Yahtzee is on several records saying he wishes Silent Hill would just die and that a new surreal horror IP should be made, and I agree with him. I'm personally sick and tired of media companies dragging the corpses of a handful of franchises around for generations in general.
what's really tough is that the remakes often are not equivalent to the original games, instead of putting the original in modern platforms for preservations sake, now there are two versions you wont be able to play in another 10 or 20 years.
In the best world, more studios like Nightdive would exist, and big publishers would be more open to lend them the ip in order to remaster and bring back classic games to modern systems for new generations, while the original creators can either try something new with the IP, or move on entirely. Unfortunately, IP is king these days, and it is baffling to me how badly certain franchises like Silent Hill have been treated (those god-awful remasters), yet how unwilling Konami and others like it are to lend their IP to proven talent outside themselves. Its almost like they have the dogma of 'Nobody will ruin our franchises but ourselves.'
My confession: Anymore when a game stops being "fun," I break out cheat engine. Maybe I'll turn the game speed to 5x because travel times feel slow (sunless sea). Maybe I'll just max out my currency (Hades). Sometimes the game becomes fun again if you take out the busywork and padding so you can focus on what's left.
kinda wonder how you're able to just speed the game up on a whim with Cheat Engine without any prior knowledge on how you're specifically supposed to do it for that game. or editing the currency
@@TarlukLegion There's literally a button called "speedhack" that makes the game run in fastforward or slow motion. For stuff like currency either you download a table from someone else or do a search for your gold, buy an item, then refine for the new value, repeat. This works for most games but some games can store the variable indirectly which makes it more complicated.
@@TarlukLegion it’s not that hard when you learn how to use cheat engine, a lot of game put those modifiers in similar locations. Money is super easy you just look at how much you have search for that number, earn some more money then do its search and compare to look at any number that switched between those 2 variables and you have the code for money ( I don’t remember off the top of my head what the actual function is called)
I used to make sure to finish every movie, book and game so I could have an educated opinion on something. However, as you get older and realize how many movies, books and games are out there, I have no problem dropping something that's not engaging me. It most likely wasn't worth finishing anyway.
Some things aren't even meant to be finished! House of leaves is a piece of ergodic literature, where ergodic pieces are meant to be difficult to progress
Never experienced it, not even for amazing games. Never finished BG3, or the studio 'prequels' any of the divinities, never finished the DLC to witcher 3, and I loved these games immensely I think for me its actually just not wanting the 'story to end' to to speak.
I think it's different for me, a person whose hobby is gaming, and a reviewer. I *do not* think either needs to finish a game, but I do expect the professional talking about the game to put more time/effort in than I would before they quit. I think it's less about the number of hours or percentage and more about being able to explain to the audience *why* they didn't finish the game. The reason I think this for games journalists is because there's a bit of responsibility that comes with the territory. If Yahtzee says he didn't finish a game because it was terrible, that could have some kind of measurable impact on sales, people's jobs, etc. so I'd like for him to give the people who worked on the game the respect of at least making it far enough into the game where he explains *why* it wasn't worth finishing. Yahtzee generally does well at explaining his thoughts, but I was just using him as an example of a "reviewer" generally.
I am similar to Marty: When I roll credits my motivation to play the game usually falls off a cliff. That's why even in an infinite game like Factorio I prefer the mods that delay the "Game Complete" notification even though I could scale up afterward. I *could* but I *won't* .
So I LOVE yakuza games, but those things are dense. And while I love running around, doing sidequest, some of the mini games, I will inevitably hit the saturation point where I’m like “ok, I’m done, I wanna beat the game now.” And when I hit credits in a Yakuza game, I rarely come back afterwords. I may with Infinite Wealth, I’m really loving it and I’m not super excited to start another game yet, but yeah. Truth is, I usually have done everything I wanted to do before I hit credits, so once I hit credits, I can stop.
It's funny that you guys say that Yahtzee is done with a game when he starts a Full Ram on it, but on several occasions he's mentioned at least on the games he has compliments for, that he'll look forward to returning to a game after the review. He's outright mentioned how much he was happy to return to A Hat In Time for all its faults.
17:00 I'm with Marty. I think ppl in general need to be more comfortable with saying "this didn't do it for me" vs "this is objectively bad". Using the Hades example, if you played the game, finally beat Hades, and decided you wanted out, I don't see any issue with that. Not every game is going to appeal to everyone for a whole variety of reasons, many of which are about personal taste. But if beat dad 1 time and then say "this is a bad/mediocre game", then I have an issue, because now you're trying to evaluate the quality of the game in its entirety when you haven't experienced half of what the game is trying to do.
Excellent point. I feel many critique and review channels are guilty of this: blaming the game for things that, for all intent and purposes, aren't necessarily bad within the game. I'd rather have someone saying "I don't think this is great" vs saying "this is bad".
Dragon Quest XI was weird in that the credits were kind of a fakeout because they rolled halfway through the game. I almost didn’t go back and play the second half.
I very rarely finish games anymore. Either because I get distracted by something else or because I'm not getting the same dopamine hit from it anymore. I think a lot of the games I've played that I've liked and wanted to complete, don't handle their pacing very well. I used to finish every Assassin's Creed game, that stopped with Origin's when I was about 30 hours in and suddenly the area I needed to be in was locked behind a difficulty spike and the game is just telling you to deal with the spike or grind. A lot of games once you've done the loop enough times don't seem to have much new to offer. I really enjoyed Cult of the Lamb, but I never did the last zone because at that point I had been through the loop 15+ times and it wasn't changing. My cult was maxed out, my powers were maxed out, I had so many followers it was becoming game breaking, without me ever really trying to farm for followers. If I can't see the full loop of a game within the first few hours I tend to bounce off it, and if the loop isn't fun long term, and isn't getting exponentially bigger/faster/more bombastic, it won't hold me long enough to complete it.
I’m with Marty, especially regarding Final Fantasy after XII. Sadly, I don’t have time to play all the games I love, much less those that I don’t. If it isn’t great enough to make me think about playing it when I’m not, I just forget about it. There are 40 years of amazing games I haven’t played, much less finished.
I couldn't agree more with the panel here. If a game isn't resonating and instead giving you an emotional response you don't want (i.e it's making you bored or upset), then move on. Life's too short to feel an obligation to feel the need to play a videogame you start all the way to the end.
Ironically, your discussion pushed me to realize I don’t actually have to finish every podcast I start. Pretty quickly, I had an idea of the conversation, and knew how I felt about it, and think I got my fill. Coincidentally, I listened to another couple of minutes, as I finished washing dishes, and it juuuust got to the interesting change (16:51 or so when the dishes were done) in tone about how, no, some games you aren’t really judging the experience if you cut out too early. Now I feel like I have to come back and listen to some more. 😜
Even with hundreds of unfinished games, I always put in the effort to see a game through to the end. Sometimes what comes towards the end is what finally makes something click for me, or sometimes that's where it all falls apart and that makes for a good conversation piece. Even if I didn't like it, seeing the credits roll erases that niggling feeling of having never beaten something so if need be I can definitively put it down and not have to touch it again.
And on the topic of achievements and 100% completion, I only do it if it falls under two categories; -I enjoy the game enough that I'll put in the effort, even if some of the stipulations are ridiculously hard or grindy -It's an easy enough game to finish everything I might as well while I'm at it, in relation to my mindset of being able to definitively put something down for good.
Last year I did a retro JRPG project where I went back and finished games from 20+ years ago that I bought back in the day and stopped partway through because I "wasn't having fun". You know what happens? My brain gets mad at me for not finishing those games, especially because they're "classics". Imagine your brain nagging you, occasionally but persistently, for years and years over video games. So I finally decided I'd had enough of that and sat down with guides and played them for an hour each day, enough to get something done but not enough to get bored, frustrated, or burned out. And now all those games are done. 12 classic JRPG's, that I never have to think about again. Some of them *were* fun though. Some. In fact, I was ahead of schedule that I then went back and finished some old NES/SNES action games that I'd also dropped. Ninja Gaiden, Castlevania 3, DKC3, etc. And now those are done! Overall it was a great year for retro redemption and I'm glad I committed to it.
