Commitment to Games

[r0ck3rz]

I would love to give advice, but I can't even properly figure out what I've been going through.

It's like, right now...

1)Can no longer stand RPG's or adventure games
2)As a lot of games have adapted more adventure elements as time goes by, including increased length of gameplay time, can no longer stand 3D games.
3)Never been that into some genres, that I probably should be, given my current standing on games, but still don't want to(the other 2 internet love fests, fighting and shmups)
4)Every so often I'm dumb enough to try getting into these genres and more recent generations of gaming, and it comes right back to where I'm currently at, which is...
5)Almost don't even feel like gaming anymore, aside from a few really quick puzzle/card games for the PC, while waiting for web pages to load or something. If I actually force myself to start a game(4-16 bit), I will enjoy it, but getting myself to actually feel like it is a whole other story.




....Fuck it, I'll be a hippocrate and give advice anyway.

1)No matter what, buy 1 game at a time, especially if you ever buy used. A 7 day return policy is no good when you buy multiple RPG's/modern games, and you need the time to see that the game will play all the way through with no problem. Especially if the back of the disc looks like a childs science experiment.

2)Try to play for maybe a couple hours a night. A modern game/RPG/adventure game will last you a whole lot longer that way, than if you sink in 6+ hours a day. try to make it so you make that last save at the 2 hour limit and aren't "oh, man, just a couple more levels/dungeons." It's a hobby, don't turn it into a career, or a lifestyle.

3)One of the major difficulties of being a gamer is that it can take you so long to figure out what you truly like in gaming. That said, try to figure this out quickly. You might like a few good titles in one genre, but one day come to find you're not nearly as in love with the genre as you think you are, you just lucked out and came across some of it's crowning jewels.

4) Coinciding with the last one, and this can be difficult, but try to think of things less in terms of what genre you like, and more in terms of which games you like. Using myself for example, I've always loved the beat em up genre, but it's a genre that hardly ever got it right. So it'd be pointless for myself to look for as many beat em ups as possible, rather than looking for the few AAA beat em ups there are, as the individual games they are.

5) Try not to have more than 30 games per console if possible. Hell, not more than 20 would be even more ideal. This goes along with points 3 and 4, where you want to find what you truly like within gaming, without grabbing a bunch of games just because they're in a favored genre/series. You can't play them all, so don't try, and move on should you "miss out." The last thing you want is to have 100 games per console, only to find out you'll only feel like revisiting 5 or so after you've beaten them.

6) Goes along with my 2nd point some, and kind of against it some, but try to think less in terms of actually beating the game. If you have a lengthier game, try to take it in, rather than trying to plow through it. This obviously works better with my first point in mind. If you buy multiple used games in one go, and have a 7 day limit to find something wrong with, and bring any of them back, you start to make a job out of beating the game, and moving on to the next one, without really enjoying any of them.

[beach1]

Mar 5, 2011 1:25:56 GMT -5 Bobinator said:

Lately, I've been having a really big problem with the fact that I've just got a HUGE collection of games on consoles and PC, and I can't seem to stick to any of them long enough to beat them at all. It's not that I don't want to play them, but it's usually that I'll get a new game, play it for a few hours, and then drop it for months. It's either that I end up having other games I want to play, or that I just end up doing other things and forgetting about the game entirely.

Games that require a lot of involvement required tend to be pretty bad for me, too, since lately I tend to lose focus of those pretty quick. Which is why I traded in New Vegas for Splatterhouse at GameFly.

...Any advice?

Pretty much this for me too. I don't have much trouble starting to play a new game that I want to play, but after a few days of playing it, I feel tired of it even if I haven't beaten it yet, and want to move onto something else. It's what's happened to me recently with Star Ocean 2nd Evolution. But then I guess this has been happening to me in a way throughout much of my teenage life when I had to rent most of the games I played, since I couldn't afford to buy them, and had to return them before I beat them.

The only thing I could think of is just take a break from the game (if it's an rpg, write down what the next thing you have to do in case you forget) and just return back to it whenever you feel like it. Or you can always force yourself to keep on playing it and see how that works.

[r0ck3rz]

Mar 5, 2011 10:50:58 GMT -5 Pixel_Crusher said:

As if it weren't enough, now days I can't play a single retro game without resorting to rewinding, I just can't find the time to pour dedication on them and their challenge curve, no matter how much I like them.

