The plight of the adult gamer with an amount of disposable income. Too many games to play and not enough time.
I get stuck with those problems most of the time I open my Steam library. Too many games that I haven’t started. Too many that I haven’t finished. Yet I still find myself rotating between the same 2 or 3.
I’m not a streamer; I feel that people watching me play would be waaaaay too much stres.
Yeah, I have a growing backlog. When I want to get back into a game, I think about if I'll remember what I was doing or if I'll remember the controls or if I'll ruin my save file.
What also hit hard when I lost my save file halfway through The Last of Us Part II. That game is hella depressing and intense, and I've struggled to go back through it.
All of that is compounded by the fact that I have some old comfort games that I play on my phone or Switch.
But recently, Theatrhythm and Final Fantasy XVI have got me back into the rhythm of things.
This happened to me when I was streaming. My favorite hobby became like a job. I only played while streaming and the time I was putting in outside of work was kind of killing me. Working a full day, coming home to do dinner and time with my wife and then start streaming by 8pm a couple days a week. It exhausted me. At some point I started to skip days and then I just never went back. Now I play games as a form of entertainment like watching Netflix/Hulu. I do it for leisure.
Sometimes I miss it though and think maybe I should try and get back into it but so far I've just not.
Yeah I feel that with many hobbies too as well as gaming. I feel like there is a culture of, if you’re not doing something productive you’re wasting time. But in reality I think everyone needs a break. You can’t possibly be always productive, that ruins the whole point of relaxing!
It’s not easy to get away from either, but I’ve found that dedicating time to just not being productive and filling it with what you want to do is a good start. I work from home now so separating my day into chunks is even more important than ever because I my work space is also my PC gaming space.
Just try not to feel like you need to get something meaningful out of everything I guess. Sometimes it can just be fun.
Now this is luck and not skill, but I traded Pokémon in Pokémon GO with a friend. When you do this, the Pokémon you send to your friend rerolls its IVs. The Duskull I sent him rerolled its IVs, the Buneary he sent me rerolled its IVs, and we both ended up with perfect-IV Pokémon.
(I’m a 100-IV aka perfect-IV hunter in Pokémon GO. In the mainline games, I tend not to care as much.)
Ok, not so much as hidden, but also not super known: Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun. A tactical stealth game (think commandos saga back in the day) is 90% Technobabylon. A pixelated point & click adventure with some cyberpunk themes at 70% Return of the Obra Dinn. Probably the best detective/deduction game that I’ve played, at 40% Prey. One of the best immersive sims, at 75% The Case of the Golden Idol. Is not as good as Obra Dinn in my opinion, but it’s super good none the less, at 30% Antichamber. Super good puzzle game, at 75% The Age of Decadence. Ultra hardcore RPG set in ancient Rome, 60% Tametsi. Is like minesweeper but good, 67% (and only 0.77€)
Absolute gem of a game, shame Bethesda forced them to use the Prey branding; a lot of fans of the original wrote it off because it has nothing to do with the original. One can't help but wonder if we would've had such a disaster as Redfall if Colantonio hadn't left as a result of all that.
Underrated even among Prey fans is Mooncrash, easily the best roguelite experience from a AAA studio, and just a great experience all around for anyone who wants 'more Prey'.
People are going to be pedantic about this one, because it’s not ALL games, but what you’re seeing is real. Game design, especially corporate design, has changed to accomplish two things:
Engagement
Accessibility
Games are designed to be playable by as many people as possible for as long as possible. Some would say this is just Western AAA games, but lots of anime games have been doing this nonsense for decades - games with 10 hours of baby’s first JRPG tutorial and 80 hours of grinding and filler. Many of them critically acclaimed games that fans would flog me for if I actually named one of them.
There are indie games that help you escape this, but many take that accessibility-first approach that requires everything to be very structured and corral you toward the right direction.
Again, I think people are going to be dismissive, but you’re right. It’s a tough world out there for someone who just wants to play a game and not be suckered into a live service engagement trap, or ladder system that hides your real MMR to keep you grinding up an imaginary points system. It’s not like the old days when you can just pick something popular, you have to discriminate and carefully judge what you buy now.
I should put “accessibility” in sarcastic quotation marks. Here, it doesn’t mean adding options or features to assist someone with different handicaps or needs. It means making the game so easy that anyone, even a toddler or game journalist, can finish it without having to learn from mistakes or think about what they’re doing.
Particularly with regard to excessive guidance. Varying degrees of “mobile game that makes you click exactly what it says for 30 minutes to prove you played the tutorial.” Those games may be the worst offenders, but less-dramatic hand holding happens in console and PC games too.
That's a sweeping generalization, there are many indie games that are hard, obtuse, hostile or all of the above. Even a walking sim's difficulty is higher than just "beating" it, just like the point of a museum is higher than going through all the rooms and saying you "went"
I thought I was alone with that feeling. I’m in exactly the same boat as you.
For me, it’s a tiny bit different, because I played BOTW shortly before my daughther was born in 2017. I still had time for games like that back in the day. Now I don’t only have a daughter, but a son as well.
When I grab the controller and start playing something time intensive like BOTW and now TOTK, I usually feel really guilty really quick, because there are so many other things to do, that in theory should have a higher priority.
Just do what I do. Split your time between family, work, house projects, errands, and play a little of each backlogged game you have. Get absolutely nothing in your life done by trying to do everything 24/7. This way you get the benefit of feeling like you have no free time while also having the benefit of getting burnt out and overstressed. It can't backfire. 100% sustainable.
Don't forget taking so long a break between games that you completely forget what you're supposed to be doing, and if the game offers no sort of recap/hand-holding quest system - you have to start from scratch.
At which point the daunting nature of that overwhelms you and you just sit there browsing your catalog for something new to play/continue until you're 15 minutes past your allotted time - and you're now even further behind.
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