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Do you have a hard time starting a game?


AJ_Radio

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Since last summer I have made it a habit to give myself a couple days without starting a game.

 

The last several games I have played and completed I have come to really enjoy. The biggest struggle to me is not playing the game mid-way, or wrapping up what I need left, but simply starting it.

 

The thread "What's your 'favorite' stage of the trophy hunt" has spiked my interest in creating my own thread here because like most of you, I enjoy trophy hunting. But it's hard for me to simply start a game, even if it's a game I had played before in the past.

 

It is extremely rare for me to automatically be "WOWED" by a game at the beginning. I often find that it takes me upwards of a few days, or a whole week in some cases to really get myself adjusted to a game and enjoy it for what it is. Assassins Creed Rogue, a game I finished just a few months ago, took me a long while to finally get to start to enjoy it which was around a week. Most open world games take me a long time to get adjusted to and I don't think I'm alone in this.

 

Depending on the game, it may take me longer to start it. A retro 8 - bit, 16 - bit indie game may only take me a day because I love those types of games. An open world game like Marvel's Spider-Man may take me upwards of a week. Batman: Arkham Knight took me longer than a week, but I finally came to really enjoy that game and it is in my opinion one of the more solid open world games on the PS4.

 

However, on the flip side it is usually rare for me to be absolutely disgusted with a game by the time I'm getting close to being done with it. Orc Slayer is one such example. Most games I play I do my very best to get the most out of them as I can and enjoy myself. For some games I am impressed with moreso than others. But regardless of the game it takes me a long time to really get into it.

 

I detested Unravel at the beginning and ended up dropping it for a month. When I came back I found myself enjoying it a lot more than I did at the start. A number of games I have dropped after earning a couple trophies and came back to them, once done I had a completely different impression of the games.

 

What do you all think?

Edited by Spaz
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Most of the time I do have a hard time starting a game. Unless it is something I really want to play. Like God of War or Marvel's Spider-Man. I really enjoyed both of them. I love open world games so it don't take me long at all to get immersed in the world. 

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Nope, I'll start games all day.  Which is a problem because always in the back of my mind I'm thinking about what else I could be playing.  That's why I picked mid to late game in that other topic you mentioned.  If I've made it that far, I'm seeing the game through at least the main campaign.  

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My problem is sticking with them even though I am really enjoying them. Trying to not do that as much lately, like with Persona 5 I was playing it regularly making good progress, now I'm almost at the end of my 1st playthrough, and for whatever reason I've sat it aside and played a bunch of other stuff, and it's now like a month and a half since I last touched it, self sabotaging at it's finest haha.

 

Anyway as you can tell from above I'm much better at starting games rather than finishing them! Only time I struggle with the start is if I go from one game to the next with vastly different control schemes or gameplay, another game I dropped off of was Red Dead 2, I think the control scheme in that game was garbage and I'll have to play nothing but it if I want to really get my eye in.

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Almost always. I have 0 idea why but you and I have the exact same issue. Once I get the ball rolling on a game, it's great, I'm trophy hunting, getting through the meat of the content, and having a good time. But starting up? It's stupid how long it takes me. I'll give an example. I started dabbling in Transistor as early as January and was on and off... got like 1/4 of the way through, and then put it down for a month. Came back to it a month later and fell in love with it and thus far it's my favorite game I've played in 2019 and one of my favorites ever. Why the hell did it take me so long to enjoy it? After finishing off a game, it takes me 3-4 days to get going again. I'll go to my hub game which is Rocket League, and then stop playing shortly thereafter. Same thing is happening to me with Guacamelee 2 which took me a week to start, played it for an hour yesterday, and am now starting to get into the groove with it. 

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I have trouble starting longer games. When I know I can beat a game in 10-15 hours, it's easy to jump right in, because I know I can be finished with it in about a week, regardless of how hard it is or how much I enjoy it. Any time spent agonizing over whether I should or shouldn't start something new is time that could be spent making significant progress in the game.

