10 Video Game Tricks Players Fall For EVERY Time

7. Repeatedly Falling for Traps

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Most video games work best when players take their time moving through locations and studying their surroundings. This is beneficial not only to appreciate the sights and sounds around them, but also to ensure that they don’t accidentally trigger a trap.

Even so, gamers will incessantly fall for the same sorts of harmful – or even fatal – hazards year after year and game after game.

Take, for example, how frequently people step on tiles, pull levers, push buttons, and stumble over tripwires that get them blown up, trapped in a cage, impaled by spikes, or foiled by some other kind of nasty punishment.

Not only should the majority of these traps be obvious to anyone paying attention to what they’re doing, but they’ve also been done to death in major franchises such as Resident Evil, Uncharted, Tomb Raider, and Dead Space.

Equally common are traps that mask themselves as treasure chests or other seemingly rewarding objects. Now, that might relate to creatures that attack once they're opened – known as mimics – or pots and boxes that hurt the player in some other way.

Several beloved series – ranging from Dragon Quest, Enter the Gungeon, and Final Fantasy to Dark Souls, Metroid, and Borderlands – are known for these types of traps. Nevertheless, both novices and veteran players constantly get swindled by them.

 
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Hey there! Outside of WhatCulture, I'm a former editor at PopMatters and a contributor to Kerrang!, Consequence, PROG, Metal Injection, Loudwire, and more. I've written books about Jethro Tull, Opeth, and Dream Theater and I run a creative arts journal called The Bookends Review. Oh, and I live in Philadelphia and teach academic/creative writing courses at a few colleges/universities.