Have I Lost My Gaming Mojo?

danabnormal writes "Increasingly I'm being frustrated in my attempts to find a game I want to play. In an effort to catch up, I've been using my bog standard Dell laptop to dig out treasures I have missed, such as American McGee's Alice, Grim Fandango and Syberia. I don't often get the time to play games, so I like to have the opportunity to dip in and out of a title without feeling like I'm losing something by not playing it for periods of time. But when I find a title I like, I make the time. Heavy Rain is the last game that gripped me, that truly engaged me and made me want to complete it in a single sitting. I'm tired of the GTA formulas, bored of CoDs and don't have the reaction time to think on my feet for AOE III. Is it about time I tossed in the controller and resigned myself to the fact that the games I want only come out once in a blue moon? Or have I just not found that one great title that will open me up to a brand new genre? Lords of Ultima is going OK at the moment — is there anything of that ilk I've missed? What are your thoughts? Do you stick to a particular genre? Are you finding it harder, as you get more mature, to find something you want to play?"

Comments

Auditorium

[jonabbey]

Have you checked out Auditorium? It just came out on the PlayStation store for PS3..

Borderlands

[SpryGuy]

I really got into Borderlands... great base game, with three out of four great DLCs (the third one being the high point). Great game play, LOTS of replayability (I've been playing it non-stop for a year), and a wicked sense of humor. And multiplayer is a blast if you have any friends to play it with.

I also really liked the original Fallout 3. Fallout New Vegas isn't really grabbing me though.

What you've missed

[PhrostyMcByte]

Are you finding it harder, as you get more mature, to find something you want to play?

I have no problem finding interesting games, but I do find it harder to put up with bad ones. The more frustrating thing is that a lot of the games coming to PC now are actually designed and tested for consoles, which results in (at best) stupid UI design, and (at worst) major instability.

Lately I've been finding competitive games to be more fun if it involves more than just personal skill, so I've been gravitating toward co-op multiplayer games. Here are two free games on Steam that are great:

• Alien Swarm: simple to get into, but requires a lot of teamwork and planning skills to master. Everyone has their own role to play and there are usually many ways to tackle problems, so this game makes for some fun speed running.
• Moonbase Alpha: a NASA-published game that has you fixing a broken moon base (surprise). It's very simple and has some glaring performance issues, but again with some strategy it can be quite fun to speed run in. Even so, it's a very slow game with little going on while you're actually executing your plan, so it's not for everyone.

I've also been going back to play Neverwinter Nights, which has so many good 3rd party modules that I could be kept busy for years. It has multiplayer too, if you can find friends to play it with.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed had a good story and fantastic gameplay -- the spiritual successor to Jedi Academy.

Dark Void was fun but really short. The jet pack works for some great gameplay and the story is decent. If you can get it cheap, I highly recommend it. Also probably the best video game score I've ever heard, done by Battlestar Galactica composer Bear McCreary.

Prototype is like GTA meets God of War -- most games start your character off weak at 1 and get you to 10 when you're 80% through the game. Prototype starts you at 11 and somehow keeps getting better, so you never feel short of awesome. The only game to let you glide down to a street, snatch someone up, and run up the side of a building to eat them like some sort of zombie king kong.

Borderlands is fun if you like to mix in a little RPG with your FPS. Get four friends and go at it. Requires some discipline to ensure you don't level past each-other when you don't play together.

I'm 31

[holophrastic]

I certainly don't play games the way that I used to -- I own and operate two businesses -- but I've managed to find many games to keep me playing an average of 10 hours per week, and it's fun.

Truth is, I dropped all of the games that simulate real work. Big surprise, I have a full-time job. It's unfortunatel because I really used to like the Master of Orion series, and number three was fantastic. But running a galactic empire easily plays 40 hours per week, and has you thinking about it all the time, and that's no longer entertainment for me.

But there are way more genres now than ever before, and some have evolved quite nicely. So here's what I've done.

Used to love the old Sierra adventure games. Now, it's the new Tales of Monkey Island -- the 5 episode thing from last year. Plays the same, but modern story and modern humour.

Never liked racing games. I bought a sports car last year. Played GRID. Had lots of fun. So much fun, that I took my car to a track -- Watkins Glen. Turns out that real-life race tracks are 100% reproduced in today's racing games. Right down to the advertisements. Really quite something. Felt awesome in the real thing in part because of the game thing.