 

On the other hand, a 60+ hour game is a huge commitment, and it's even worse when that game is just one of many in a long-running series. It took me until my 30s to even play a Kingdom Hearts or Resident Evil game because of this. I doubt I'll ever get to Assassin's Creed.

 

But it's not just video games. I'm the same way with books, movies, and TV shows. I'm just now reading the first Harry Potter book, I've seen about two Marvel movies in the past decade, and I can't for the life of me keep up with Game of Thrones or the other ten thousand shows these days that are one long story arc. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I like being able to turn on the TV, enjoy a complete story in a single evening, and move on with my life the next day. And if I want to return to that world again the next day, I can, but be treated to a new story that doesn't require advanced knowledge of everything that happened in the past episode.

 

It takes me a while to get into a game too. I remember not understanding or even liking Dark Souls when I first played it. This whole mentality of stretching a story across dozens of iterations -- often over a ridiculously long period of time -- is fine when done once or twice, but I find it difficult to commit myself to so many of these at once.

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I usually have a hard time starting games, thinking I should finish the ones I already got going. But recently I was in a rut not wanting to play anything I had downloaded and when that happens I find I have to delete everything and find something completely different to play. I did that the other day and only have Agents of Mayhem downloaded now. I played it for the first time today and I'm finding the aiming is really weird. But now that I have no choice but to play the one game, I find not having the option to play anything else helps get me into a game because I know I either have to finish it before downloading anything else, or at least a decent amount of time has to elapse and I'm free to download one more game. It's dumb but it helps me find games I actually want to play and gets me out of my rut.

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Yeah I have a hard time starting bigger games. Small ones are no problem really, but if the game is bigger and especially if it is complicated, I might not start to play it for a while even though I have both the time and the motivation. I just don't like learning new things in games for some reason, being bad in the beginning, barely being able to work out the interface, knowing that what I do early is bad and will come back to haunt me later in the game, sometimes to the point of having to restart the game because I ruined a character. Trophies make this a bit worse if there are many missables, but not too much.

 

It makes no sense for me to have that feeling though, because bigger and more complicated games are the ones that intrigue me the most. I learned several Paradox games on pc, even the feared Crusader Kings 2 that has a learing curve so long and steep it can take some people over a hundred hours to even get the basics done to some extend. I learned to play Factorio even though the game feels like I am actually doing a job I should be paid for, I played several MMO's and I managed to dive into a Moba that was chock full of toxic elitists and play it well enough that I was writing guides for people. I still have that dreaded feeling before a bigger game and stall, and I sometimes really dislike the early state when I have no idea what I am doing. Can't shake it off so I will just have to live with that I guess.

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It depends.

 

If I'm playing a game for fun (ie something without trophy system, something that requires multiple playthrough anyway...), it's usually easier to start. But with Nier, for example, I've been putting it off a lot because I need to x-ref a bunch of guides so I don't have to buy DLC or replay the first part again.

I also don't really like to start playing games at night, even though that's when I usually play :/ It's like "I should go to sleep" but then I'm up five hours more anyway and annoyed I didn't start the damn game lmao

Edited by mako-heart
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1 hour ago, Cassylvania said:

I have trouble starting longer games. When I know I can beat a game in 10-15 hours, it's easy to jump right in, because I know I can be finished with it in about a week, regardless of how hard it is or how much I enjoy it. Any time spent agonizing over whether I should or shouldn't start something new is time that could be spent making significant progress in the game.

 

I'm the same way.

 

It took me over two years to fully finish The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, but most of that was because I simply played for a good 20 - 30 hours then I stopped and played something else. But once it starts to hit that 30 - 50 hour mark I start to lose focus and it's easy for me to drift off into something else.

 

I have never played through The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, and that game is 8 years old now. I know full well it's over 100 hours, but I have always felt when I played it a little on the Xbox 360 that it was extremely overrated. I cannot play through it in just two weeks, that is far too much time I need to spend for a game that long.