I know a number of people who play far too many games at the same time and can count the number of games they have finished on one hand. It's the opposite problem where they stretch themselves thin so they lose interest super quick when they can't remember what happened in each game and quit. Personally, I play maybe 1 or 2 single player games at most, so I can focus on them. It makes it easier to actually enjoy them, but also notice when I'm actually not enjoying them, rather than losing interest from information overload. Sometimes that means dropping a game because I'm simply not interested in a kind of experience at the time and may be later. I have gone back to games I dropped because I knew what they were and was in the mood for them. Fundamentally, I play a game when I have capacity and am interested in them. I drop them when I lose interest, sometimes forever, but other times to pick up when I am interested.
With Elden Ring I was having so much fun just exploring the world and its secrets. But then after exploring almost everything and went to the designed final areas to finally beat the game it became a chore
I have ADHD so a game is over when it leaves my awareness. It can happen for a lot of reasons. The game is narrative driven and it ends (TLoU, RDR2), the game’s loop stops being fun, I’m too scared to keep playing, or the game I’d been waiting for comes out. Some games I go back to but I don’t play them in the same way. I use them as a place to go while I listen to a podcast. Example, building houses in The Sims while I listen to you chaps 😊
Also, buying a game on impulse then dropping it after a little bit… then personally, returning to my evergreen favorites, Monster Hunter and the Souls games. These just hit my brain in the most appealing way so I don’t want to go to other stuff.
Having recently played Nier: Automata yeah, I felt all of that. I "finished" the game and was like "Well this was stupid what was the hype about?" When it became clear "beating the game twice" actually started the game proper that's when the hype became real. However still a baffling choice to roll credits on what is essentially a game's beginning.
I loved Death Stranding because of the circumstances I played it in. It was during the pandemic lockdown and (among some other personal stuff) it just clicked. Biggest factor was the big amount of free time I had at the time. Sadly, I cannot get that much excited for Death Stranding 2 for time is something I lack at the moment.
You guys need to get someone that plays total war, civilization, rim world, etc. second wind seems to be lacking on strathegh and management coverage. Maybe reach out to codybonds or partyelite.
Love the rec for Daryl Talks Games. He started out talking about the psychology in games, but had since branched out. Not only are his video fascinating and educational. But the more you watch, you more you realize the guy is a big goof and I love his random quips.
I bounce around between tons of stuff all at once. I often take forever to finish any given game but get more enjoyment out of sampling lots of different stuff at a time. It's pretty rare a game will grip me start to finish but it's not impossible. Some that managed that would be things like Half Life series, Portal series, Baldur's Gate 3, and Outer Wilds.
I also play a lot of games at once and bounce around them. There aren't that many games, comparatively speaking, that I've seen the end credits roll on. I really have to get sucked in and find it a bit special for that to happen. It also depends on how hard I go into a game and if I burn out on it as a result.
I have Marty's issue with needing the right sense of mind to play a game. I keep putting off The Witcher series because I want to play all 3 games and it'll be a time sink. Same with Cyberpunk.
I find it nice and refreshing when there's a long game I'm into. Most of what I play are short games so it's not the short games that are a refreshing change of pace.
Bought the pitman collection because people ahve raved about it for years. 3 hours in I dropped it. Idc about the cost if I'm done I'm done. Movies are different. If you told me to watch every movie by an actor and I didn't like his roles I wouldn't finish all of them. But 20 more mins or an hour is different than dozens of hours trying to play a game.
At 1:11:10, I have a story to share that relates. When I first started dating my wife, I introduced her to Plants vs Zombie, helped set it up on her laptop. She starts playing it thinks it's fun. This is before we started living together, and she gets home on a Friday after a week of shit happening with her work, pours herself a glass of red, and starts playing PvZ. Orders pizza delivery, drinks a little more, really getting into PvZ. Puts Rage on the TV (Aussie music show that's used to start at midnight) as background. Continues playing PvZ. Notices the sun coming up and shining its bright light into the house, realised what she's done and was embarrassed about the lack of self control to go to sleep at a sensible time.
A great discussion. As a child it was always just about the fun, finishing games was never a big deal to me, but now I sense theres a structural demand to complete, to not leave things undone. Also maybe a FOMO element now that everyone's opinion is so much more available to see and read. I feel the resistance against just letting the game go sometimes though I wish I didn't.
I play a game, get about halfway through, and then drop it...but then come back after 6 months and then finish it. OR, I'll go back to it and not finish it, but I rarely, if ever, finish a game even if I really enjoy it. I'm ALMOST done with Super Mario Wonder and I've loved it. That might be the first game I finish for all of 2023. Being an adult with other responsibilities and hobbies/things you want to do can be a bastard.
I definitely bounce around with games. I've started loads and while I've finished many, I also have a pile of unfinished ones. They're not even bad games either. I know that once I can dive back in I can have fun, but something stops me every time and I don't know what it is. It does also depend on the length of the game. I got into BG3 and I'm only 5 hours in (made it into the Grove in Act 1) and I want to dive back into it and I'm not too sure why I tend to gravitate toward a different game every time I turn on the console. Bloodborne is the first FromSoftware game I saw the end credits roll on, shortly followed by Dark Souls 3. Then it was Armored Core VI. Now, I'd started Elden Ring the day it came out and I spent a good 40 hours in the game before I burned out. And man, did I burn out hard. I didn't touch Elden Ring for nearly a year, I swear. Then November 2023 happened and I broke my left elbow. I was out of work for 10 weeks as I had to basically bother the stupid workers' comp insurance nearly daily to get them to get their act together. Anyway, I had a lot of down time and I could actually still use a controller. That's when I got back into Elden Ring. However, my approach changed. When I'd burned out I'd been focusing on trying to do everything. All the catacombs, caverns, and other optional stuff. It got overwhelming and I also felt a bit bored. Going back in I made it so that I wouldn't open the game unless I had a solid plan of where I was going and what I was doing. That's what worked. I didn't bother trying to find all the catacombs and other optional stuff so much. That approach is what let me complete all of Ranni's stuff, all of Fia's stuff, Volcano Manor, and everything. It let me get to Mohg very early via Varre and defeat him while being at just level 78 (I think 100+ is recommended for Mohg). I've defeated Horah Loux and am now just doing some random stuff as I wait on the DLC, because I know better than to go into a FromSoftware DLC in NG+, lol. All that said, Elden Ring still doesn't feel as good as the others. I got sucked into AC6 and got through all 3 runs for all 3 endings and S-ranked a good many missions in the space of just a month or so. I adore the world of Bloodborne and the Souls games. It plays to their strengths with those games not being fully open-world. With ER I feel that FromSoftware made their game too big. Too many optional places feel the same after a while. The Cavern of the Forlorn is one of the few later places that felt really unique to me and I love how different it was compared to most of the caverns. ER should have, imo, been either a smaller open-world game or not fully open-world at home. The good bits are nearly all the legacy dungeons: Stormveil, Volcano Manor, Farum Azula, etc. Put it this way: I want to do NG+ runs in Bloodborne and DS3 to get the other endings, but I'm not too fussed about getting all the endings for Elden Ring. I'll get the DLC, especially if it's going to involve Miquella and I did like the Haligtree and Elphael (well, the first half of Elphael can get fucked, but the second half was fine), but right now I don't have a burning urge to go to NG+ and to do various things again to do the other endings.
Someone brought up Rimworld so I'll say that swallowing my pride and turning permadeath off is what saved that game for me. It doesn't matter if you're not playing the way Tynan intended if you never even see half the game
If I'm investing more than 100 hrs into one playthrough I will not be a completionist and I'll play it over 6-12 months in small chunks (Elden Ring, P5, Witcher 3, Like a Dragon etc). But for a 20-40 hr experience I'm happy to do all the extra content because it is more generous with my time just to get through the story.
I agree with the idea that, if I'm not having fun, then I'm done with the game. For me, the real dilemma occurs when I stop playing I've been enjoying for a while for a separate reason (sudden business, moving, etc.) and then struggle with whether to resume the game or not, as resuming often means re-learning the game while being midway through it.
Yeah, same. I'll keep going at a game and then I might get sidetracked by other stuff going on. Then when I go back to the game I sometimes realize that I wasn't really having that much fun. I got frustrated by a side quest in Horizon Zero Dawn, so I took a break for a while. A month or two went by and I realized that I wasn't actually having that much fun with it, so I uninstalled it and don't have the desire to continue. The beginning was great, but once Aloy got out in the world that's when I started to feel both bored and overwhelmed by it. It makes me sad when that happens, especially if I'd been genuinely enjoying myself before that point.