Left4Dead, 1&2, do a great job as playing like a sports team. It's tough to organize a game of football in the park. Easy to organize a game of shooting zombies in steam. The tactics and communication work the same way, so it's fun in that way.

I'm looking forward to the new DeusEx in February. I loved the story in the first one.

In the end, the truth is that there are just so many many games these days, there's plainly going to me a huge number that you won't like. But you can bet that an industry that big is going to have something for you. It's just that big of an industry, and it's dedicated to giving you a good time. But you'll have to spend some time searching. Really. And if you're looking at anything first-person, you're going to have to get used to the modern-day controls of whatever platform you choose. They're different than they were ten years ago -- in every way.

But yeah, if you want to enjoy playing games, and you put in some effort to find those games, you will like them. Remember, some games take over 70 million dollars to create. I promise they do it all for you. But if you don't want to, then it'll be an acquired taste that you'll never acquire.

These days, I'm trying to acquire a taste for Scotch. Don't look up the game, I mean the drink. I've mixed in with amaretto -- something that I simply cannot live without (nor spell consistently) -- and Scotch is still tough to drink. But I want to like it, and I'm on my way. Last you it was french onion soup. This year, it's-a-gonna-be-Scotch.

Keyword: indie

[SharpFang]

Game studios have become corporations. Middle managers are the people who decide upon form of their games nowadays. They are run-of-the-mill, with little variation. Finding something new and refreshing from big studios is an exercise in futility. Just don't. Wait 5 years and nowadays' games that are fondly remembered then will be the ones worth playing.

Meanwhile, load up Steam Shop and click the "Indie" tab. Not all of these games are worthwhile. But about half of them is. That's where real innovation is nowadays. Where new brave concepts are explored. Sure about half of these concepts is failed. But still, considering the prices, you're better off financially buying 3 Indie games (and enjoying one) than buying one blockbuster (and finding it boring).

Look for games made in Russia. Some amazing artistic enterprises have been undertaken. Some extremely ambitious projects - very realistic flight simulators for example. Ignore flashy commercials for EA, Ubisoft, Activision. Go for the little-known stuff and you'll find where the good games are at.

Vot iss this "mojo" of vich u spik?

[grikdog]

I turned 66 last Saturday, and I'm still addicted to small games from years ago. Any Zelda older than Minish Cap was fine with me, especially OoT, and I went on a Castlevania tear for while. My favorite is still Star Ocean: Blue Sphere, which requires a modicum of Japanese and a GBC. I confess to playing the Professor Layton series more than once -- lost mojo is an advantage here, because I don't remember the solutions to some of the harder puzzles from two years ago and have to work them out again the hard way. I'm not a fan of most of the Final Fantasy franchise, but still replay 1, 2, 9 and 12. FF13 was an excrutiating disappointment, but in the last chapter there are only three bosses -- the first is easy, the second is either beyond my frayed reflexes or requires more levelling up (a colossal bore at this stage). My current game of choice is GTA Chinatown Wars, which is kind of a mini-mayhem doodle machine (you don't have to follow the main story line), and sort of fun if you rinse out your abused sense of morals once in a while. I don't know about "good" games -- seems a bit subjective to me. But I have no doubt one of the big franchises will uncork a great game again sometime soon. We seem to be living in a magical moment in the development of the Arts -- like Toulouse Lautrec, or Van Gogh, when the great souls are among us, unnoticed by the mainstream.

don't stick to just 0 day releases.

[gl4ss]

try some "old" games you haven't yet finished. the lifespan of a game decides how timeless it really is.

in terms of gameplay, the games haven't really gone much further at all in the past decade, and graphics on artistic/functional level have stayed the same as well.

vampire the masquerade: bloodlines, morrowind, deus ex, X(and sequels) and so on, many of them have texture packs and mods available to make it a bit more fresh and also you can play them at high resolutions with antialiasing, modern look with many game studios is to just blur everything with fake focal blur(makes everything look like a cheap sitcom and not a movie.. if you catch my drift). you could even try ascending in nethack.

of course, you could look into making your own and replaying some old and new games with that in mind, you might be amazed with how little original thought or actual content variety some games that ship on two dvd's have. I've been playing mass effect 1 and 2 lately, they suck in many, many aspects(gameplay is VERY repetitive, controls were made worse in 2 etc etc), it's a bit boring when you can guess beforehand where/when enemies will be spawned(just noticing that they're spawned in waves to make it easier on the engine sucks enough, also there's no adventure in m.e, despite having a galaxy to explore, but whats the fun when the galaxy is smaller than your hometown.. and what fun is flying a space ship when it's just a menu. gameplaywise some bbs door games had as much galaxy exploring).

