Summary
- Game recordings can help you improve by analyzing gameplay for mistakes and areas of improvement.
- Recording gameplay is easy on consoles with built-in features or with PCs using screen recording software.
- Reviewing recordings can help you understand boss fights, missed dialogues, and track progress in competitive multiplayer games.
Most people think of game recordings as something you use to make content, stream to your gaming audience, or share on social media. However, what if you could actually use game recordings to become a better player?
They say that practice makes perfect, but that won’t help if you don’t know what you’re doing wrong, so here’s how to apply game recordings to your gaming skill.
Recording Games Is Easy These Days
If you haven’t been recording your gameplay, it’s a good idea to talk about how to do that. On the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles, the feature is already built in. On a PS5, just press the Share button on your controller, and select the length of the clip you want to save. On an Xbox Series console, press the Xbox button on your controller, and choose the clip duration you want to share.
Of course, you can skip the internal recording function on these consoles, and use a PC with an HDMI capture card instead, but for most people the convenience of a share button is the right option.
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PC gamers can simply use the screen recording software that comes with their graphics card, which usually activates using a keyboard shortcut, or you can set up an instant replay interval. If your game is on Steam, then you can also use the Steam screen recording function.
You Can Figure Out Why You Can’t Beat a Boss
Boss fights in video games are awesome. These are the highlights of most games, where all your practice and level grinding is put to the test. They can also be spirit-breaking bottleneck, and sometimes it’s hard to figure out why exactly you’re losing over and over to that boss while you’re actually doing your best to survive.
So it makes perfect sense to sit down, and watch footage of your boss battle, to see if you’re missing something obvious, or if there are things you can do differently.
Review Missed Dialog or Clues
The whole reason I got the idea to write this article came from watching my wife play Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. If she missed what someone had just said, she’d immediately hit the Share button on her PS5, and watch the last minute or two of gameplay.
It’s particularly useful for games where story and choice matter. The quest log doesn’t always have all the information you need, and it can even help you solve puzzles if you save recordings of important info for later.
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Learning From Your Wins and Losses
So far, I’ve only touched on single-player games, because, personally, that’s all I play, but I know how incredibly popular multiplayer games are. In particular, how competitive people are when playing Call of Duty, or Overwatch.
If you record your matches, and make some time to sit down and watch them later, then you learn what you’re doing wrong and what you’re doing right. You can’t just get better at a competitive game or sport by imply playing, because you may in fact be reinforcing bad habits instead of good ones.
So watch your games and try to analyze them. See if you can tell if there’s a common factor involved when you do well, and when you’re having a bad match.
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Tracking Whether You’re Actually Getting Better or Not
The last use of recordings builds on everything above. The thing is, you should keep your recordings, because that allows you to compare how you were playing before to how you’re playing now.
Getting better at stuff is hard to track from your own internal viewpoint. You might be getting much better, but not realize it at all. Conversely, you might be going backwards and not know it.
So by keeping a few key recordings of your gameplay, and watching them back-to-back can be quite educational. Of course, you don’t have to do all the analyzing yourself. If you have friends who also play (and are better than you) you can ask them to have a look as well. Just make sure they don’t upload your dumbest mistakes online behind your back!
