How long until you give up on a game?

[lacktheknack]

I give up on games very easily.

Well, "give up" isn't the right word. "Am suddenly distracted by something else" is a better term.

If a game wants me to finish it, it has to have an damn good story or a damn good design. The last game I played to completion was Tomb Raider (2013).

 

[DementedSheep]

i played 40 hours of kingdoms of amalur then hit a game breaking glitch which didn't let e get any further in the main story line, and got very angry and sad as i really liked that game.

Ouch. I got around 35 hours in and my computer blew up so I lost my save file. I liked the game but not enough to start again. At least not right now, maybe I'll pick it up again in a few months.

 

[AnthrSolidSnake]

I've stopped playing games because I enjoy them so much I don't want them to end ._.

I've done it with Bioshock Infinite
I've done it with Skyrim
I've done it with GTAV
I've done it with Far Cry 3
I've done it with Half Life 2 I don't know how many times

It usually happens when I come to the realization of "Wow, I've played this a long time, and I'm probably towards the end already...so if I keep playing, it'll all be over. NO THIS CAN'T HAPPEN, I LIKE IT TOO MUCH!!!!"

 

[Bestival]

I have stuff in my steam list that's been played for very little time. Think the lowest is 11 minutes or something. That's the sort of stuff where I just hate the core gameplay/controls/everything.
If I hate it because it's boring or just horribly made (extremely buggy or really shitty voice acting for example) I usually give up after an hour or two.

 

[floppylobster]

Now that I'm old I give up on games within half an hour. Sometimes much less. As soon as I realize I've seen it before, or that the game is padding something out, I'm completely out. I no longer have 8 hours free to discover what my gut is telling me in the first few minutes.

 

[BarkBarker]

Do I got better things to play? If so, the game I'm playing out of pure curiosity better be good or I'll move onto the more assured things. It can be playing for so long and realizing it doesn't get any better than maybe 5 hours in, hell I stopped playing Sleeping Dogs because I came back to it after nearly a weekend session nearly a month back and just sighed, looking at all the things to do and how LONG it would take to do them, all purely for my own enjoyment and not enhancing my experience.

 

[Flammablezeus]

LA Noire was the longest I've persisted without having any interest in finishing the game. I can't remember how many hours it was, but probably half way through I gave up because of how stupidly simple AND broken the game was.

FFXIII only took me an hour or two before I noticed that it was more efficient simply mashing X than actually selecting attacks myself.

However, Crysis 2 takes the cake for me. I rather recently tried playing for 30-60 minutes. I was incredibly disappointed. It doesn't even feel like you're wearing the nanosuit in this one. Also, you walk down static corridors instead of actually having an open, dynamic level. The only part of the nanosuit that got better instead of completely watered down was the stealth mode for some reason. It didn't need to be made that easy. Especially not at the expense of the numerous options we had in the first one. Crysis 2 is basically modern CoD + invisibility mode. They had something special with Crysis and just threw it out the window.

 

[thejackyl]

Depends on the game, and WHY I'm playing.

I played WoW for 4 years, and only had maybe 100 Hours in it that I've had actual fun. (Being and MMO 100 hours is nothing), the rest was grinding and killing time til I needed to do something or a raid occurred that I was going to. I kept playing because while the game was getting tedious, talking with my friends who played it, and their shenanigans, as well as talking to the rest of my guild (nearly 200 people, across like 1500 toons or something.) was fun. I've found myself logging on, and sitting in Dalaran or Stormwind and just talking to my guild, while on skype with my real friends.

I quit that because I was getting bored, and both my IRL friends, and guild friends were quitting.

I've played through Army of Two, twice and it's a boring game, even the first time. However the two people I played through with made the game much more than it is by itself. Luckily the 2nd on was much better, even if it isn't the best game out there.

I played Far Cry 3 for 4 hours and just quit... Came back last night and finished it. I think I bought it Christmas 2012.

90% of my Steam games I've never played, because I got them in $5-$10 bundles (Thanks Humble Bundle).

It's usually when I stop having fun with a game.