Re:Yeah..

[interkin3tic]

I suspect your tastes have just matured. There might be other, more complex games you enjoy more. In college I thought JRPGs were great and had little time for anything else. These days, I can't spend 90 hours crawling through dungeons, and much to my surprise find that I just get frustrated when I try to play JRPGs. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate games anymore, it just meant that I have to say "okay, I'm only going to play the best ranked games on metacritic."

Re:Lack of interesting storyline

[darrylo]

I just played Mass Effect 2 (a single-player RPG) in easy mode, just for the storyline. I'm sure some will disagree with me, but the storyline and presentation just blew me away. While the plot can be cheesy at times, it's amazingly well done, and, in easy mode, it can almost feel like a movie with limited interaction. During some of the end game sequences, you're blasting away with the same feel and urgency (but not plot, of course) as the movie, Aliens 2. However, the game is short (I finished in less than 35 hours in easy mode), and fairly linear -- while most missions can be done in any order, gameplay is linear once inside a mission.

Here's a trailer for it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2O-0-fQOOs

(Yeah, it's really is that good -- most of the trailer was made from excerpts from the actual in-game videos.)

Re:Yeah..

[TapeCutter]

Agreed. I'm 51 and have been playing video games since the grandady of them all "Pong" appeared next to the pinball machines in the local bowling alley. I have no intention of stopping anytime soon. Games are like movies and books, maximum of one or two genuine classics per year, the rest are either good variations of an existing classic or just rubbish.

As to the question posed in the summary; I find games with a simple interface and rules are the best ones to leave and come back to later. I have been playing the popular flash game "gemcraft - chapter 0" since the start of the year, I keep coming back in the hope of finishing the last few feindishly frustrating levels.

OTOH if the poster genuinely cannot find anything to play he could do what my 77yo dad did and find enjoyment from learning to write his own games.

Re:Chess

[JockTroll]

And the poppy is also a flower.

I find myself in the same predicament ...

[Aceticon]

... being in my late thirties and having been gaming since I was 15.

As far as I can tell, it's a mix of:

• The "I've seen it all" syndrome: lots of modern games are just rehashes of old formulas and some are even clones of old games (for example the highly hyped "Supreme Commander" was pretty much a clone of "Total Annihilation" from 10 years before). There's no fun or challenge in beating that which you beat already.
• Exceptionally well trained gaming skills: my reaction times are slower than an 18 year old gamer but still superior to those of a non-gamer, I can quickly figure out any game - in fact sometimes I figure out a game by thinking "how would I set it up if I was designing this game" and games are designed to appeal to gamers of average experience and intelligence so most games are just too easy for me. Most games have a pattern to them and there is usually a "method" to beat those: once I figure out the "method", the game stops being fun.
• A lot of modern games are not-casual friendly: if I can't sit down with a game for just 1 or 2 hours and get some enjoyment out of it, then it won't fit my schedule. This means a smaller selection of games that can be fun for me given my time constraints
• Games are still designed to be played by teenager males: these are people who have lots of time and a high-tolerance to "Having to work for your fun". This means that all sorts of cheap tricks are employed when designing games to make them "last longer", mostly boiling down to grind-type activities. Games are made too long for the time available to working adults, have a bad fun-stuff to filler ratio and (in RPGs) have too long intervals between "rewards"

Because I actually like RPGs and like to explore "a large world" in games, at the moment I am providing for my gaming needs with MMORPGs, since they have huge amounts of content and a reasonable price. I stick with the no-grind-required ones, explore the content until I get bored and then move to another one. They tend to be fun even in just 1 or 2 hour sessions and are in fact great value for money.
At the moment it's WoW (huge world, nowhere as grindy now as 4 years ago, new expansion coming next month) and before that it was Lord of the Rings Online (now free to play, beautifull world, lots of story, adult mature players, highly recomended).

Re:Lack of interesting storyline

[L4t3r4lu5]

35 hours is LOOOOOOOONG nowadays. Most AAA titles on the PC come out in 18-20 hours.

OP wants a game where he doesn't feel he has to play all the time. I get the impression that someone without much game time would want a game you can dip in and out of, as opposed to a monolith of narrative and cinematography.

Think of it as like watching Lord of the Rings in 10 minute segments, every week.