@@SolaScientia I don't think I've ever come back to a game and realized I wasn't enjoying it; for me, the struggle is with coming back to a game in the first place. For instance, my first playthrough of Persona 5 Royal was in 2023, and I got really far in the game before stopping sometime shortly before December. I struggled with returning to it in December simply because of how far in the game I was; I knew I was not going to start from scratch, but it also felt odd revisiting it after months. Incidentally, I did finish the game, but I did so after also playing the Mario RPG remake.
@@matthewmuir8884 I get that too. I'm not sure if it's the same as what you describe, but I've been enjoying BG3 even with just 5 hours in the game so far, and yet I'm struggling to dive back in even after just a couple weeks away from it now. I'm not exactly sure what's keeping me from selecting it when I look at the games I might want to play. Just now I had an hour or so to kill before tending to my cats and I opted to run around Elden Ring doing all the Ever Gaols I'd thus far ignored. I'm waiting on the DLC to drop before I actually fight Radagon and Elden Beast since I know better than go into a FromSoftware DLC in NG+. I don't really know why I decided to do that instead of hopping into BG3 and working on helping the Grove out. I had about a year off from Elden Ring, because I burned out hard on it. I did too much at one time with it and then felt overwhelmed with all there was to do. I ended up finishing Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3, and then I got sucked into Armored Core VI and that game is some of the most fun I've had in a very long time in a game. I went back to Elden Ring because 1) it's a FromSoftware game and I tend to be more lenient with them, and 2) I had a plan for how to tackle what I had left to do. It worked. Do I like it as much as their other games? No, I put it fairly far down my list of the games they've done that I like, but it's still a good game and I'm very interested in the DLC.
It depends if theres still some things that are making me interested in the game versus the things that are not making me interested in the game. If the latter beats the former, then I try to push things further to see if I missed something and/or a certain "game logic" in the game. And after that, if the "first impression" is confirmed that the game is a complete waste of time and should be avoided... then I just quit.
Re: Spoilers. I wish in Thor: Ragnarok that I didn't know who the Grand Master's "champion" was befornit was revealed in the movie. That moment would have been so amazing.
I'm in the camp that usually doesm't complete games even if I like them. I'm also in the terrible place of getting to 90% complete (usually stopping at the final dungeon) and then dropping the game. My problem is trophies. I get burnt out going for platinums, which is why I prefer Nintendo games because they don't have trophies. On the other hand, I usually get games on PS5 instead of Switch because PS5 loads faster and has more memory.
I didn't vibe with Dark Souls when I first played it. I went back after a few months and restarted it and unlocked my favorite series and developer. I try to leave room when considering retrying a game is if there was something I wasn't understanding making the experience feel worse than it was.
I derive the most enjoyment when I roll credits and beat the game. Same thing when I movie. That feeling of "wow that was a good time" allows me to move on. However, if I have to quit halfway through because I do not like it, I feel this disappointment of having wasted my time. Therefore, I am emotionally punished for playing a game I ended up not liking. This turns into a cycle of wanting to complete everything I start because I don't want to experience the disappointment of dropping the game.
Fantastic discussion. It depends on the individual and its biases towards the game in question. Even though I do prefer DS3 and Sekiro over DS1, none of them made exploration so compelling to nearly complete as that game. Elden Ring is the best base game content in the Soulsborne series, and I'm satisfied mostly doing the endgame bosses nowadays, since I don't have to grind in dungeons like other RPGs. It will mostly depend on the individual.
Game not fun - pull the rip cord a few hours in Game is decent - play to end credits, and maybe some epilogue/DLC stuff if it has it Game I absolutely love - try for 100%/all trophies Live service - stop when it gets boring
I played Shin Megami Tensei IV a few years ago, and it wasn't for me. I was getting bored and the game felt tedious, but I didn't want to stop midway. Well, lucky for me, I hit a fake ending somewhere near the real ending, and it rolled the credits. I said to myself "Well, that counts to me". And I never looked back.
I wasn't aware there were people who finish games they aren't enjoying. I don't really rank games, I more or less group them into tiers. Top tier games are games I'm sad they're over. Good games are games I finished and thought it was worthwhile. Mediocre games I might finish or might not, if I don't I don't think I missed anything special. Bad games are games I started but did not finish
@@scrittle Gollum ranks I've heard of the issues and didn't even want to try. That's a tier that's locked in the basement. And yeah thinking it over completionists would be most vulnerable to 100%ing a game they don't even like.
I have a Platinum Trophy and most DLC completed for AC Valhalla. I have somehow not been broken yet. That said, I don't play this series day one or anywhere close. I played Valhalla in Dec and Jan of 2022/2023, since that's when they finally released the final content update. The only DLC that I passed on was for the free update roguelike campaign. I have a Platinum Trophy for all but one game in this cursed series: Brotherhood. The online trophies were just too much for me.
My power flickered once -- half my aquarium bluetooth LED lights switched to "night mode", half didn't, so it wasn't even fully out but I still had to open my app to get the ones stuck at night back synced so my pet nocturnal frogs didn't think it was their "morning" Twas enough power outages that AlertSF send out an alert specific to the outages.
I used to finish nearly everything, but nowadays there's so much great media and my time is much more limited. When I decide to drop something depends on how deep in I am before I start to bounce off it... not necessarily because of any sunk cost, but more because the media developed a bit of trust from me. I might drop a TV series after ep 3 if I just never started to gel with it, but I also will push through a game I'm not enjoying overall as long as it was "good" previously and there's ~~something~~ about it I still like...at least until it's lost that trust it built and it appears obvious that it's not getting better.
I have three young boys and I got them Mario Wonder. They got to credits. They did all the easy wonder seeds and bought whatever else they needed to beat Bowser. Thankfully, Nintendo doesn't hide its secret ending very well, and so now they're working on that (and the levels are hard to get to that secret ending.) So, that's the other question: not taking away from games like Neir or anything, what if you can get to credits SUPER easily and not really engage with 3/4 of the game, is that really finishing it? I'm looking at you, most of modern Mario games.
There's so many books I've started that never finished. Games, I complete them all because I know I'll 100% love them before I start them (opposite to Marty).
The sad part of listening about sunk cost fallacy and about whether or not to continue....I'm 10 minutes into a 1 and a half hour podcast and I don't know if I can stomach anymore. 😆 I did have a bad day though, so I'm hoping to come back to it.
In reference to Marty's comments at 15:50, the Does Hades change THAT MUCH after the first time you defeat him? I've got like, 40 hours in the game and have only managed one clear (lucked out with a trait that regens health slowly so I just danced around him that battle), but I'm hard-pressed to imagine the game's dynamic changing, especially after several runs in the aftermath. Is that really not enough for an honest review of the game?
I've started wrangling my growing list of "current games" by limiting myself to 10 games at a time. I cannot buy or start a game unless there's room on the list. And a game doesn't drop off the list until I finish it or decide "that's it, I am abandoning this." Forcing myself to make that conscious decision instead of just kind of drifting away is so helpful.
I had this experience with Starfield. Initially had no intention of buying it but I was between games, bored and a friend talked me into it. Beat the main game and concluded that the game was buggy, mediocre and dull. Was told the value was in the faction quests so beat all those and my opinion didn't change. Was then told that the fun was in exploration. That is absolutely hilarious on hindsight but whatever, I got 100% achievements and still thought the game was naff. 100 hours and I don't feel I even got a few hours worth of fun out of it for my £70.
The more I like a game, the less likely I am to pull the trigger on the final sequence in it that takes it to its Epilogue. I made that mistake once with Mechwarrior Mercenaries and nothing about the "ending" could even begin to measure up to the full conflict involving Tukayyid and the rest of BattleTech's true lore during that time period
sometimes i'll throw it on easy mode and blow through it if i'm not feeling it. i mean, i don't have to be grinding it, but i do want to finish the story, if it's worth finishing
If I find I stop enjoying a game as much, I'll just stop doing sidequest stuff/extra content and just power through the rest of the main story. Usually doesn't take that long, and it gives me a sense of completion. Closes the chapter on that game.
yeah if game sucks i'll just remember that it did and remember not to spend my money on future games from the same devs, its all you can really do, i have almost 600 games on steam not about to waste my life playing things i regret buying.
Omori is a game that is very long and honestly the most of it is filler, but the ending is so phenomenal, no one in the Omori community had not played this forty hour game to the end because the end is what gives context to the entire story, and it makes it the life changing game that it is. No piece of art or media has ever come close to affecting me like Omori has, the slog is worth every second.
