Gaming enthusiasm: have you lost it?

[Soylent Green]

My enthusiasm hasn't changed, but my tolerance for crappy games has. When I was a kid playing PC and NES games, I didn't exactly have a broad selection of games. The few games I had were my only source of entertainment, so I'd even appreciate the mediocre and shitty games. Now that I have literally thousands of different games at the click of a mouse, I've become stuck-up and find it really difficult to get excited for games if they aren't spectacular by my stupid high standards.

[treos]

My enthusiasm hasn't changed, but my tolerance for crappy games has. When I was a kid playing PC and NES games, I didn't exactly have a broad selection of games. The few games I had were my only source of entertainment, so I'd even appreciate the mediocre and shitty games. Now that I have literally thousands of different games at the click of a mouse, I've become stuck-up and find it really difficult to get excited for games if they aren't spectacular by my stupid high standards.

you know, maybe this is what happened to me, sure i had a fair selection (as we all probably did before finding the internet and its vast selection of ROMs) of games to play fron nes, genesis, snes, gg, gb/gbc, gba, n64, psx but once i started downloading roms i guess i got to see just how many good games there were and learned more of which ones were poor/crappy. nowadays most new games end up as a dissappointment to me even if they seem fun for a while. not even going to talk about the current GENs biggest fails looking at you Fable 3.

[gezegond]

I remember as a kid getting a copy of Sonic CD; I was so crazy to play it that I could barely contain myself on the ride home, and when I finally got there I tossed the disc in the system and played it for the rest of the night. I skipped dinner, and I was so focused that by the time I stopped I literally had eye strain and a headache. The same happened with Chrono Trigger; I must have played that game for 12 hours straight the day I got it, stopping only to sleep and because I got this massive headache from staring at the TV for so long.

But these days, I get a new game in the mail and I just don't have the same desire. I get the games I want to play, but there's no more long periods of time just spent playing the game; Hell, I have stacks of games I haven't played, not because of lack of time but because of lack of motivation. Breath of Fire 5 alone has been sitting there for almost 2 years now and I never touched it despite my buying it specifically because I wanted to play it.

So as you've aged, have you lost that enthusiasm, that desire and drive to just sit down and play the Hell out of a game you just got because you're just so excited?

same here.

[Andy_Jerk]

Yeah I actually stopped buying games for a while because I just wasn't playing them. At one point I had these four 360 games that I never played at all and I just ended up selling them on eBay. I know I sound like a broken record but I still feel like older games had Soul and this newer stuff doesn't always have that "energy." I mean old school gaming music was unique and sometimes it was brilliant--now it has to cater to the lowest common denominator.

[Tsukasa]

I remember playing Mega Man Legends on the PSone for 12 hours. Also, one time, i played Ragnarok Online for 20 hours. Today, i don't have pacience for doing this

[MaslowK]

Speaking of gaming enthusiasm. I have several games I've started playing again/nearly have finished (namely, Pokemon Crystal) that I've suddenly lost interest in seemingly randomly, when at the time I was spending 4-5 hours straight at a time playing them I had a damn good party going on that too.

[LSA]

Absolutly... but I dont think its cause ive gotten older... its probably cause I have 3 kids and rarely get to play any games...

but there are a few titles i get excited for...
every new zelda title... i pre order months in advance then drool over it till it comes out... then do nothiing but beat it for the next week or so after it comes out...
my wife gets upset... but she will get over it... zelda was my first love

and recently I have been getting fairly excited about some new 3ds games (cause i do play it often as i can take it with me)
kid icarus i was very excited about... it was worth it too
mario 3d land... i was excited but it was a big let down... far too easy
mario kart 7 was worth the wait
im also excited about paper mario and luigis mansion2... we shall see...

but i dont think ill EVER not be excited about a new zelda game...
you should have seen me at the Symphony of the Goddesses concert... row 1 seat 1... back stage meet and greet... (my birthday preasent to myslef) I was geekin like I was 12

[DanteWilhelm]

Yeh I'd say I have, I don't find new games interesting anymore.

I've known about this site for 6 maybe 7 years not sure how long it's been going for and old games are just so much more fun to play

when I didn't have money I would download goodsets from here

I had over 13,000 roms so yeh that kept me going for a long time,

Now I collect old games, haven't played many of them, got maybe 5-600 I just like having them.


My friends will say play this play that and I know it will bomb. The main reason for not buying or liking new games is because they are all released with problems, or they're broken they all need patching. My internet isn't nearly as good as it needs to be to properly enjoy online gaming and people put new games down quickly.

Always onto the next thing, no lasting value, games are hyped and hyped and then they suck. You would end up spending so much money, trading games in and buying the next biggest thing.

So my enthusiasm for modern games has gone


Now as far as gaming in general, I've gotten older, I like to do other things and/or just sit down and watch cartoons or a film, and even stuff on TV which I wouldn't find interesting a few years ago.

