How long until you give up on a game?

[simmysims]

So I got bored of LA Noire about 3/4s of the way through but felt I needed to finish it and plowed through without having much fun. Now I'm a little more than halfway through Prototype (I like buying older games on Steam for $2.50) and I've given up on the story and the gameplay is getting repetitive. I feel guilty just stopping without completing the main storyline but I also have about 140 titles in my Steam queue waiting for me.

What do you guys do?

 

[Catfood220]

It depends, if the game starts out fun and tails off towards he end, I will generally see it through and then either sell it or keep it in case I get nostalgic and feel like playing it again. But if I start a game and it sucks and gets worse (I'm looking at you Resident Evil 6, yes I have played you now, you suck) then I have no problem turning it off and playing something else.

 

[EeveeElectro]

Some games have been so unbearably bad I gave up after about half an hour.

Some I've played for hours then slowly realised it always veers off in the same direction so I get bored and stop playing, or some just start sucking. Sometimes if it's too hard I'll sulk and not go back to it.

It takes a lot to get me to stop playing though, I'm stupidly stubborn.

 

[Foolery]

Whenever I stop having fun. If I'm not engaged by a game, I can't force myself to keep playing. Doesn't necessarily mean I won't finish it. Some titles are better bits at a time.

 

[shrekfan246]

It depends on the game.

Most of the time I don't give up so much as lose interest and go on to other things for long enough that going back to the previous game is a hassle in itself.

But when it does happen, it's usually dependent on the time when I determine I'm not enjoying myself and don't have the energy or determination to push past whatever is bugging me.

Pokemon Black/White, I disliked the UI, the region, the insistence on shoving the dialogue in the player's face every ten minutes, and most of the Pokemon designs for that generation, but the real turning point was at about the fifth or sixth Gym, maybe ten hours in or so, where I realized after having not played the game for a month or two that I had no idea where I was supposed to be going or what I should be doing.

Baldur's Gate, I just cannot get past the implementation of AD&D rules in a video game. Maybe it's because you start out at level 1, maybe it's because I have little experience with old-school western RPGs, but the combat in the two Baldur's Gate games starts out so inexorably boring and tedious and frustratingly random that I just can't be bothered getting to a point where the player's party is actually competent. Two hours into the first game I came across a normal traveling location between the starting area and a town down south that you're supposed to go to that took me the better part of another two hours and more save reloads than I ever had to make in the entirety of a Dragon Age: Origins playthrough just to pass. So after about my fiftieth death over the course of five hours, give or take, I decided I was done. I get the appeal, and still want to give something like Neverwinter Nights a better bash because I love Knights of the Old Republic myself and don't know why I can't get into the D&D games, but it just infuriates me.

Final Fantasy XIII, I talk about too much. Far too much. I've talked about it today, because threads about it are inexplicably popping up again. But I gave it just about twelve hours before I couldn't go any further, and then almost exactly three years later I tried to give it another go because I had a hankering to see if I could stomach it better with a different perspective. Short answer is, no I couldn't. Didn't even take half an hour before I had to turn it off again.

 

[Pseudonym]

Just stop playing. If I'm not having fun I'm not having fun. Some games are praised to the moon by people who apparently enjoy things I don't so I've often got games which disappointed once I got my hands on them. There have been games which I just didn't manage to get into because they didn't have any kind of worthwhile tutorial. Ussually I want to know some basic things like: where am I going, how am I supposed to be doing this. Some games however don't tell you this. Take a game like Zelda: windwaker (havent played many other zelda's) It won't tell you all manner of really basic stuff at all. I remember just standing around in a room with my newly aquired boomerang, never having played a zelda game before wondering "wtf does this boomerang do that's so special?" Well, apparently I was supposed to know somehow that the boomerang could hit multiple things in one throw but the game never told me. And supposedly figuring that out is some kind of 'puzzle' or 'gameplay.' I didn't stop because I had a friend who kept assuring me that it was a great game once you got into it and occasionally told me what I was supposed to do but that kind of thing is ussually enough to make me quit games. I stopped playing the original xcom, the witcher 2 and half-life all within the fist few hours because those games seem to withold information from me so I just stand around for some time trying to figure out what the hell the game expected of me before deciding "never mind, I'm not having fun so I'm going to play something else". So lack of tutorials piss me of. (I prefer games with simple mechanics that can lead to all kinds of different situations so I can get into them easily without them lacking variation)

On occasion I can just tell a game is bad/not to my tastes within the first hour or so. Especially with shooters I've played enough of them to just no longer have much patience for first person jumping puzzles, boss fights where the boss can only be defeated by spamming a gazillion bullets into them, cover-systems combined with narrow levels and no opportunity for flanking, bad controls or auto-aim.

Like I said at the beginning of this post. If a game is not to your tastes for whatever reason and you don't find yourself enjoying it, I recommend you just go play something else. Whenever I encounter games with bad tutorials or bad gameplay or a bad story (whatever that game is focussed on) I just quit.

 

[DementedSheep]

I don't really have a set stopping point. It depends on how bad it is, whether I think its going to get better and if I have other new games to play. I use to force myself to finish games because I paid for it dammit! which is really stupid because that just means you waste money and time.

