeding. I eventually stopped this as well as it occurred to me one day, scrounging around in sewers in Fallout 3 for junk to sell, that this behaviour was not really benefiting me in any way beyond maybe getting some extra achievements. Modern game design is most insistent on never allowing you to fuck yourself over on the item scarcity issue. Which, to me, is both a good and bad thing. I'm playing the Last of Us right now, on hard, and while the game is trying to emphasize that materials are in short supply, I know full well that it will give me ammo when I need ammo. Part of that is checkpoint saving design style, where the game neatly separates itself into little chunks, and at each chunk makes sure you are provided with at least the minimum you need to proceed. I don't care for that. Nothing was wrong with save anywhere. Item scarcity works best as a tension building mechanic when I know that I can fuck myself over if I am not careful about using resources.

Now when playing the modern linear games I just plow through the main line of wherever the game so clearly wants me to go. And I am not having fun. I keep buying the big budget mainstream games expecting... i don't know, something a little bit more than a marginally interactive movie. Perhaps I should consider stopping that buying habit. Even an excellent game like Bioshock Infinite left me frequently bored and disconnected from the action for similar reasons. A good story and beautiful design isn't enough.

Reloading, even if I only fired one round and have 29 left in the magazine.

This is chronically bad with some weapons like machine guns since the animation takes forever, the weapon has over a hundred bullets left, and the whole point is you don't need to reload as often...

... doesn't matter. Gotta press R.

I've never played any portion of any assassins creed game with the HUD visible, I turned it all off the first time I played the first one and never turned back. I only use the map and I never fast travel.

Also in everything that has a variable movement speed, unless there is serious shit going down, I walk everywhere. In games like AC and Uncharted I also platform at a deliberate pace. As though there might actually be consequences if I miss a handhold or mistime a jump.

Another one is Changing into appropriate armor/clothes for specific activities in anything with a wearable inventory. Skyrim is a great example, Oh I have a crap load of smithing to do? on with the old shitty peasant clothes and leather gloves. Leaving a city to hunt? Hood and light armor, away I go.

I guess it came from the time I spent playing games in front of my friends but I've also built a habit of smooth cinematic camera movements, All. The. Time. Even when no one is watching I try to use the camera to highlight what's on screen in the best way possible. Except for FPS, then I'm usually nudging the right stick or mouse gently back and forth to make it seem more like I am walking/running/sprinting, you know, because that's sensible. . . . Syndicate was a godsend for me, they did half the work, I love the movement in that game.

I.. I also do all of these.

i never take a companion with me in a fallout game because i think there gonna take my kills and xp even though i get any xp they get.

Also i always turn subtitles on no matter the situation, i even turn subtitles for movies on sometimes even if i can hear them and there in english.

Better not use any of my items... cause I'll need them eventually... oh this level/boss is totally doable without the items... never end up using helpful items.... /sigh

I HAVE to explore EVERY LITTLE BIT of a level. I have to know what's there! What if it's a rare item! More money! Don't wanna miss anything!

Yes, I do this as well. Although I do have a specific reason. I am autistic and sometimes have trouble with verbal comprehension. So I have subtitles on so that I can check what I think I heard against what the subtitle says.

I quite literally have OCPD when it comes to to the way my custom characters look in a game, especially MMOs. I kid you not. I can easily spend anywhere from 30min-1 hour in basic character creators and anywhere from 1-3+ hours in more in-depth character creators. No joke. If I'm going to be using an avatar for god knows how long, you better believe I'm going over each and every detail with a fine tooth comb again and again and again until I'm happy. On top of that, what class I end up using depends on what their abilities are as much as it does on what armor/clothing options are available to them. There have been MMOs where I've wanted to play one class then looked at what their available gear looks like and decided against it because I couldn't bear the sight. There have been times I've gotten hours into a game and noticed something I didn't like about the way my character looks, but since the game didn't have a re-sculpt feature, I would start over again. I don't tthink I can continue to stress this further lol. I do not joke around when it comes to my characters' appearance. (Is this a little thing? lol)

1: You should get on the GB Feed The Beast server setup by Darkstar. It'd probably kill you, but we'd have a lot more supplies :D

2: Yes on that edit. I loved getting the upgrades for Rise in Persona 4 (chest and shadow location) because I could hazard guesses on which way the stairs weren't. It made me mad when I'd go down a long path, and the only door at the end was the exit. At least I knew the rest of the area included chests and shadows. Granted this compulsion was lessened slightly for the bonus boss runs. Still had to get the chests, but didn't have to uncover the maps.