I actually screwed myself over when I decided to give up on Omori. I liked it somewhat, but the random ecounters, boring sidequests and the tension of waiting for the game to turn into horror again caused me to drop it. Well fuck me, it turned out that Omori has some immense highs later on - it's just that the way there is long and repetitive. And now here I am, playing Bug Fables, Hat in Time and NieR and not enjoying any of them... But the fear of missing out is real now. It's not fun, but there are only so many games out there...
Marty made a great point about the journey. For some reason, maybe it's because I used to live in DC, The Division 2 had just a wonderful campaign I thought. I heard the endgame sucked royally, but I never play endgame for much of anything. But man, that's one I feel people missed out on because of all the people railing the atrocious endgame. The journey was great- but gamers didn't see a journey. They saw an obstacle.
I never fell into this fallacy when it comes to entertainment. For work and hobbies, sure, all the time. But no way I'm playing a game I'm not enjoying. For movies I do usually finish watching them, unless it's really really bad, but I don't necessarily watch sequels. For example, I've seen every star wars movie until I didn't. Didn't watch Solo, I didn't even go to watch The Last Jedi. Not out of spite or anything, I have no strong feelings about it. But why waste a couple of hours with a piece of entertainment I don't think will work for me.
On my third attempt with death stranding and I'm adamant i will finish it this time. I have a feeling it will be like marmite, ill keep eating it till i enjoy it.
I will play a game till I feel like i've done everything I want to do in it. I have a handful of games that i've 100%'d. It has to be fun to do that challenges. Last game I 100%'d was Bomb Rush Cyberfunk,.
I don't finish a lot of games, but any game with a satisfying enough gameplay loop that I'll play it all the way through to the credits is something I'll almost definitely replay. Recent games that come to mind are Inscryption and Cassette Beasts
Honestly, the best thing I did was switch to pc gaming. Achievements ruins video games for me cuz I'm a completionist, however I realized I was just doing chores and not having fun. It's bad having ADHD with gaming, then add arbitrary challenges with a number/trophy score
Its only a waste of time when your data gets deleted. Thus ive wasted 150 hrs first skyrim playthrough in 2014. Never finished it after i did that to myself. Edit: i forced myself to beat yakuza 3-5 cuz i wanted to play 6 and i wanted to beat all of yakuza. This was back in 2021 when like a dragon and judgement just came out. I beat 1-6 plus judgement in a single yr. I recommend never doing that cuz i hated yakuza for a bit there. Now i need to beat all the like a dragon games and the samurai one and lost judgement. Not a completionist but yeah. Also vahalla killed what love i have for AC cant even get through mirage now and no i didnt beat vahalla i got maybe a third of the way through.
I grew up poor (and still kinda am) so I am very selective with the games I buy. 100%ing the games I did get was a big part of my childhood because I couldn't do much else. If I buy a game nowadays, I will at least finish it (roll credits once). If I truly like a game I bought, I will still try to 100% it. Much like Yahtzee, I'm mostly interested in narrative games and if you tell me a good enough story, I can excuse a lot. I consider a game done when it has told me the whole story or when I can wring no more enjoyment out of the gameplay.
wow I can't believe yall took 2 hours to say game media cant possibly be expected to finish a game before reviewing it /s (split that $20 here Nick) great discussion, TLDR is when do you stop playing? When you stop having fun.
I played an hour of Ghostwire: Tokyo and expressed my opinions in a steam review. I'm now half-way through it (was free on Epic Games) and everything I said in my review still holds. Ghosts are cool, setting is disappointing, gameplay is good but held back, protagonist is awful, story is awful, performance is inconsistent (published by Bethesda).
I rarely feel the need to 100% a game because most of them are such a bore (I couldn't be bothered replaying some of them just to get some silly achievement, fuck P5 and the dating trophies, it's the only thing forcing you to replay it), but lately I've had a lot fun 100%ing Lies of P. I had even more fun breezing through my NG+, the mobs and exploration were suddenly safe and easy, but the bosses were hard as nails. I got the hang of the parrying system and everything clicked, I had such a blast with certain late game bosses I even tried to bully them into endless parrying just to train myself. Once I got my platinum trophy I felt like I still wanted more of it. I guess 100%ing it was just an excuse to play more of it and not the other way round, that's how you know it's a good game.
I stop playing if I get really put off or bored. Life is to short. Played Dragon age 1 and 2. Started Dragon Age Inquisition and was bored and then I got a horse and just turned of the game. I don't have time for this.
I think it;'d be better if reviewers don't feel the pressure to "finish" games in their allocated review time, as it puts pressure on them and may reduce enjoyment in longer games and thus reduce review scores and give a review that reflects that pressure more then the game itself. I'm enjoying AC Valahalla atm (outside a few bugs), I don't think reviews I've seen reflect it well. The "mysteries" are so cute, I can get high on mushrooms and follow seals around! There's a babe ruth knockoff! People are complaining about these mysteries?! Different strokes for different folk. Really not a good choice for people that want to 100% but don't enjoy some of the activities in the game. Ignore the parts of games that don't enjoy.
I think if youre going to be a games critic then you should absolutely finish your games. My opinions on goty games like Elden Ring and BOYW chsnged a lot by the time i beat them. The first 30 hours were absolutely amazing 10/10 experience, then by hour 50 the cracks and flaws start to become more apparant. Also, the story could have some plot points that only start making sense by act 2 or 3. So its kinda hard to judge unless you know the entirety of it. I just dont think we can argue games as art if we cant even be bothered to experience what it is. Especially in a medium where an experience can be flipped on its head by the end. If you just see something you bought as just aome product though, then yeah, drop that shit as soon as you stop having fun. I know I have. Ive definitely had games where i played for a few hours and called it good, but i wouldnt be critquing it anytime soon.
i gave up on that russian robot fps... i cant even remember the name, played it up to the train crash... got so bored with the world and many crashes. thank god for gamepass
The argument that some people make being, 'unless you finish a game you cant review' it or that the review is somehow 'less valid' is bull shit. It doesnt take 20, 40, 60, 100 hours to know what you have to say about a game. And if your 20 hours in and hating the game but it gets good at the 40 hour mark that's also bullshit. A reviewer should only play a game for as long as they have the generosity to give it to make it's case. If it doesnt make it's case in as long as the review has, thats A FAULT OF THE GAME not a fault of the reviewer. I understand there are genre's that require a significant time commitment, and if people can only respect reviews from people who put in that time they should not expect a reviewer to commit that time but rather find reviewers that already do.
If the waiting room for being allowed to talk about Nier Automata is finishing it 4 times, im glad to not be part of the conversation. The gameplay just didnt click with me at all in the first playthrough
I'll say it: neir automata sucked. Played the whole thing on max difficulty did every side quest i noticed. Even tried eating the fish. To borrow a phrase yahtzee employs. That game was so up itself i couldn't tell if i was looking into its mouth or balloon knot.
Nah, bioshock 2 isn't that great, It's obviously just an opinion, but 1st just flows better. 2nd kinda is meant to impress you. It's trying too hard and yet not actually doing anything significant/fun with the improvements.
Yahtzee is on several records saying he wishes Silent Hill would just die and that a new surreal horror IP should be made, and I agree with him. I'm personally sick and tired of media companies dragging the corpses of a handful of franchises around for generations in general.
What sucks is how tough it is to play the original games now
what's really tough is that the remakes often are not equivalent to the original games, instead of putting the original in modern platforms for preservations sake, now there are two versions you wont be able to play in another 10 or 20 years.
In the best world, more studios like Nightdive would exist, and big publishers would be more open to lend them the ip in order to remaster and bring back classic games to modern systems for new generations, while the original creators can either try something new with the IP, or move on entirely. Unfortunately, IP is king these days, and it is baffling to me how badly certain franchises like Silent Hill have been treated (those god-awful remasters), yet how unwilling Konami and others like it are to lend their IP to proven talent outside themselves. Its almost like they have the dogma of 'Nobody will ruin our franchises but ourselves.'
Unfortunately we are outnumbered by the people who are more than happy to buy a game off the franchise name alone, and publishers know that.
My confession: Anymore when a game stops being "fun," I break out cheat engine. Maybe I'll turn the game speed to 5x because travel times feel slow (sunless sea). Maybe I'll just max out my currency (Hades). Sometimes the game becomes fun again if you take out the busywork and padding so you can focus on what's left.
