10 Video Games That Make You A Better Gamer

What do Dark Souls and Pikmin have in common? They both make you better at games.

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[justchris]

After playing the souls series I played every game as if every enemy could one shot me. It makes your approach to some games so much more careful.

[aurochtamer]

When I was little and taking Computer Lab in school, one of the games we could play if we finished early was Towers of Hanoi. Looking back, I'm pretty sure that game was responsible for helping me learn how to deal with sequential logic situations for the rest of my life.

[dylanthevillain]

In the 360 era, whenever I would start to lose touch at any FPS I would switch over to Unreal tournament 3 for a couple games and come back as a Super Saiyan.

[trystansykes]

Man I can't believe Starcraft 2 wasn't on this list. There was even a University study done on that game with found that playing it increases mental agility. This applies to games and a whole bunch of other areas of life too. Strategy, tactics, resource management, multitasking, the list goes on

[kriscynical]

I'm going to show #1 to my mother. She's in her 70s and I got her into playing BotW for herself a couple years ago after she had watched me play for hours on end. She's primarily a puzzle gamer but she's learned BotW really well at this point. Even though she thinks she isn't very good at it I've repeatedly told her just the fact that she can hold her own makes her far better at the game than she thinks.

[mistersippi]

So glad Darkest Dungeon was mentioned. One of my all time favorite games.

[coreyrogers]

No Killer Instinct? It had a tutorial that teaches you techniques and terms for every competitive fighter on the market.

[ZatoichiBattousai]

The Surge is a good start before getting into Dark Souls.

[semnae]

Here’s a list of games that I would recommend to improve a particular gaming skill:

Timing - Celeste. This game is unforgiving and trains you to hit the button at the exact right time. Kaizo Mario would also work, but I feel like Celeste builds in difficulty, while Kaizo Mario games are at maximum difficulty from the start.

Accuracy - Playing any shooter will help you improve your accuracy, but if you really want to improve this skill, it is probably a good idea to try something with metrics, like Aim Lab.

Micro - Micro is old school gamer lingo. It refers to how rapidly you can enter commands into an input device while giving more thought to your commands than just button mashing. The real time strategy genre is notorious for needing good micro. For this skill, I would have to recommend StarCraft. There are a lot of good trainers for the game that calculate your actions per second and other useful metrics. It’s also the most popular RTS series of all time.

Observation - In most role playing games, you don’t have to put much thought into attacking enemies. Dark Souls really changed changed the genre. If you run up to even a minor boss in Dark Souls and just start swinging your sword, you’re going to die. Dark Souls unforgivingly trains you to watch what the enemy is doing and quickly react in the correct way. The Witcher on maximum difficulty also does this, but I prefer Dark Souls. The Witcher is a terrific series, but it seems like there’s a million ways to attack or defend, and I forget how to do most of them while playing.

That’s it. Strategy and tactics are also often important skills for gaming, but the application of these skills are so different from game to game, I can’t think of one that would make you better at all games that use strategy or tactics. Being good at chess is not going to make you good at XCOM or Civilization. The games in these genres are just too different.

[elvispressplay]

In Middle School every computer in our Mac Lab had "Bolo" on it. Before the Internet was commercially available, this game allowed us to play together all at once in a sort of team based Battle Royale with Tanks (pre-1995). While the graphics weren't even great for the time, it was surprisingly robust. We learned a lot about teamwork and base building, forming alliances and breaking them in the fight to come out on top. It seemed like we learned a new feature or strategy every time we played.

To this day, I wish there was an updated version so we could introduce it to a new generation.

[EvilPikachu]

Distinct lack of Monster Hunter on this list. It's pretty much the definitive choice, the whole point of the series is building your knowledge of environments, targets, gear choices, the value of proper preparation, etc.

You could also throw Final Fantasy 14 on there too since it's pretty much the only MMO where you can meet decent people instead of an entire series of Jeremy Kyle Show's worth of toxic idiots.

[GageisME]

6:15 very debatable quote there dude…..

[TalesTheDude]

Zombie Army.
A game that is made to be challenging enough regardless of difficulty, as it forces you to adapt and strategize with every level against hordes of the undead, systematically programmed to match the number of players. It forces you to be creative in your approach alone, as well as making you a better team player, as it makes teams take vantage points and have different roles as the game progresses. The level designs force you to do this in compact areas, as well as larger ones, with the constant moving around to find spots to pick your shots, like in it's parent franchise: Sniper Elite. Each weapon has strengths and weaknesses, with items like trip mines becoming a saving grace in many a battle against a variety of zombie soldiers.

[GrindyVine]

"they says that practice makes perfect"
Showed dark souls


I think it's not just practice needed, you need A LOT of patience

[TJ-dhsr]

Look at "Hell Let Loose" in this context. Teaches a lot about tactics, Communications and recognizing hidden enemies (often i die there without even knowing where the enemy was who killed me)

[joshuaebenedict]

I would say I got much better at video games by 100%ing the main achievements in Sekiro.

[-_-]

Glad seeing Darkest Dungeon here, it has a really high learning curve

[deathtalker]

Let's put together our favorite games and figure out a video we could do on them..rinse... repeat

[RagnarokMic]

Hitman for creative thinking, figuring so many different routes and ways to take out your target and disappear like you were never there.

[WhiteFangofWar]

No Mega Man X? X-pect an angry letter from Egoraptor.
But honestly most Mega Man games are pretty good at teaching you about their hazards and enemies before throwing them back at you in a more difficult way.