It still usually takes me a while though. It took me 6 hours to give up on Dead Island and 17 hours (which is longer than I've played some games I actually like) to give up on Divinity 2. There are some games I even finished despite not liking them. Rpg's tend to get more leniency because sucking at the start is unfortunately a problem many of them have. Hydrophobia only took me me 30 minutes to give up on and I can't even complete the demo for Castlevania: lord of shadows.

 

[Folksoul]

End credits or severe difficulty spike or if the game refuses to run properly. I tend to play games twice+. Once completely on the story's terms, and then I go through on my terms.

 

[RealRT]

It's not about time. Some games I abandon for no apparent reason, not giving up on them specifically. Others piss the hell out of me and I drop them instantly (it usually involves a difficulty spike).

 

[Someone Depressing]

Does the game really, really suck?

Five minutes, place your bets.

 

[WaReloaded]

I have less trouble giving up on games and more trouble simply beginning them. My Steam backlog is immense...

 

[Easton Dark]

I really need to be sure that what I dislike is a symptom of the entire game and not just a particular section.

- Morrowind is given up because dice rolls for anything and everything.

- Crysis 2 is given up because closed city streets are fucking boring.

- Human Revolution is not given up due to the boss fights, because those are few and far between.

So I take about an hour or two to really get a feel for how awful parts of a game are.

And unfortunately, some games are given up because a new game comes out that is actually just an improved version. I will never play Orcs Must Die again, because Orcs Must Die 2 exists. I will never play Hitman 2 again, because Blood Money exists. Etc.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

It's totally not a time thing. More recently, I remember dropping Binary Domain after about an hour because I knew its bland aping of Gears of War was never going to work for me.

My wife still gives me hell about Final Fantasy XIII. I played through the whole entire game, though I was never once happy about it. It was apparently amusing to see me be so persistent in the finishing of a game despite being very vocal about everything that was wrong with it. But that was a brand loyalty thing.

You could also say I "gave up" on World of Warcraft because I never saw what happened with Calaclysm onward, but I had to stop that for my health and sanity. I actually decided to start a blog because I was tired of starting games I couldn't imagine finishing, and getting to write about what was wrong is a great motivation when there's no inherent fun or immersion.

I suppose "dollars spent" factors in too, one is probably less likely to quit after an hour when there's $60 to account for.

 

[The Wykydtron]

I gave up on Witcher 2 a while back because the setting and pretty much entire universe rubbed me the wrong way. I'm trying it again on PC right now and it's a little less unbearably grimdark than I remember. I'm still a step away from dropping it though.

I tend to drop things for absolutely no reason, I hit the very last boss fight in Vanilla Skyrim then just dropped it entirely. Yep cool dragon fight past this one door, nope not interested anymore. I dropped Catherine after all the plot twists were explained simply because I liked the idea of Vincent drowning his sorrows at the bar before his final areas more than actually doing those final areas... Come on, the song "Alone" from the Persona 4 soundtrack unlocked for that very scene, am I going to let that go?

I'm replaying it now though, (Quadrangle so hard T_T) i'm done dicking around unlike my last run. No hesitation, full ultimate Katherine attempt. I just get the feeling that if you hover around the middle hesitantly Vincent's natural fear of commitment will just bite him in the dick and he'll be left with nothing. Also my preference in women has apparently evolved into liking Katherine's whole overbearing ***** with a heart of gold that appears for like 2 seconds before more bitchiness personality. Thinking about it that's my natural attraction to tsundere characters at work again...

Also turtleneck sweaters and glasses are so hype right now.

 

[verdant monkai]

It depends on what is making me want to give up.

If its boring then about 2 hours.
If the controls suck about 30 mins.
If the story is bad and its an rpg then about 3 hours.

Oddly specific I know.

 

[Kurt Cristal]

On console I couldn't finish Prototype. The difficulty and unfairness far exceeded my willingness to see the already mediocre plot thru to the end.

Ahaha, Doom 3. First time was actually because I was too scared. Now I'm playing it retrospectively and haven't beaten it because I'm too bored. Even in BFG edition, the game hasn't aged that well for me.

Then there's Amnesia. Got too annoyed at one level too continue. I was genuinely scared but I was starting to get more and more frustrated over scared with the sanity mechanics and getting lost too often.

The Bridge is an interesting puzzle game but I just lost interest.

Hotline Miami is a fantastic game but got way too hard.

Just Cause 2 is a game I love love love, but just somehow never beat it. It's more fun to play that do any of the half-assed story missions.

 

[Saltyk]

A lot of what has been said applies to me. Especially about it being a thing that varies, but mostly comes down to whether I'm enjoying it or not and why that is.

But I wanted to add one that may not have been said from what I saw in the thread so far.

I stopped playing Crisis Core because I didn't want Zack to die.

Yes, I literally stopped playing it because I suddenly realized that Zack would die in the end. And I didn't want him to die. And the Hell of it is I knew going in that he would die. The game might as well have been called "Zack Dies at the End". I didn't think it would bug me. But I came to really like him. Probably as much as, or even more than, Cloud or Sephiroth. And his eventual death bugged me.

I did go back and finish it, and even complete all the Side Quests, though. Still I really hated to see Zack die.