This is a great way to get your money's worth, respect.
kinda wonder how you're able to just speed the game up on a whim with Cheat Engine without any prior knowledge on how you're specifically supposed to do it for that game. or editing the currency
@@TarlukLegion There's literally a button called "speedhack" that makes the game run in fastforward or slow motion. For stuff like currency either you download a table from someone else or do a search for your gold, buy an item, then refine for the new value, repeat. This works for most games but some games can store the variable indirectly which makes it more complicated.
@@TarlukLegion it’s not that hard when you learn how to use cheat engine, a lot of game put those modifiers in similar locations.
Money is super easy you just look at how much you have search for that number, earn some more money then do its search and compare to look at any number that switched between those 2 variables and you have the code for money ( I don’t remember off the top of my head what the actual function is called)
I used to make sure to finish every movie, book and game so I could have an educated opinion on something. However, as you get older and realize how many movies, books and games are out there, I have no problem dropping something that's not engaging me. It most likely wasn't worth finishing anyway.
Some things aren't even meant to be finished! House of leaves is a piece of ergodic literature, where ergodic pieces are meant to be difficult to progress
Never experienced it, not even for amazing games. Never finished BG3, or the studio 'prequels' any of the divinities, never finished the DLC to witcher 3, and I loved these games immensely I think for me its actually just not wanting the 'story to end' to to speak.
I think it's different for me, a person whose hobby is gaming, and a reviewer. I *do not* think either needs to finish a game, but I do expect the professional talking about the game to put more time/effort in than I would before they quit. I think it's less about the number of hours or percentage and more about being able to explain to the audience *why* they didn't finish the game.
The reason I think this for games journalists is because there's a bit of responsibility that comes with the territory. If Yahtzee says he didn't finish a game because it was terrible, that could have some kind of measurable impact on sales, people's jobs, etc. so I'd like for him to give the people who worked on the game the respect of at least making it far enough into the game where he explains *why* it wasn't worth finishing. Yahtzee generally does well at explaining his thoughts, but I was just using him as an example of a "reviewer" generally.
I am similar to Marty: When I roll credits my motivation to play the game usually falls off a cliff. That's why even in an infinite game like Factorio I prefer the mods that delay the "Game Complete" notification even though I could scale up afterward. I *could* but I *won't* .
So I LOVE yakuza games, but those things are dense. And while I love running around, doing sidequest, some of the mini games, I will inevitably hit the saturation point where I’m like “ok, I’m done, I wanna beat the game now.” And when I hit credits in a Yakuza game, I rarely come back afterwords. I may with Infinite Wealth, I’m really loving it and I’m not super excited to start another game yet, but yeah. Truth is, I usually have done everything I wanted to do before I hit credits, so once I hit credits, I can stop.
Exactly.
Also, while I have several Yakuza games left to experience, I would never play them back to back.
It's funny that you guys say that Yahtzee is done with a game when he starts a Full Ram on it, but on several occasions he's mentioned at least on the games he has compliments for, that he'll look forward to returning to a game after the review. He's outright mentioned how much he was happy to return to A Hat In Time for all its faults.
17:00 I'm with Marty. I think ppl in general need to be more comfortable with saying "this didn't do it for me" vs "this is objectively bad". Using the Hades example, if you played the game, finally beat Hades, and decided you wanted out, I don't see any issue with that. Not every game is going to appeal to everyone for a whole variety of reasons, many of which are about personal taste. But if beat dad 1 time and then say "this is a bad/mediocre game", then I have an issue, because now you're trying to evaluate the quality of the game in its entirety when you haven't experienced half of what the game is trying to do.
Excellent point. I feel many critique and review channels are guilty of this: blaming the game for things that, for all intent and purposes, aren't necessarily bad within the game. I'd rather have someone saying "I don't think this is great" vs saying "this is bad".
Dragon Quest XI was weird in that the credits were kind of a fakeout because they rolled halfway through the game. I almost didn’t go back and play the second half.
I very rarely finish games anymore. Either because I get distracted by something else or because I'm not getting the same dopamine hit from it anymore. I think a lot of the games I've played that I've liked and wanted to complete, don't handle their pacing very well.
I used to finish every Assassin's Creed game, that stopped with Origin's when I was about 30 hours in and suddenly the area I needed to be in was locked behind a difficulty spike and the game is just telling you to deal with the spike or grind.
A lot of games once you've done the loop enough times don't seem to have much new to offer. I really enjoyed Cult of the Lamb, but I never did the last zone because at that point I had been through the loop 15+ times and it wasn't changing. My cult was maxed out, my powers were maxed out, I had so many followers it was becoming game breaking, without me ever really trying to farm for followers.
If I can't see the full loop of a game within the first few hours I tend to bounce off it, and if the loop isn't fun long term, and isn't getting exponentially bigger/faster/more bombastic, it won't hold me long enough to complete it.
......getting this recommended me while tearing my hair out trying to do an Akumu run of Evil Within is definitely a sign
I’m with Marty, especially regarding Final Fantasy after XII. Sadly, I don’t have time to play all the games I love, much less those that I don’t. If it isn’t great enough to make me think about playing it when I’m not, I just forget about it. There are 40 years of amazing games I haven’t played, much less finished.
I couldn't agree more with the panel here. If a game isn't resonating and instead giving you an emotional response you don't want (i.e it's making you bored or upset), then move on. Life's too short to feel an obligation to feel the need to play a videogame you start all the way to the end.
Ironically, your discussion pushed me to realize I don’t actually have to finish every podcast I start. Pretty quickly, I had an idea of the conversation, and knew how I felt about it, and think I got my fill.
Coincidentally, I listened to another couple of minutes, as I finished washing dishes, and it juuuust got to the interesting change (16:51 or so when the dishes were done) in tone about how, no, some games you aren’t really judging the experience if you cut out too early.
Now I feel like I have to come back and listen to some more. 😜
Even with hundreds of unfinished games, I always put in the effort to see a game through to the end. Sometimes what comes towards the end is what finally makes something click for me, or sometimes that's where it all falls apart and that makes for a good conversation piece.
Even if I didn't like it, seeing the credits roll erases that niggling feeling of having never beaten something so if need be I can definitively put it down and not have to touch it again.
And on the topic of achievements and 100% completion, I only do it if it falls under two categories;
-I enjoy the game enough that I'll put in the effort, even if some of the stipulations are ridiculously hard or grindy
-It's an easy enough game to finish everything I might as well while I'm at it, in relation to my mindset of being able to definitively put something down for good.
Last year I did a retro JRPG project where I went back and finished games from 20+ years ago that I bought back in the day and stopped partway through because I "wasn't having fun". You know what happens? My brain gets mad at me for not finishing those games, especially because they're "classics". Imagine your brain nagging you, occasionally but persistently, for years and years over video games. So I finally decided I'd had enough of that and sat down with guides and played them for an hour each day, enough to get something done but not enough to get bored, frustrated, or burned out.
And now all those games are done. 12 classic JRPG's, that I never have to think about again. Some of them *were* fun though. Some.
In fact, I was ahead of schedule that I then went back and finished some old NES/SNES action games that I'd also dropped. Ninja Gaiden, Castlevania 3, DKC3, etc. And now those are done! Overall it was a great year for retro redemption and I'm glad I committed to it.
I know a number of people who play far too many games at the same time and can count the number of games they have finished on one hand. It's the opposite problem where they stretch themselves thin so they lose interest super quick when they can't remember what happened in each game and quit.
Personally, I play maybe 1 or 2 single player games at most, so I can focus on them. It makes it easier to actually enjoy them, but also notice when I'm actually not enjoying them, rather than losing interest from information overload. Sometimes that means dropping a game because I'm simply not interested in a kind of experience at the time and may be later. I have gone back to games I dropped because I knew what they were and was in the mood for them. Fundamentally, I play a game when I have capacity and am interested in them. I drop them when I lose interest, sometimes forever, but other times to pick up when I am interested.
With Elden Ring I was having so much fun just exploring the world and its secrets. But then after exploring almost everything and went to the designed final areas to finally beat the game it became a chore
It doesn't help that the final stretch of Elden Ring is so tedious.