I assume everyone or most people here who have agreed with the poster of this thread are just growing out of games, they do take up a lot of time, or they don't but then it's not fun to just quickly whack on Strider for 5 minutes (not that i can play it for much longer without getting my ass beat).



Games are still fun, just find the right ones and find some good friends to play with




Good multiplayer games

PS3

1. MAG (online only)
2. Dead Nation (birds-eye-view zombie killing online co-op game)

PC

company of heroes
age of empires 3
universe at war
empire earth II
rise of nations


those games will keep you entertained for a long time, and of course there are many classics on PS1

play rampage world/universal tour with a friend on PS1 and tell me you didn't just have fun playing an old school game :O

[Mario Pino Pacheco]

ah, this a interesting thread actually.

I'm not young, I'm more like young adult, with lots of resposabilities, many other interests, other than gaming etc.

Still, when people ask me: What do you like to do when you are not busy or with your girl? My answer is always playing video games, even when I do lots of other stuff like reading fantasy, sci-fi, mistery and stephen king novels (yes, stephen king is a genre on it's own), wathing movies and series with similar themes, sporting with some friend (we are so silly that we go to the gym and compete to see who can excercise the most repeating common gaming phrases ).

I play mainly Xbox360 and PC games.

I don't think I will ever get past gaming. it's one of my mayor personality traces. I picture myself at age 45, sitting on the lobby with my sons, on sunday's noon, playing Halo or gears of war with them and my wife looking at me like she couldn't believe I'm not repairing the boiler or cleaning up the ceiling

Still, I do have noticed my enthusiasm for games has decreased. A great part of it comes perhaps from me not beeig stinking rich so I can't just get the game I want or purchase the new flamin DLC wich takes some shine out of my game. On PC, it' mainly that I'm unable to get something good to play. When I was younger I played a lot of the classic titles, the FF series, silent hills, Resident evil (on emulator), age of empires, starcraft, warcraft III, diablo, dungeon siege and so on. Now that I go looking for something to play on PC (something I do when I don't have money to buy and xbox title) I realize I have played all the good titles for PC. I visit blogs and forums searching for lists of good PC games of different genres and all I find is one of the next two:

A list of all games I have already played and I don't want to play again or

A list of all brand new games that weight something around 10-20 GB and can only be played on a state of the art PC with video card above 1 GB, RAM no less than 5GB and processor no less than 6 GHz.

So I guess I have already exploited all I could on PC gaming without having to buy a new, better, one. That takes the enthusiasm out of me on the PC as well.

Still, when I do get my hands on something new and shiny I get very excited. When I bought FF XIII and played it for the first time it was crazy. sit down and played, and played untill I had to stop (after like, 8 Hrs), then next morning at 8 a.m. I was playing again .

Something I have noticed that turns down many gamers is that they rely to heavily on reviews they read on magazines or the web. For example, for me, FFXIII is one of the best FF games I have ever played, however when I read the reviews all I see is complains about the little control over battle system you have, the mainly lineal gaming that you have most of the game and that characters and plot are mediocre compared to other FF games. Me? I didn't care. I loved tha battle system. it was fluid and easy going as you acted more as a general rather than controlling everyones single move (something I find tiresome and boring when you have to do like a couple thousand battles just to finish the game, not to speak about farming, leveling, sidequesting, achievement completion). I enjoyed the semilineal maps on the beginning. It allowed to enjoy the plot in a continuos, logical way without overloading you with docens of options and sites to explore after 5 minutes of gaming and graphics and music were epic.

Another example. My friend, who does rely a lot on reviews and won't buy a game if it has a bad review, didn't bought dead island because of this, although he was waiting since it was first advertised to play it. He readed somewhere that it was a long, repetitive game, that put more emphasis on free exploring and getting cool stuff than actually going through the plot and enjoying a true survival. I didn't care, bought the game and played. I was awesome. So in rented another one and invited him to play. He had so much fun that he now has my game -.-

Same goes with ninja gaiden 2. It has a lot of bad reviews because of the crappy, xbox original graphics it has and the chuck norris lvl dificulty it has even on normal mode game. Still I liked what I saw of the demo so I went on a got it. I was not dissapointed in any way. graphics are crappy and dificulty is frustrating sometimes, but it has a solid, fluid combat system that has a lot of effort put on it and a solution for everything you encounter (like when I first fought sagan demons, I stubornly kept on with my superawesome dragon and tiger swords only because I had them fully upgraded and they owned me. repeatedly, so angry and frustrated I switched to my new, not upgraded kusarigame and surprise I slaughtered them with little effort and almost no HP loss, even though my weapon had much less raw damage. I felt like a true ninja for the next 3 minutes.