 

I may end up dropping the idea of picking up Kingdom Come Deliverance because it's too long of a game for my general liking and after hearing all the backlash against it, may be better to either skip it or pick it up later when all the problems have been patched out.

 

1 hour ago, Cassylvania said:

On the other hand, a 60+ hour game is a huge commitment, and it's even worse when that game is just one of many in a long-running series. It took me until my 30s to even play a Kingdom Hearts or Resident Evil game because of this. I doubt I'll ever get to Assassin's Creed.

 

I would start with Assassins Creed 2. Thankfully the Ezio Trilogy on the PS4 removes all the multiplayer crap that was on the Xbox 360/PS3 original versions so you only have to worry about the story and the collectibles. I highly recommend picking it up, Ezio is still the best and most memorable Assassin of the bunch. The gameplay mechanics and the graphics are both a bit dated at this point but they're still worth playing.

 

1 hour ago, Cassylvania said:

But it's not just video games. I'm the same way with books, movies, and TV shows. I'm just now reading the first Harry Potter book, I've seen about two Marvel movies in the past decade, and I can't for the life of me keep up with Game of Thrones or the other ten thousand shows these days that are one long story arc. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I like being able to turn on the TV, enjoy a complete story in a single evening, and move on with my life the next day. And if I want to return to that world again the next day, I can, but be treated to a new story that doesn't require advanced knowledge of everything that happened in the past episode.

 

That's why I love sitcoms, especially the older ones from the '90s.

 

Family Matters, Home Improvement, Roseanne, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Sabrina the Teenage Witch among many others. One episode, one story. Steve Urkel would run into a problem and the problem was resolved at the end of the story. The Fresh Prince and Carlton Banks would get into hot water with Uncle Phil, by the episode's end everything is solved. It was extremely rare for any sitcom to have a story going across multiple episodes. Seinfeld had something like that towards the end but even then the story was simple enough for a general audience to be entertained with.

 

One of my friends tried to get me into watching Mr Robot with Rami Malek. I have to spend several weeks if not a couple months if I'm going to know what the hell is going on with that story.

 

I was a huge Dragonball Z fan as a kid. Used to watch it almost daily on Toonami back when they were the shit on Cartoon Network. It took me years to catch up with the story, because it was a continuous story that dragged on and on and on. I started watching when Vegetta was first introduced and watched right up to where Gohan had grown up and him and Goku fought against Majin Buu. I loved the show, but I was glad to finally get through with it. It just seemed to never end.

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Well, I cannot really say that I do. I try to not start too many games at a time (having 4 half-finished games is already too much for me ?), but I have also a relatively small backlog. I try to have about three games to play, which I divide in the following categories: 

  • Long, single-player game that will likely take me over a month to finish. These are games like Bloodborne, Nioh, The Witcher III, Sekiro (hype!), RDR2, etc...
  • Short, single-player game that I can jump in for a 30 minute session if I don't have more time. Games like Thumper, Super Meat Boy, OlliOlli2, etc...
  • Games to play with my girlfriend / friends in couch-coop. Examples are Guacamelee 1 & 2, Overcooked 1 & 2, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, etc.. 

So, whenever I finish a game in one of those categories, I replace it with another of the same. That way I never have too many time-consuming games open at a time. That's also why I don't mind starting a new 60+ hour game... Cause I know that it will likely take me months to finish, but also that I'll play shorter games in parallel. 

 

I have Hollow Knight waiting on my console since almost half a year though, and I just don't get to it.. It took me forever to finish RDR2, and now with Sekiro coming out this Friday it will need to wait a bit longer ?

 

 

9 hours ago, Cassylvania said:

On the other hand, a 60+ hour game is a huge commitment, and it's even worse when that game is just one of many in a long-running series. It took me until my 30s to even play a Kingdom Hearts or Resident Evil game because of this. I doubt I'll ever get to Assassin's Creed.