I have ADHD so a game is over when it leaves my awareness. It can happen for a lot of reasons. The game is narrative driven and it ends (TLoU, RDR2), the game’s loop stops being fun, I’m too scared to keep playing, or the game I’d been waiting for comes out. Some games I go back to but I don’t play them in the same way. I use them as a place to go while I listen to a podcast. Example, building houses in The Sims while I listen to you chaps 😊
Also, buying a game on impulse then dropping it after a little bit… then personally, returning to my evergreen favorites, Monster Hunter and the Souls games. These just hit my brain in the most appealing way so I don’t want to go to other stuff.
Having recently played Nier: Automata yeah, I felt all of that.
I "finished" the game and was like "Well this was stupid what was the hype about?"
When it became clear "beating the game twice" actually started the game proper that's when the hype became real.
However still a baffling choice to roll credits on what is essentially a game's beginning.
The third form of the boss of Ninja Gaiden can keep the ending.
I loved Death Stranding because of the circumstances I played it in. It was during the pandemic lockdown and (among some other personal stuff) it just clicked.
Biggest factor was the big amount of free time I had at the time.
Sadly, I cannot get that much excited for Death Stranding 2 for time is something I lack at the moment.
You guys need to get someone that plays total war, civilization, rim world, etc. second wind seems to be lacking on strathegh and management coverage. Maybe reach out to codybonds or partyelite.
Love the rec for Daryl Talks Games. He started out talking about the psychology in games, but had since branched out. Not only are his video fascinating and educational. But the more you watch, you more you realize the guy is a big goof and I love his random quips.
I bounce around between tons of stuff all at once. I often take forever to finish any given game but get more enjoyment out of sampling lots of different stuff at a time. It's pretty rare a game will grip me start to finish but it's not impossible. Some that managed that would be things like Half Life series, Portal series, Baldur's Gate 3, and Outer Wilds.
I also play a lot of games at once and bounce around them. There aren't that many games, comparatively speaking, that I've seen the end credits roll on. I really have to get sucked in and find it a bit special for that to happen. It also depends on how hard I go into a game and if I burn out on it as a result.
I have Marty's issue with needing the right sense of mind to play a game. I keep putting off The Witcher series because I want to play all 3 games and it'll be a time sink. Same with Cyberpunk.
I find it nice and refreshing when there's a long game I'm into. Most of what I play are short games so it's not the short games that are a refreshing change of pace.
Once games start inching towards that 20 hour mark they are losing their window to finish real fast for me lol.
@@haruhirogrimgar6047 I don't have a specific hour limit, I just find that most longer games lose me a few hours before they're over.
Bought the pitman collection because people ahve raved about it for years. 3 hours in I dropped it. Idc about the cost if I'm done I'm done.
Movies are different. If you told me to watch every movie by an actor and I didn't like his roles I wouldn't finish all of them. But 20 more mins or an hour is different than dozens of hours trying to play a game.
I think a game is over for me when I start reaching for cheat codes just to advance the story faster or to move things along.
At 1:11:10, I have a story to share that relates.
When I first started dating my wife, I introduced her to Plants vs Zombie, helped set it up on her laptop. She starts playing it thinks it's fun.
This is before we started living together, and she gets home on a Friday after a week of shit happening with her work, pours herself a glass of red, and starts playing PvZ. Orders pizza delivery, drinks a little more, really getting into PvZ. Puts Rage on the TV (Aussie music show that's used to start at midnight) as background. Continues playing PvZ. Notices the sun coming up and shining its bright light into the house, realised what she's done and was embarrassed about the lack of self control to go to sleep at a sensible time.
A great discussion. As a child it was always just about the fun, finishing games was never a big deal to me, but now I sense theres a structural demand to complete, to not leave things undone. Also maybe a FOMO element now that everyone's opinion is so much more available to see and read. I feel the resistance against just letting the game go sometimes though I wish I didn't.
I play a game, get about halfway through, and then drop it...but then come back after 6 months and then finish it. OR, I'll go back to it and not finish it, but I rarely, if ever, finish a game even if I really enjoy it. I'm ALMOST done with Super Mario Wonder and I've loved it. That might be the first game I finish for all of 2023. Being an adult with other responsibilities and hobbies/things you want to do can be a bastard.
I definitely bounce around with games. I've started loads and while I've finished many, I also have a pile of unfinished ones. They're not even bad games either. I know that once I can dive back in I can have fun, but something stops me every time and I don't know what it is. It does also depend on the length of the game. I got into BG3 and I'm only 5 hours in (made it into the Grove in Act 1) and I want to dive back into it and I'm not too sure why I tend to gravitate toward a different game every time I turn on the console.
Bloodborne is the first FromSoftware game I saw the end credits roll on, shortly followed by Dark Souls 3. Then it was Armored Core VI. Now, I'd started Elden Ring the day it came out and I spent a good 40 hours in the game before I burned out. And man, did I burn out hard. I didn't touch Elden Ring for nearly a year, I swear. Then November 2023 happened and I broke my left elbow. I was out of work for 10 weeks as I had to basically bother the stupid workers' comp insurance nearly daily to get them to get their act together. Anyway, I had a lot of down time and I could actually still use a controller. That's when I got back into Elden Ring.
However, my approach changed. When I'd burned out I'd been focusing on trying to do everything. All the catacombs, caverns, and other optional stuff. It got overwhelming and I also felt a bit bored. Going back in I made it so that I wouldn't open the game unless I had a solid plan of where I was going and what I was doing. That's what worked. I didn't bother trying to find all the catacombs and other optional stuff so much. That approach is what let me complete all of Ranni's stuff, all of Fia's stuff, Volcano Manor, and everything. It let me get to Mohg very early via Varre and defeat him while being at just level 78 (I think 100+ is recommended for Mohg).
I've defeated Horah Loux and am now just doing some random stuff as I wait on the DLC, because I know better than to go into a FromSoftware DLC in NG+, lol. All that said, Elden Ring still doesn't feel as good as the others. I got sucked into AC6 and got through all 3 runs for all 3 endings and S-ranked a good many missions in the space of just a month or so. I adore the world of Bloodborne and the Souls games. It plays to their strengths with those games not being fully open-world. With ER I feel that FromSoftware made their game too big. Too many optional places feel the same after a while. The Cavern of the Forlorn is one of the few later places that felt really unique to me and I love how different it was compared to most of the caverns. ER should have, imo, been either a smaller open-world game or not fully open-world at home. The good bits are nearly all the legacy dungeons: Stormveil, Volcano Manor, Farum Azula, etc. Put it this way: I want to do NG+ runs in Bloodborne and DS3 to get the other endings, but I'm not too fussed about getting all the endings for Elden Ring. I'll get the DLC, especially if it's going to involve Miquella and I did like the Haligtree and Elphael (well, the first half of Elphael can get fucked, but the second half was fine), but right now I don't have a burning urge to go to NG+ and to do various things again to do the other endings.
The storm decided to gift us a massive tree trunk in the parking lot right outside our apartment.
Someone brought up Rimworld so I'll say that swallowing my pride and turning permadeath off is what saved that game for me. It doesn't matter if you're not playing the way Tynan intended if you never even see half the game
If I'm investing more than 100 hrs into one playthrough I will not be a completionist and I'll play it over 6-12 months in small chunks (Elden Ring, P5, Witcher 3, Like a Dragon etc). But for a 20-40 hr experience I'm happy to do all the extra content because it is more generous with my time just to get through the story.
I agree with the idea that, if I'm not having fun, then I'm done with the game. For me, the real dilemma occurs when I stop playing I've been enjoying for a while for a separate reason (sudden business, moving, etc.) and then struggle with whether to resume the game or not, as resuming often means re-learning the game while being midway through it.
Yeah, same. I'll keep going at a game and then I might get sidetracked by other stuff going on. Then when I go back to the game I sometimes realize that I wasn't really having that much fun. I got frustrated by a side quest in Horizon Zero Dawn, so I took a break for a while. A month or two went by and I realized that I wasn't actually having that much fun with it, so I uninstalled it and don't have the desire to continue. The beginning was great, but once Aloy got out in the world that's when I started to feel both bored and overwhelmed by it. It makes me sad when that happens, especially if I'd been genuinely enjoying myself before that point.
@@SolaScientia I don't think I've ever come back to a game and realized I wasn't enjoying it; for me, the struggle is with coming back to a game in the first place.
For instance, my first playthrough of Persona 5 Royal was in 2023, and I got really far in the game before stopping sometime shortly before December. I struggled with returning to it in December simply because of how far in the game I was; I knew I was not going to start from scratch, but it also felt odd revisiting it after months. Incidentally, I did finish the game, but I did so after also playing the Mario RPG remake.