I do the first mostly because they're my enchanted blacksmithing clothes (but I did pick them specifically for looks), and I do the second a lot. Even in FPS games, I'll slow pan after say, coming out of some underground place and seeing a grand landscape before me. I remember doing this in Halo 3 and Battlefield 3 a lot. Basically every bit that I think looks nice / beautiful.

I also tend to slowly turn my mindset into that of whatever game I'm playing. Start to act the part more in-game, and think more along those lines. I also tend to talk to the screen in some games, like Skyrim or Fallout. Not saying what I can choose to say in the game, but in response to what others say. Kind of like...Freeman's Mind or something like that. My characters are sarcastic as hell in their own minds. Hell, even in some other FPS games I'll do that, like..."stumble" around after being hit by a scripted explosion or stuff like that.

Edit: @babychoochoo: I'm not that much into looks (though I will spend 10~ minutes on the physical appearance), but oh god the names. The names are what always kill me. I used to go with just variations on "Capum", but recently with Guild Wars 2 and The Secret World...even Diablo 3, Torchlight, etc...though Persona 4 was simple enough; if I hadn't watched 99 hours and 59 minutes of that game before hand I'd probably have spent a while on naming too.

Seriously. I've sat at some screens for a good 30 minutes, just staring at the monitor. It slowly gets annoying, and then maddening, and then calming.

I always turn back and face the other way whenever I feel like I'm already going in the right direction. But I guess it's not really a compulsion so much as it is an impetus to explore before going into the next area.

Also, in RPGs, the protagonist must always be a level or two ahead of the whole party because it will bug me constantly if he/she wasn't. This happened when I was underleveled when I got Rise.

After a childhood with full bore debilitating Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, it thankfully never seeped into my video game escapism to any great degree.

The one thing that stands out in my mind is the first time I played Phantasy Star II, the fact that resurrection was "cloning" made me decide to reload any save rather than have "cloned" characters in my party. Just wasn't the same... (nevermind the plothole of... oh spoilers nevermind. :)

I don't do that all the time, but I do become worried if I sneak through an area with guards still patrolling. Even though I'm in the clear, I fear some random enemy will break off the path and come up from behind.

Which leads to my compulsion: if I'm playing a stealth game (like Dishonored), I must, must, must close any door I walk through, simply because the reason I just gave above. Even if I open a safe, if I can close it, I will. I don't think there's been a game where a guard will raise the alarm because a random safe is opened, but I still think it will happen every time.

I've found that Mother 3 broke me of this quite handily. At least temporarily.

I never use wands or scrolls in RPGs, both because I horde them for a hypothetical rainy day and because I often forget that I have them until after I've used up all of my regular spells.

In stealth games I am pretty compulsive about knocking out everyone in my path, to the point where I inevitably screw up because I was trying to knock someone out.

My first stealth game was Manhunt.

Needless to say, it taught me some horrible things.

I have to take out EVERYONE. It doesn't matter that they don't pose a reasonable threat from across the room. I have to get them. Already snuck past everyone and reached the exit? Fuck that, I have to go back and clear out the room. And I have to do a good job at it because I don't want to piss off the Director. Which, in the age of "stealth optional" games, translates to "stealth is the only option". I need perfect runs everytime, or else I'm reloading a save.

The most annoying thing I do that I can think of is that I have to go through all the paths in a multi-path kind of game.

Let's say I take the roof in Deus Ex? When I reach the quest marker, I don't go for it, I turn back and go through all the other paths I can find, clear them out, then go for the quest marker. A lot of vent crawling....

In Max Payne 1 & 2, I wouldn't allow myself to continue on if I had less than full health and full painkillers. I also had to collect all the painkillers I came across even if it meant damaging myself in order to be able to do so. I'm not usually like that, but I remember discussing the game with my friend and it turns out he had the exact same thing going on, so I dunno...

I also don't use grenades in anything, because I might need them later.

i always catch myself working out lore or roleplay based justifications for why my character is doing something that only makes sense from a gameplay perspective, then i feel like an idiot, then i keep doing it.

All of the above.