VVVVVV

[wildstoo]

VVVVVV is one of the best and most challenging Indie games I've played in quite some time. It's a platformer/puzzle game with an absolutely fantastic chiptune soundtrack and striking C64-style visuals (some objects in the game are inspired by classic C64 games and demos).

Caveat: It can be very difficult... but if you're anything like me it'll sink its teeth into you and demand that you complete it.

Doing Things The Hard Way is an absolute fscker tho. :P

Re:Make some kids

[mcvos]

How about go adopt a kid instead? There's a world full of children that need good parents.

Apparently, but it's getting harder and harder to adopt them. At least where I live.

Re:Yeah..

[unity100]

thats because you are from a generation that didnt grow up gaming. in your time, these stuff that are found in games (spacely stuff, fantasy worlds this that) were desired, but could only be dreamed. your generation grew up with those dreams. those dreams stuck. you are now enjoying games continually because they satisfy your generation.

our generation (early to mid 70s born and later) have grown up WHILE gaming. we didnt have to dream, we had all those dreams satisfied. got space-like ? fire up a space game. watched conan ? fire up conan and play.

we satisfied our shit. your generation, yet didnt.

Re:Chess

[funwithBSD]

No, more like you and your son rebuilding that Honda CB750 into a cafe racer. =)

Re:Chess

[Omestes]

I think he had a valid point though. You can read it as trolling, or you can read it saying "tastes change with age".

I found that I have this problem too, I was slowly finding that most games don't really hold my attention anymore. I was a bit bummed out about this, since I used to be an avid (perhaps to avid) gamer, and found myself pondering whether games themselves got worse the older I got, or if I was just moving past them. Tons of things I loved in my youth are no longer satisfying, not just games. Books and movies I used to love seem rather shallow and stupid now as well.

Its just natural aging. You are not the same person you used to be, events have happened, and you have grown, so its silly to assume that your tastes will remain the same.

I used to really enjoy games like WoW, but slowly I realized that I wasn't having fun. It was work. It was work populated by the lowest common denominator who get great joy about using naughty words like "tits", and think that calling someone "gay" is the height of witty repartee . I don't have the time and patience I once had for it. I used to enjoy most FPS/deathmatch type games, and found that I don't anymore. They are mostly "stealth" games, where I get to spend 6 hours staring at the back of a cover wall, and none of them have really innovated on Quake3 or UT2003. I still manage to enjoy a decent western RPG (totally lost patience for the drama and cut scene heavy Japanese ones, if I wanted annoying drama and characters I would read a Jane Austin novel), Dragon Age was fun, until they started spawning $6000 worth of DLC. Most games are hindered by being mainly console ports though, and I have less patience for working against the design elements than I used to. I have broader experiences, and greater means than I did as a teen or in my early 20s, so I have more alternatives to turn to when games start being arbitrarily frustrating.

The last game to actually get me to obsess over it (meaning play it for 6 straight hours without realizing it) was Minecraft. The honeymoon is slightly over, since I realized there is really nothing much to do after a bit, and the thrill of discovery wears off.

But generally I play for 5 hours, and move on to other, non-gaming, projects. I'm currently plotting a collaborative novel, and it is a bit more appealing and enticing than playing Call of Duty 2001: The Bigactionexplosionbangbanggogoteamamerica Odyssey, as is many other fun projects I have around the house. Instead of trying to avoid being tea-bagged by 13 years olds with more free time than me, I can go out to the local pub with some friends, or read one of the 50 or so books in my "to read" pile. Sometimes going for a nice long hike is more fun... Sometimes studying things just for fun is... etc... Your horizons expand with age. There is no shame in finding your appeal in video games waning.

Re:Chess

[yukk]

I'm in my mid 40's as of about a week ago. I still play games, single and multiplayer, and I still own the kiddies who think they are hot stuff. Getting older doesn't mean you can't have fun.

This could be just how my brain works, but I figure if I'm 40 and I am still able to own kids in fast-paced multiplayer games, then this is actually a BAD thing because it means I've invested way too much time into the game when I should be doing other things with my life. Not to criticize you in any way, it's just a reason why I feel that sucking at such games as one gets older is nothing to be ashamed of at all. Means you've moved onto other, more important things.

No, being able to own those kiddies means his senses, reactions and eye-hand co-ordination are still good at 40. Maybe even great. Let's hope your next surgeon if you need one kicks ass at video games and that the guy behind you on the highway isn't thinking it's too bad his reactions have gone to heck and he can't see well enough to play games any more. Games are just a choice of outlet as someone said. Different things engage different people. That's what makes us individuals.