@@matthewmuir8884 I get that too. I'm not sure if it's the same as what you describe, but I've been enjoying BG3 even with just 5 hours in the game so far, and yet I'm struggling to dive back in even after just a couple weeks away from it now. I'm not exactly sure what's keeping me from selecting it when I look at the games I might want to play. Just now I had an hour or so to kill before tending to my cats and I opted to run around Elden Ring doing all the Ever Gaols I'd thus far ignored. I'm waiting on the DLC to drop before I actually fight Radagon and Elden Beast since I know better than go into a FromSoftware DLC in NG+. I don't really know why I decided to do that instead of hopping into BG3 and working on helping the Grove out.
I had about a year off from Elden Ring, because I burned out hard on it. I did too much at one time with it and then felt overwhelmed with all there was to do. I ended up finishing Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3, and then I got sucked into Armored Core VI and that game is some of the most fun I've had in a very long time in a game. I went back to Elden Ring because 1) it's a FromSoftware game and I tend to be more lenient with them, and 2) I had a plan for how to tackle what I had left to do. It worked. Do I like it as much as their other games? No, I put it fairly far down my list of the games they've done that I like, but it's still a good game and I'm very interested in the DLC.
It depends if theres still some things that are making me interested in the game versus the things that are not making me interested in the game. If the latter beats the former, then I try to push things further to see if I missed something and/or a certain "game logic" in the game. And after that, if the "first impression" is confirmed that the game is a complete waste of time and should be avoided... then I just quit.
Re: Spoilers. I wish in Thor: Ragnarok that I didn't know who the Grand Master's "champion" was befornit was revealed in the movie. That moment would have been so amazing.
I'm in the camp that usually doesm't complete games even if I like them. I'm also in the terrible place of getting to 90% complete (usually stopping at the final dungeon) and then dropping the game.
My problem is trophies. I get burnt out going for platinums, which is why I prefer Nintendo games because they don't have trophies. On the other hand, I usually get games on PS5 instead of Switch because PS5 loads faster and has more memory.
There's very few games I will drop, even if I'm not enjoying the moment to moment experience. It has to be downright horrendous for me to drop a game.
Red Dead Redemption 2 gets honors for a game I went back to to try and 100% so many small interesting world details to pick up
Anyone know which Far Cry game Frost was referring to?
3
I didn't vibe with Dark Souls when I first played it. I went back after a few months and restarted it and unlocked my favorite series and developer. I try to leave room when considering retrying a game is if there was something I wasn't understanding making the experience feel worse than it was.
I derive the most enjoyment when I roll credits and beat the game. Same thing when I movie. That feeling of "wow that was a good time" allows me to move on. However, if I have to quit halfway through because I do not like it, I feel this disappointment of having wasted my time. Therefore, I am emotionally punished for playing a game I ended up not liking. This turns into a cycle of wanting to complete everything I start because I don't want to experience the disappointment of dropping the game.
Fantastic discussion. It depends on the individual and its biases towards the game in question. Even though I do prefer DS3 and Sekiro over DS1, none of them made exploration so compelling to nearly complete as that game. Elden Ring is the best base game content in the Soulsborne series, and I'm satisfied mostly doing the endgame bosses nowadays, since I don't have to grind in dungeons like other RPGs. It will mostly depend on the individual.
Game not fun - pull the rip cord a few hours in
Game is decent - play to end credits, and maybe some epilogue/DLC stuff if it has it
Game I absolutely love - try for 100%/all trophies
Live service - stop when it gets boring
I played Shin Megami Tensei IV a few years ago, and it wasn't for me. I was getting bored and the game felt tedious, but I didn't want to stop midway. Well, lucky for me, I hit a fake ending somewhere near the real ending, and it rolled the credits. I said to myself "Well, that counts to me". And I never looked back.
I wasn't aware there were people who finish games they aren't enjoying.
I don't really rank games, I more or less group them into tiers.
Top tier games are games I'm sad they're over.
Good games are games I finished and thought it was worthwhile.
Mediocre games I might finish or might not, if I don't I don't think I missed anything special.
Bad games are games I started but did not finish
@@scrittle Gollum ranks I've heard of the issues and didn't even want to try. That's a tier that's locked in the basement.
And yeah thinking it over completionists would be most vulnerable to 100%ing a game they don't even like.
I have a Platinum Trophy and most DLC completed for AC Valhalla. I have somehow not been broken yet. That said, I don't play this series day one or anywhere close. I played Valhalla in Dec and Jan of 2022/2023, since that's when they finally released the final content update. The only DLC that I passed on was for the free update roguelike campaign. I have a Platinum Trophy for all but one game in this cursed series: Brotherhood. The online trophies were just too much for me.
I'm in Chico (about 5 hours northeast of SB bay), can confirm the power loss issues we had last night
My power flickered once -- half my aquarium bluetooth LED lights switched to "night mode", half didn't, so it wasn't even fully out but I still had to open my app to get the ones stuck at night back synced so my pet nocturnal frogs didn't think it was their "morning"
Twas enough power outages that AlertSF send out an alert specific to the outages.
Hedonist Critic should be the name of a new series they have
I used to finish nearly everything, but nowadays there's so much great media and my time is much more limited.
When I decide to drop something depends on how deep in I am before I start to bounce off it... not necessarily because of any sunk cost, but more because the media developed a bit of trust from me. I might drop a TV series after ep 3 if I just never started to gel with it, but I also will push through a game I'm not enjoying overall as long as it was "good" previously and there's ~~something~~ about it I still like...at least until it's lost that trust it built and it appears obvious that it's not getting better.
I have three young boys and I got them Mario Wonder. They got to credits. They did all the easy wonder seeds and bought whatever else they needed to beat Bowser. Thankfully, Nintendo doesn't hide its secret ending very well, and so now they're working on that (and the levels are hard to get to that secret ending.) So, that's the other question: not taking away from games like Neir or anything, what if you can get to credits SUPER easily and not really engage with 3/4 of the game, is that really finishing it? I'm looking at you, most of modern Mario games.
There's so many books I've started that never finished. Games, I complete them all because I know I'll 100% love them before I start them (opposite to Marty).
The sad part of listening about sunk cost fallacy and about whether or not to continue....I'm 10 minutes into a 1 and a half hour podcast and I don't know if I can stomach anymore. 😆
I did have a bad day though, so I'm hoping to come back to it.
I hope your next day is much better.
In reference to Marty's comments at 15:50, the Does Hades change THAT MUCH after the first time you defeat him? I've got like, 40 hours in the game and have only managed one clear (lucked out with a trait that regens health slowly so I just danced around him that battle), but I'm hard-pressed to imagine the game's dynamic changing, especially after several runs in the aftermath. Is that really not enough for an honest review of the game?
I've started wrangling my growing list of "current games" by limiting myself to 10 games at a time. I cannot buy or start a game unless there's room on the list. And a game doesn't drop off the list until I finish it or decide "that's it, I am abandoning this." Forcing myself to make that conscious decision instead of just kind of drifting away is so helpful.
I had this experience with Starfield. Initially had no intention of buying it but I was between games, bored and a friend talked me into it. Beat the main game and concluded that the game was buggy, mediocre and dull. Was told the value was in the faction quests so beat all those and my opinion didn't change. Was then told that the fun was in exploration. That is absolutely hilarious on hindsight but whatever, I got 100% achievements and still thought the game was naff. 100 hours and I don't feel I even got a few hours worth of fun out of it for my £70.
I remember it being a big plus for games in Yahtzee's top 5s through the years being the games he wanted to play after he was done with the review
The more I like a game, the less likely I am to pull the trigger on the final sequence in it that takes it to its Epilogue. I made that mistake once with Mechwarrior Mercenaries and nothing about the "ending" could even begin to measure up to the full conflict involving Tukayyid and the rest of BattleTech's true lore during that time period
I get Marty on spoilers. While there is something to that moment of reveal... it's not everything
sometimes i'll throw it on easy mode and blow through it if i'm not feeling it. i mean, i don't have to be grinding it, but i do want to finish the story, if it's worth finishing
If I find I stop enjoying a game as much, I'll just stop doing sidequest stuff/extra content and just power through the rest of the main story. Usually doesn't take that long, and it gives me a sense of completion. Closes the chapter on that game.
yeah if game sucks i'll just remember that it did and remember not to spend my money on future games from the same devs, its all you can really do, i have almost 600 games on steam not about to waste my life playing things i regret buying.