 

[dolgion]

I give up on a game if it feels like it has nothing to offer me. If it's not innovative and derivative, at least the gameplay must be enjoyable. Or if the story has potential, I'll slog through. I will also stick through huge initial hurdles if I read online that a game has much to offer after an initial painful phase (Crusader Kings 2 for example). Those games are very satisfying. Sometimes though you just don't "feel" it and can't quit get why people enjoy it (Disgaea) and then I'll just give up on it. Other times a game can be so overwhelming with content and you just know that this will be a huge commitment (any MMO really) and so I'll stop before I invest too much time into it.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

It's not a problem for me because i finish almost everything i play before moving onto the next game...except when a game is so crap that it pisses me off quickly enough to stop me wanting to play it.

 

[PureChaos]

I'll give it a few hours but if I'm not having fun I stop. I don't play that many new games these days so it's very rare for me to give up on a game without at least finishing the main story

 

[duwenbasden]

This boils down to 2 questions:
- Do I care?
- Does the story care about my contributions?

If I do not care about the game/story, or I feel I have no control over the story,
then I'll just stop playing and/or rush through everything just to get it done.

 

[RJ 17]

For me it depends on what "offense" the game is committing that's making me want to not play it any more. For instance, with Final Fantasy 9: I was utterly bored with that game by the end of the first disc and as such didn't bother to play through the rest of the game. Dark Souls, on the other hand, I rented and returned about two hours later. I'm all for a challenge, but I'm in the group that insists that one of the most difficult things about Dark Souls is the actual mechanics. The fights themselves aren't that bad, but when you're marred down with crappy controls it's no wonder you're going to get your ass kicked 20 times before you manage to pass a particular area.

Truth be told, I was done with Arkham Origins by the time you realize "Holy shit, yeah, they did make another Arkham game with Joker as the main villain, despite promising it'd be Black Mask." But at that point I said screw it, might as well finish it up.

So yeah, it's a case-by-case basis for me.

 

[Greg White]

I'll give a game a few hours past the tutorial. If it's not very interesting by then, I have serious doubts that it's getting any better...which may explain why I never got very far in FFXIII.

 

[Atmos Duality]

OT: Depends heavily on the nature of the game, and what issues (if any) arise.
Technical hangups are the quickest way of killing my interest, followed closely by bait-n-switch gameplay (trailer/demo shows one thing, actual game is much different/worse).

I have an especially low tolerance for "misdirection" at this point.

The latter, I don't really deal with anymore because I try to inform myself before buying a game.
The former is a crapshoot, though I expect most releases to fix their game quickly enough before it gets a sales-killing reputation as being unplayable.

A few hours. Five maybe. If a game doesn't have me hooked after 4 hours of gameplay, it's done. I think Yahtzee said it best:

I won't bother quoting specific examples, suffice to say there were a lot of them. The main thrust of the argument was that Monster Hunter Tri totally gets good once you've gotten past the tutorial, which takes about ten hours of gameplay.

Ah, I remember that quote, mostly because Yahtzee was talking directly out of his ass when he said it.
I don't know what his angle was, but Yahtzee was either exaggerating for the sake of comedy, or he told an outright lie to avoid having to actually play the game.

Or maybe for that week he decided the best way to proceed was to play only using his feet, because that's the only way I can imagine how he could spend 10 hours in just the tutorial. (I rented MH:Tri the same week of his review; it took me and my friends maybe an hour at most to get through the tutorial. Including those who had not played any Monster Hunter prior)

A better example would be his FF13 review; because that "game" is just atrocious (pacing and gameplay).

 

[VondeVon]

Reflex games or games with poor controls (or both together) tend to get binned real fast.

The new Sam & Max got binned because of the slow walking speed. I know they fix it in later chapters but frankly the dialogue wasn't good enough to get me there.

 

[sageoftruth]

If I'm not having fun and I'm getting the impression that I've already seen everything this game has to offer, then I'll give up. Persona 4 and Ni No Kuni had very dull and restrictive beginnings, but the reviews all suggested that the real game waited further ahead (and it sure did).
However, then there are other games, where very little seems to change throughout the game. If I'm playing one of those games, I'm not having fun, and there isn't something like an engrossing narrative to encourage me to endure the gameplay, then I'll stop.

 

[Ascarus]

Whenever I stop having fun.

pretty much this. if the game isn't doing its job then it isn't worth my time.