Poll: How long do you try a game before you give up on it?

[Dirge Eterna]

So recently I finished playing Borderlands 2, been playing since January pretty much exclusively and I was looking for a new game to play. I had purchased the Napoleon and Empire Total War games, DragonAge Origins, Elder Scrolls Oblivion and the Overlord series from a Steam sale so I figured I would give them a shot. I love RTS games so I thought the Total War games would be just what I was looking for and well I think the games are well done but I find the style of warfare boring. I tend to be very armor and aircraft heavy when I play a RTS. The massed infantry ranks aren't that exciting for me as an armored breakthrough. I spent about 11 hours total between the two games before I was dreading playing again. Spent about 3 hours trying to get into DragonAge and I am still not really enjoying myself, the camera angles and controls are annoying me. I started the Elder Scrolls universe with Skyrim so it isn't really a surprise for me that I am having a problem acclimating to the older game but I have played about 3 hours as well and I ended up putting it aside for now. I have over 300 hours logged on Skyrim so I do enjoy the universe just not the game so far. I only spent about an hour on Overlord as it is ok just not what I am looking for right now. There are other games I have started, stopped, deleted and came back to before but not recently and not with as much of a feeling of forcing myself to try to like them. I suppose some of that is from all the rave reviews I have heard and read for the TW series ,DA and Oblivion.

So how long do you give a new game to grow on you before you shelve it?

 

[Zhukov]

Until I no longer have the desire to play it. Exactly how long that takes varies from game to game.

I rarely find myself self rage-quitting. Usually it's more of an apathy-quit. The game ceases to engage and I just sorta forget to play it for a few weeks.

Dark Souls and Shadowrun Returns recently went this way. Borderlands 2 came dangerously close too, but I was close to the end, so I just skipped all the remaining side missions and powered through to the end.

 

[MetalDooley]

I try to give games a fair go so generally between 3-5 hours.My attitude is that if a game hasn't grabbed my attention by that stage then it probably never will

 

[piinyouri]

Depends. I can usually tell when me and a game are just going to be incompatible in the long run or if it's just a tough spot.

 

[Dirge Eterna]

Until I no longer have the desire to play it. Exactly how long that takes varies from game to game.

I rarely find myself self rage-quitting. Usually it's more of an apathy-quit. The game ceases to engage and I just sorta forget to play it for a few weeks.

Dark Souls and Shadowrun Returns recently went this way. Borderlands 2 came dangerously close too, but I was close to the end, so I just skipped all the remaining side missions and powered through to the end.

Yeah I am the same way, just apathetic to it to play more than anger. I tend to get apathetic to a game if I have hit all the goals like level ups and advancements while there is still a lot of the game left. In BL2 after I hit the level cap I was not that into playing but after I got the DLC to raise the cap I was more into it again. In Skyrim once I hit the level cap on all my skills I just finished the main quest and started a new character.

 

[Timotei]

I usually give a game a 12 hour playthrough. If the game is shorter than that, I'll play through it again using a different method than before. I'll decide whether to uninstall of not.

Biggest factor in this decision is of course whether the game felt like a chore. A good game never feels its length.

 

[KarmaTheAlligator]

About two months ago, I would have said I give it a couple hours. Now, it depends. I've had plenty of games lately (mostly free to play games) that I found fun for the first few hours, but then they became extremely boring (or had some really bullshit features that rubbed me the wrong way, or maybe they had such a difficulty spike that it became near unplayable for me) and I gave up on them then.

 

[Joccaren]

Until I have no desire to play it.

Dark Souls I stopped playing before I even started. Had heard about the terrible controls, figured I'd somehow manage to fix them. Nope, irreparably terrible, and you can't even remap many of the buttons to a button that might actually work. My first, second and third preferences for button layouts for this game were unable to be used. AND it didn't like using the same buttons for camera and menu control, which should be completely different things. The second I knew I couldn't get the controls to work, I was uninterested. Its honestly just not worth it when 90% of the challenge in the game would be the shit controls.

Assassins Creed III I gave up on after the second ship mission. Would have given up earlier had I not heard that the ship missions were good. Thoroughly average game that had me interested at the start, but then went into gratuitous cutscenes on top of its average plot and annoying scripted stealth game play. Not the sort of game I'd have hoped it to be.

Mass Effect 3 I managed to finish, despite everything it did from the first few seconds of the game pissing me off [Exception of the main Tuchanka mission line. The side missions were shit]. After that though I couldn't get past the Citadel on my first replay. There was pretty much nothing in that game worth playing for.

Dead Space 3 I got about 4 hours into before I decided it wasn't really my type of game. Nothing I really had against it, as I'd barely played it, it just wasn't for me.

It really does depend on how quickly the game pisses me off, and how attached I am to the series. ME3 got a full playthrough as although it did everything in its power to piss me off, I loved the ME series. AC3 and DS3 I had never touched the other games of, had no attachment to the series, and thus whilst they didn't piss me off as much, I lost interest and stopped playing rather quickly. Dark Souls... It sounds interesting, and I really want to give it a go, but the control system is unforgivable. Not going to happen.

 

[Bertylicious]

When I can no longer take it anymore, when I find myself exclaiming "oooohhhh God" upon learning I have to trudge through a million miles of snow to pick up and/or stab a maguffin for the umpteenth time, when my legs start aching with a desire to run around in circles outside and leap, leap, leap and just fucking LIVE rather than sit for a moment longer feeling my life bleed out my eyeballs into this vacuous and boring wound of a game, then I will uninstall it and play more of the Starsector alpha.

It's difficult to put a time limit on that though. Sometimes it is months, sometimes minutes.

 

[Raikas]

Until it stops being entertaining.