Omori is a game that is very long and honestly the most of it is filler, but the ending is so phenomenal, no one in the Omori community had not played this forty hour game to the end because the end is what gives context to the entire story, and it makes it the life changing game that it is.
No piece of art or media has ever come close to affecting me like Omori has, the slog is worth every second.
I actually screwed myself over when I decided to give up on Omori. I liked it somewhat, but the random ecounters, boring sidequests and the tension of waiting for the game to turn into horror again caused me to drop it. Well fuck me, it turned out that Omori has some immense highs later on - it's just that the way there is long and repetitive.
And now here I am, playing Bug Fables, Hat in Time and NieR and not enjoying any of them... But the fear of missing out is real now. It's not fun, but there are only so many games out there...
Marty made a great point about the journey. For some reason, maybe it's because I used to live in DC, The Division 2 had just a wonderful campaign I thought. I heard the endgame sucked royally, but I never play endgame for much of anything. But man, that's one I feel people missed out on because of all the people railing the atrocious endgame. The journey was great- but gamers didn't see a journey. They saw an obstacle.
I feel like early access developers learn to avoid the sunken cost fallacy of finishing games more and more often. ;)
Once I start something I generally feel like I have to/want to finish it, even if I’m not loving it.
I never fell into this fallacy when it comes to entertainment. For work and hobbies, sure, all the time. But no way I'm playing a game I'm not enjoying. For movies I do usually finish watching them, unless it's really really bad, but I don't necessarily watch sequels. For example, I've seen every star wars movie until I didn't. Didn't watch Solo, I didn't even go to watch The Last Jedi. Not out of spite or anything, I have no strong feelings about it. But why waste a couple of hours with a piece of entertainment I don't think will work for me.
Credits roll and I’m done now. It has to be a special game for me to finish it.
On my third attempt with death stranding and I'm adamant i will finish it this time.
I have a feeling it will be like marmite, ill keep eating it till i enjoy it.
I will play a game till I feel like i've done everything I want to do in it. I have a handful of games that i've 100%'d. It has to be fun to do that challenges. Last game I 100%'d was Bomb Rush Cyberfunk,.
Why the fuck is Days Gone the longest goddamn game ever made
I don't finish a lot of games, but any game with a satisfying enough gameplay loop that I'll play it all the way through to the credits is something I'll almost definitely replay. Recent games that come to mind are Inscryption and Cassette Beasts
Honestly, the best thing I did was switch to pc gaming. Achievements ruins video games for me cuz I'm a completionist, however I realized I was just doing chores and not having fun. It's bad having ADHD with gaming, then add arbitrary challenges with a number/trophy score
Its only a waste of time when your data gets deleted. Thus ive wasted 150 hrs first skyrim playthrough in 2014. Never finished it after i did that to myself.
Edit: i forced myself to beat yakuza 3-5 cuz i wanted to play 6 and i wanted to beat all of yakuza. This was back in 2021 when like a dragon and judgement just came out. I beat 1-6 plus judgement in a single yr. I recommend never doing that cuz i hated yakuza for a bit there. Now i need to beat all the like a dragon games and the samurai one and lost judgement. Not a completionist but yeah. Also vahalla killed what love i have for AC cant even get through mirage now and no i didnt beat vahalla i got maybe a third of the way through.
I grew up poor (and still kinda am) so I am very selective with the games I buy. 100%ing the games I did get was a big part of my childhood because I couldn't do much else. If I buy a game nowadays, I will at least finish it (roll credits once). If I truly like a game I bought, I will still try to 100% it.
Much like Yahtzee, I'm mostly interested in narrative games and if you tell me a good enough story, I can excuse a lot. I consider a game done when it has told me the whole story or when I can wring no more enjoyment out of the gameplay.
wow I can't believe yall took 2 hours to say game media cant possibly be expected to finish a game before reviewing it /s (split that $20 here Nick)
great discussion, TLDR is when do you stop playing? When you stop having fun.
I played an hour of Ghostwire: Tokyo and expressed my opinions in a steam review. I'm now half-way through it (was free on Epic Games) and everything I said in my review still holds. Ghosts are cool, setting is disappointing, gameplay is good but held back, protagonist is awful, story is awful, performance is inconsistent (published by Bethesda).
I rarely feel the need to 100% a game because most of them are such a bore (I couldn't be bothered replaying some of them just to get some silly achievement, fuck P5 and the dating trophies, it's the only thing forcing you to replay it), but lately I've had a lot fun 100%ing Lies of P. I had even more fun breezing through my NG+, the mobs and exploration were suddenly safe and easy, but the bosses were hard as nails. I got the hang of the parrying system and everything clicked, I had such a blast with certain late game bosses I even tried to bully them into endless parrying just to train myself. Once I got my platinum trophy I felt like I still wanted more of it. I guess 100%ing it was just an excuse to play more of it and not the other way round, that's how you know it's a good game.
In the old times. No yahtzee. I probably wouldnt watch... But now... The crew is so awesome I watch...
I stop playing if I get really put off or bored. Life is to short. Played Dragon age 1 and 2. Started Dragon Age Inquisition and was bored and then I got a horse and just turned of the game. I don't have time for this.
Toffee Calandra😆
How the hell can I make my voice sound like Frost's? Asking for a friend.
The self-contained expansion to the original Last of Us was pretty good.
I think it;'d be better if reviewers don't feel the pressure to "finish" games in their allocated review time, as it puts pressure on them and may reduce enjoyment in longer games and thus reduce review scores and give a review that reflects that pressure more then the game itself.
I'm enjoying AC Valahalla atm (outside a few bugs), I don't think reviews I've seen reflect it well. The "mysteries" are so cute, I can get high on mushrooms and follow seals around! There's a babe ruth knockoff! People are complaining about these mysteries?! Different strokes for different folk. Really not a good choice for people that want to 100% but don't enjoy some of the activities in the game. Ignore the parts of games that don't enjoy.
00:50
The Witcher itch? the itcher?
I think if youre going to be a games critic then you should absolutely finish your games. My opinions on goty games like Elden Ring and BOYW chsnged a lot by the time i beat them. The first 30 hours were absolutely amazing 10/10 experience, then by hour 50 the cracks and flaws start to become more apparant. Also, the story could have some plot points that only start making sense by act 2 or 3. So its kinda hard to judge unless you know the entirety of it.
I just dont think we can argue games as art if we cant even be bothered to experience what it is. Especially in a medium where an experience can be flipped on its head by the end.
If you just see something you bought as just aome product though, then yeah, drop that shit as soon as you stop having fun. I know I have. Ive definitely had games where i played for a few hours and called it good, but i wouldnt be critquing it anytime soon.
i gave up on that russian robot fps... i cant even remember the name, played it up to the train crash... got so bored with the world and many crashes. thank god for gamepass
The argument that some people make being, 'unless you finish a game you cant review' it or that the review is somehow 'less valid' is bull shit. It doesnt take 20, 40, 60, 100 hours to know what you have to say about a game. And if your 20 hours in and hating the game but it gets good at the 40 hour mark that's also bullshit.
A reviewer should only play a game for as long as they have the generosity to give it to make it's case. If it doesnt make it's case in as long as the review has, thats A FAULT OF THE GAME not a fault of the reviewer.
I understand there are genre's that require a significant time commitment, and if people can only respect reviews from people who put in that time they should not expect a reviewer to commit that time but rather find reviewers that already do.
"The Last of Us" no-lifing is real 😆I would come home from work, not even text my girlfriend and *just keep playing*
If the waiting room for being allowed to talk about Nier Automata is finishing it 4 times, im glad to not be part of the conversation. The gameplay just didnt click with me at all in the first playthrough
Shit, there are some sentences that I don't
I'll say it: neir automata sucked.
Played the whole thing on max difficulty did every side quest i noticed. Even tried eating the fish.
To borrow a phrase yahtzee employs. That game was so up itself i couldn't tell if i was looking into its mouth or balloon knot.
Who is saying "we don't want scripted content"? Outside of multiplayer PvP, everything needs to be scripted or it has no purpose!
@@SimuLord all games I am not interested in, but I get your point 👍
Nah, bioshock 2 isn't that great, It's obviously just an opinion, but 1st just flows better. 2nd kinda is meant to impress you. It's trying too hard and yet not actually doing anything significant/fun with the improvements.