 

I'm in the same boat, but with the difference that I don't think I'll ever play a Kingdom Hearts or AC game, ever. Same with the Batman games, the Yakuza series, etc...

There are just so many different games and only limited time, so instead of trying out everything I try to play what interests me most. I used to only play Final Fantasy and other RPGs (Legend of Dragoon... does anyone know this one?), then with the PS4 and access to digital games I started to discover other genres that I love today. But I won't play a series only because of great reviews if I'm otherwise not interested. That's why my Backlog is so small, I guess. 

 

Maybe I'll play RE VII now that I have VR, though ?

Edited by Arcesus7
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I made the mistake of buying too many games at once thanks to Playstation Flash Sales and just doing a little impulse buying. Problem is now I don't have as much time as I used to to play.

 

One of the reasons I've specifically avoided any of the Final Fantasy games and such games as Kingdom Come Deliverance. Final Fantasy is part of a very long series which I felt @Cassylvania helped make mention. It would take me ages to get through all of those games since I strongly prefer to play a series chronologically.

 

Metal Gear Solid alone is going to take forever. But it'll be interesting.

Edited by Spaz
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I have a hard time starting a game only if that game is part of a trilogy/quadrilogy/whatever saga Assassin's Creed is.

For example if I play a stand alone game ( say Horizon Zero Dawn) I don't really have a hard time getting into it even if I know it will be a huge game. 

But if I start a game that is part of a series where I know that I can't relax until I finished every game in the series, DMC and Witcher 3 being one example, I usually either postpone it or finish some minor games until I attempt the collection, thus having a hard time starting the specific game. So yeah in conclusion it's hard to start a series of games.

Special mentions to Assassin's creed where I have a whiteboard tracking every single one,so many goddamn games and Nier because my dumbass needs to play those shitty drakengard games too on an emulator or something.

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5 hours ago, coldsphinx93 said:

I usually have a hard time starting games, thinking I should finish the ones I already got going. But recently I was in a rut not wanting to play anything I had downloaded and when that happens I find I have to delete everything and find something completely different to play. I did that the other day and only have Agents of Mayhem downloaded now. I played it for the first time today and I'm finding the aiming is really weird. But now that I have no choice but to play the one game, I find not having the option to play anything else helps get me into a game because I know I either have to finish it before downloading anything else, or at least a decent amount of time has to elapse and I'm free to download one more game. It's dumb but it helps me find games I actually want to play and gets me out of my rut.

 

It's not dumb at all. I'm sorta the same in terms of starting new games and feeling anxious about finishing the old ones. Gonna try your solution of only keeping one game installed, or at least only the games I have already started. Thanks for the tip!

Edited by SinisterPledge
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With me it's switching to a new game once you have really enjoyed and sunk multiple hours into a game and have completed it.

 

Don't know why but it's like nothing fits, and even though i eventually get into it, i need at least a week where i play per bouts of 20min or not at all. Kinda like game detox...

 

I guess u can compare it to having a new gf after a hefty breakup if that makes any sense. Exciting and all, but just doesn't feel like home, till it does again ?

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I don't have a hard time starting new games. I have a hard time coming back to games I have already started but then got engrossed by another game, and I'm like "I'll come back to it later. I'll come back to it later...." but then end up playing all kinds of games and eventually get back to them several months later lol

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It takes me a while to adjust to a new game yes, I think this comes with the territory if you're a completionist and the game is either difficult or time consuming.

 

If a game takes 50 hours to platinum and I only play that game it will take around a month for me to complete. In order to get 100% you have to get absorbed in the game and understand it.

 

When the final trophy pops and it's all over it's hard to just switch off. I think that's the same for anything you invest a lot of time in.

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I don't have a problem starting a new game if it's one that I really want to play or have been looking forward to, all other factors be damned.. Just any random game though and I end up with a mental pros and cons list before I decide to start it. With work and family I feel like I need to try to make my game time worth it for the most part.

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