For me reviews are very usefull before getting a game, I pay special attention to problems the game has, like bugs, that can be a real let down, but I don't disregard a game just because the reviewers didn't liked something of it.

For those of you that have the "I have to high standards" problem, It's better that you choose based on what you expect of a individual game instead of searching for perfect games with perfect scores on everything (since no such thing exist).

Like, from ninja gainden I expected challenge and precise and solid combat system that allowed me to do exactly what I wanted to and I was not disapointed even with shitty graphics and cliche music.

From my lego harry potter I expected a laid back game, easy to master and with harry potter (so my girl was interested and would play with me) as well a good sense of humor (something ALL lego games have) so I could enjoy it to a degree despite the fact it was.... well... a lego game and intended for 10 years old gamers

From my FFXIII I expected a long, epic game, with rich graphics and music, good plot so I could have a book like experience (something that catches me for hours because I wanted to see what happens next after I beat this boss)

[William Jones]

Looking at games themselves nowadays, theyre too life like. theyre not wacky cartoons anymore. everything has to be like gta or halo, i hate it.
also a big thing is theres no console war. sega and nintendo fought ultimately to the death, sonic was on sega and mario was on nintendo, how many exclusive big games are there now that are popular, halo basically. almost all the big games are on both xbox and ps3.

[DJEldest]

I cant really get into the newer games like I could as a kid playing NES or Gameboy. Yea the new games are flashy and have cool graphics but nothing beats the 8bit music and all around interesting games.... Plus I always find myself wanting to play old school more than the new stuff. Its addictive. And most importantly its nostalgic!

[DylanD]

I definitely feel this (may have posted already) but lately my gaming interest has been piqued again! Thanks to computer gaming (and the Steam summer sale!)

In the last 4 years I've only actually beaten a handful of games, and had only a handful of real gaming addictions (you could say.) A few of those were (starting around 4 years ago):

- Metal Gear Solid 4 + MGS Online (I loved this game so much, I rarely (Final Fantasy VII, Portal and MGS4) play games more than once but I beat the campaign 3.5 times in a row before getting stuck on the hardest mode. Then all night online sessions.)
- Burnout Paradise (Completed the game 102%, all offline and online stuff done. Did a few 8 hour online gaming sessions for this one.)
- Dirt 3 (Just fell in love with racing for a while, got pretty far but it got too hard and my OCD doesn't let me change difficulty)
- MGS: Peacewalker (On PSP and PS3! Played a ton of both, loved the game to death but haven't played in a while now. Did just about ever main campaign mission S rank and a lot of others S rank but it got too hard.)

That's pretty much all I've played since 2008, minus a few I felt were shorter affair but are still worth mentioning:

- Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Probably a decent time sink as a restarted so many times because I love the pure stealth approach)
- Catherine
- God of War PSP (First entry for psp)

I can't lie this kind of seems like a lot but I don't have much of a personal life at all so I was literally sitting around doing nothing (a lot.) Lately I feel reinvigorated though! I'm trying to keep control of my OCD and remember that I'm gaming for fun and I've been having a great time lately (aside from a few surprisingly frustrating experiences with Saints Row 3.) What I've been playing: (all on pc)

- Portal (Beat it for the second time and it was more clever than I remembered, definitely a better experience on Pc than on PS3.)
- Portal 2 (Sunk a few hour into this in the last week.)
- Saints Row 3 (Sunk almost 30 hours into this in the past 2 weeks. Not a fantastic game but amusing nonetheless.)
- Terraria (What appears to be a 2D mincraft, but (debatabley) has more personality and seems funner.)
- Trials 2 (Addicting until all the levels that can be beat are beat.)
- Torchlight (Fantastically fun dungeon crawler, if that's what you'd call it...)

Basically I've been playing a lot of games lately. You just need to search around and find something that really gets you addicted and it will give rise to your old gaming enthusiasm. The key to this for me was the iPhone/Android game Rage of Bahamut. An online card collecting game that had me seriously addicted (any chance I could get, unless I was too tired to care) for about a month or two. I challenge all those out there who have lost there gaming enthusiasm to find it again! Best place to look (in my opinion) would be some Free-To-Play games from MMOs to iPhone games like RoB. Good luck!

Edit: after reading this thread more I'm surprised how many people do extremely long gaming sessions. I like to switch up games (hard to play one for more than 2 hours at a time, but playing multiple games also makes it more of a challenge to stay interested) but the most I ever game in a row for is about 4 hours. Back when I was a kid playing GBC I used to play it dusk 'til dawn (not literally) but I think I would play nearly and entire day straight sometimes... A lot. Couldn't say for sure though I have a poor memory...

[Wiwii1010]

I still have my gaming enthusiasm, I think. I mean, my family is hollering at me at the dinner table as I play Legend of Zelda. Damn me trying to get all the hearts...