So it could be 20 minutes and it could be 20 hours.

 

[DeimosMasque]

Basically until it bores me.

For example Operation Raccon City got a whole 15 minutes before I was like "yup, done with that." While last time I played Saint's Row 1 I played for over ten hours before I decided to go to another game for a bit.

 

[Davey Woo]

I'll give a game an hour, if a game has done nothing for me in the first hour, then it doesn't deserve any more of my time. Though I tend to at least TRY and spend as much time as possible on a game if it is a trial, like most MMO's I've tried, but even then sometimes I give up without using up all the available time.

 

[Mister K]

It really depends on the game and on my will to find good points about the game.

I gave up playing FFXII before the very last boss, because I was trying to somehow prove to myself that this game is at the very least decent.

I gave up playing The Last of Us really early, because I just jumped on a hype train without knowing anything about the game and got dissapointed very soon.

 

[King of Asgaard]

I am mostly tolerant and will endeavour to finish games despite their annoyances.

Mostly.

A recent example of a game I couldn't finish was Catherine. I got to the 6th tower I think before I put the controller down after getting to the top only to realise I fucked up and would have to redo the whole damned thing. Had the story actually engaged me, I would have gritted my teeth and powered through, but I just couldn't convince myself that the way Vincent handled the situation wasn't monumentally stupid. I watched my brother play the rest, and even helped him out a couple of times, but I couldn't work up the enthusiasm to finish the game myself.

Another example is Final Fantasy XIII. I got maybe five hours in before I realised what a massive waste of time it is.

As for OP, it really all depends on the game. I got quite a ways into Catherine before I stopped, but FFXIII couldn't hold my attention for more than an hour at a time.

 

[CleverCover]

I quit Star Ocean after ten minutes, Oblivion after ten hours and this other game that I can't even remember after about five.

I keep playing until I'm sure I'm not going to get any enjoyment out of it at all....or, in Star Ocean's case, the voice acting makes my ears bleed.

 

[00slash00]

It depends how much hype there is around it and the type of game.

I got half way through Final Fantasy 10-2 before giving up, because I know jrpgs often require time to really build up steam.
I quit Assassins Creed 2 because I just could figure out what the fuck was going on.

I didn't like The Last of Us but everyone talked about the game like it cured cancer. I thought the controls were awful, the story was comically cliche and predictable, and a lot of the game play choices were questionable at best (what's this arena shooter doing in my stealth game?). To be fair, the story did get better once I got like 70% through the game. Still, I would have very okay with not experiencing that game. 20+ hours of my life that I wouldn't mind having back

 

[ImperialSunlight]

Dark Souls I stopped playing before I even started. Had heard about the terrible controls, figured I'd somehow manage to fix them. Nope, irreparably terrible, and you can't even remap many of the buttons to a button that might actually work. My first, second and third preferences for button layouts for this game were unable to be used. AND it didn't like using the same buttons for camera and menu control, which should be completely different things. The second I knew I couldn't get the controls to work, I was uninterested. Its honestly just not worth it when 90% of the challenge in the game would be the shit controls.

If you're playing on PC, you have to connect a controller and use it (preferably PS3), because Dark Souls is made for a controller. I think you'll find the controls on a controller (which were all that existed before the shitty PC port) are actually quite fantastic.

 

[Tortilla the Hun]

Usually until I feel there's no hope of me getting further interested in the game, if the game just feels broken, or if I have to start trying to have fun, as in the feelings of satisfaction feel forced if that makes any sense (long day). Then there are times, though few I've encountered, when a segment/enemy in a game just seems almost impossible to beat. I'm looking at you, Shao Kahn! Anywho, I can usually determine what game will interest me before I make the purchase, so I rarely encounter this problem.

 

[mohit9206]

I dont understand the options.What does until it bores me supposed to mean?But until how long until it bores me ? 2-5 hours for me.

 

[s0p0g]

stuff about TW, DA, Overlord and TES

i usually give them (or cannot stand more than) something between 2-5 hours, if they fail to suck me right in.

regarding the TW series: if you like motorised warfare you couldn't be much more wrong - given the settings that's just not going to happen
i had a real tough time getting into DA, too:
when it was first released back then a friend of mine insisted that i'd give it a shot; so i did, and it just felt...wrong. the movement felt sluggish, the camera was ok, but a bit off, then there was Alistair (from his attitude to his haircut, not one thing i liked), the "mature" presentation of the game (nope, hectolitres of blood and slomo-"FINISH HIM!"s do not make your fantasy game more mature), the combat felt a bit like a try to create a modern BG 2 feel (what it didn't do)... it just didn't click the first time.
then i played DA2 this year (got my hands on it for almost no money, so hey, why not?), which had quite a different tone; it took itself less serious; completely different, more or less unique, fast paced combat; enjoyable characters; (repetetive caves xD ); an interesting storyline - it managed to suck me right into the DA-world, i read its fluff online etc... then i started DA 1 once again, and now that i knew i'd like the world i could really enjoy the game (also replacing Alistair with Shale (yes, i also got the DLC, optimist that i am) helped a lot xD ). the add-on still sucked, though. more like a tacked-on. oh well.

Overlord was a rare case of entertaining until short before the end, so i ended up uninstalling it when i was almost through (got kind of stuck in the desert, which didn't help either xD ) - but until then i had a blast

i really can't say anything about Oblivion. the only contact with TES was Morrowind when it was already old-ish, when a friend wanted to show it to me (or rather a shitload of mods). i got it for a couple of bucks, started, wandered around and couldn't help but feel a BIT lost. then i stumbled upon a big city, which was basically dead. that was when i decided to wave good-bye ^^