I really want to get out of this phase and go back to enjoying games for what they where, trouble is, I just don't know how to do it or where to start. Any suggestions?

Provided we're not talking about RPG's or adventures here, basically play the game until it kicks your ass, and come back to it another time/day. Kinda tedious, but that's how they were meant to played, and usually, given a while, you don't mind going through the earlier stages again, and you start to develop better strategies for them as you along.

It's like one of the things I was trying to say in my last post, make it about trying to get better at the game, not beating it in one go. If you make it about beating it, you turn it into a job, rather than a fun, potentially relaxing hobby.

Mar 6, 2011 3:04:15 GMT -5 beach1 said:

Mar 5, 2011 1:25:56 GMT -5 Bobinator said:

Lately, I've been having a really big problem with the fact that I've just got a HUGE collection of games on consoles and PC, and I can't seem to stick to any of them long enough to beat them at all. It's not that I don't want to play them, but it's usually that I'll get a new game, play it for a few hours, and then drop it for months. It's either that I end up having other games I want to play, or that I just end up doing other things and forgetting about the game entirely.

Games that require a lot of involvement required tend to be pretty bad for me, too, since lately I tend to lose focus of those pretty quick. Which is why I traded in New Vegas for Splatterhouse at GameFly.

...Any advice?

Pretty much this for me too. I don't have much trouble starting to play a new game that I want to play, but after a few days of playing it, I feel tired of it even if I haven't beaten it yet, and want to move onto something else. It's what's happened to me recently with Star Ocean 2nd Evolution. But then I guess this has been happening to me in a way throughout much of my teenage life when I had to rent most of the games I played, since I couldn't afford to buy them, and had to return them before I beat them.

The only thing I could think of is just take a break from the game (if it's an rpg, write down what the next thing you have to do in case you forget) and just return back to it whenever you feel like it. Or you can always force yourself to keep on playing it and see how that works.

Perhaps those games just didn't resonate with you. If you can lose interest, it's definitely the wrong game for you, and I could see the validation of trading it in for something that might work better for you. Like I was trying to say in my last post, you gotta try and figure out what it is you really like.

[beach1]

Mar 6, 2011 10:58:40 GMT -5 r0ck3rz said:

Mar 5, 2011 10:50:58 GMT -5 Pixel_Crusher said:

Pretty much this for me too. I don't have much trouble starting to play a new game that I want to play, but after a few days of playing it, I feel tired of it even if I haven't beaten it yet, and want to move onto something else. It's what's happened to me recently with Star Ocean 2nd Evolution. But then I guess this has been happening to me in a way throughout much of my teenage life when I had to rent most of the games I played, since I couldn't afford to buy them, and had to return them before I beat them.

The only thing I could think of is just take a break from the game (if it's an rpg, write down what the next thing you have to do in case you forget) and just return back to it whenever you feel like it. Or you can always force yourself to keep on playing it and see how that works.

Perhaps those games just didn't resonate with you. If you can lose interest, it's definitely the wrong game for you, and I could see the validation of trading it in for something that might work better for you. Like I was trying to say in my last post, you gotta try and figure out what it is you really like.

Well, it's not that I don't like the game, it's just, some games I just get hooked on and want to play until I finish/beat it (Suikoden 2, Final Fantasy 4, etc.), while other games, I like them, but they don't hook me the same way that the first group of games do. Like after a while of playing them, they start to feel stale/not fresh and I feel like moving onto something new.

I made myself pick up Star Ocean Second Evolution again last night and it managed to catch my interest again and I want to continue playing it again today. I guess, for me, video games are part fun but also part discipline to commit to finishing them.

[hidetoshidecide]

I don't keep a collection, for the most part. I only keep games if I really, really like them, think I will replay them at some point, and there is some potential for them to be hard to find and/or more expensive if I rebought them later. If a game does not meet all three criteria, I usually sell/trade it against something new.

And I typically only play one game at a time, and I play it to completion. If I don't like the game I'm playing, I bail early. Very occasionally, I will play two games at once if they are from dissimilar genres. But in general, I find it necessary and beneficial to focus on a single game.