So how long do you play a game , before you decide you don't like it?

madwarper

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Depends on what I don't like about the game...

Bad stories I can ignore, but bad gameplay in unforgivable.

I only played 5 minutes of Morrowind before I ejected the disc to never play again. I had created a character, skimmed the text dump they call "conversation", looted all the items in the building, walked out into the open world, visited a vendor to sell the loot and equip myself, and then got killed by a mudcrab because, thanks to the atrocious combat, I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn.
 

doomed89

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KarmaTheAlligator said:
Oh. Well my point still stands that it doesn't matter if the tutorials are long and needed, if they're boring, you have every right to judge the game by those first impressions and stop playing. You need to be into the game even for those tutorials (or at least enjoying parts of it).
I do agree that there are things you can do to make them less boring, but for games with more complicated mechanics sometimes there just isn't all that much you can do and you need it to be that long for the player to understand it and actually enjoy the game and I don't think it's right to condemn a whole game based merely on the tutorial or introductory part of it. I think it's the only time you should really stick it out. Of course you should read reviews before sticking it out or possessing the game (unless it's at a friends game or something that just happens to be with you when you are bored or whatever)

CrimsonBlaze said:
I don't mind the tutorials; the issue with each of the two games was very specific.

For Mod Racers, the difficulty was ridiculously hard and the AI was unforgiving. After two hours of getting the hang of the controls and abilities, I could only get 2nd place on the first track, on the normal difficulty. I couldn't take it and I stopped playing it immediately.

For Mugen Souls, I wasn't digging the drop to single digit frame rates and the ecchi and moe inspired angle of the game. It felt like a NIS title that was done by Compile Heart, which was one of the reasons that I was first interested in it. The character designs, themes, humor, story, and battle system was reminiscent of several NIS titles, but Compile Heart threw a wrench in the system and made it into a buggy, somewhat glossy, experience with fanservice that is so blatant, I was amazed that I even lasted two hours with this game before I quit.
Yeah none of your exmaples covered what I am saying but saying one hour flat doesn't really work in the games with necessary tutorials but it sounds like you'd give games like that a little leeway anyways.
 

Strelok

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Depends, I can know I will not like a game a few minutes in and I know it will be terrible, for example Halo 2, I can get maybe half way through and know for sure a game is garbage for example Gears of War, or I can painfully drag myself to the end hoping for something good to happen and be disappointed all the way to the end, Far Cry 2.
 

KarmaTheAlligator

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doomed89 said:
KarmaTheAlligator said:
Oh. Well my point still stands that it doesn't matter if the tutorials are long and needed, if they're boring, you have every right to judge the game by those first impressions and stop playing. You need to be into the game even for those tutorials (or at least enjoying parts of it).
I do agree that there are things you can do to make them less boring, but for games with more complicated mechanics sometimes there just isn't all that much you can do and you need it to be that long for the player to understand it and actually enjoy the game and I don't think it's right to condemn a whole game based merely on the tutorial or introductory part of it. I think it's the only time you should really stick it out.
There are plenty of ways to make even a long, complicated tutorial interesting, an easy one being if the story itself is interesting. If it's boring it doesn't bode well for the rest of the game.

Of course you should read reviews before sticking it out or possessing the game (unless it's at a friends game or something that just happens to be with you when you are bored or whatever)
I never read reviews, because I don't like having my views of something tinted by other people's opinions before I even try it. And in many cases, it turned out that I did enjoy a game that many other people disliked (FFXIII being one of them). Never judge anything unless you've tried it yourself.
 

Miss G.

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The first FF game I got was FFX-2 and after numerous tries to complete it and maybe 70 hours into my last try I gave up and hated it. I decided to give the series another shot because Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories was great and its a Square title so I got FFXII and I loved it so much, I had 128+ hours of fun on it. Now compare that to FFXIII on which I lasted 7 hours... at least 1 hour of that was because I had the game paused/was trying to understand the encyclopedia they give instead of real exposition AND I couldn't get invested in anything. It really was like they took the worst parts of X's linearity, X-2's lack of certain FFness, and XII's auto-battling and had an abomination together.

I tend to stick with titles and franchises I know I will love like Pokemon, Kingdom Hearts or SMT so I don't run into this problem often. Usually if a game is something I'm not sure about but looks interesting I'll look at a gameplay video or get a suggestion from my brother and decide from there as it usually prevents me from buying something I won't like. Deadpool is probably the only game I have that I haven't done that with 'cuz I just got into the character and pre-ordered it since they announced it. I love it though, so this is an exception.
 

FootloosePhoenix

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Depends on the game in question. I played Skyrim for a little over a hundred hours before realizing that I hated everything about it especially its smile, though that had at least a little something to do with my trophy-addiction being at its absolute worst around then. Still kind of pisses me off that I didn't get the game's platinum before reaching the point where I cannot possibly play it anymore, even for a half-hour...I don't hate many things, you know, but the seeds of pure rage towards its very existence that--hmm, wait, what was this thread about again? Oh yeah.

Then there are other times where I play a game for five minutes and want to throw it out the window. Thankfully this only tends to happen with demos or games I haven't spent money on (PS+ "free" games chiefly), so I don't feel like I've just wasted money on something I despise immediately. Last time that I can think of in which this particular case has occurred was when I played the Devil May Cry reboot demo; I just knew right away that it wasn't my thing and I didn't bother finishing it. But usually I try to give a game at least an hour if I'm unimpressed with it or otherwise conflicted about whether I want to continue playing it or not.
 

PeterMerkin69

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I can usually tell right away. I've been a gamer for two and a half decades, by now there's just no way for me not to know what I'll like and what I won't. Even when I've relented and tried games that otherwise looked terrible but which my friends convinced me were totally awesome, I've always found my initial analyses to be the more reliable.

An example of this is Battlefield 3. Today I downloaded and patched it, making it my first incursion into the series since BF: 1943. I hated it then and, within the first five minutes of playing, I knew I would still hate it today. There were action prompts, it felt like every other action shooter I've played, I got hit multiple times while shooting fifty guys on a train without feeling like anything happened to me, the sound effects were anemic, and then I turned it off. I haven't tried multiplayer yet which, historically, has been where it's at for fans of this series, but I don't have high hopes for that either. What I know of the mechanics makes it look like even more of an arcade shooter than Call of Duty and I don't like Call of Duty because it's an arcade shooter. No problemo.
 

Exius Xavarus

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[sub][sub]I loved Lord of the Rings: War in the North.[/sub][/sub]

I can usually tell when I will or won't like a game. If I'm not enjoying myself from the get-go, I'm not interested in playing it anymore. But that rarely happens. Actually, I can't remember the last time that happened. :/
 

KoudelkaMorgan

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It varies greatly sometimes. I knew I hated Bayonetta after about 2 levels. I knew Eternal Poison wasn't for me after 1.

Yet I played all through Arkham Asylum and Darksiders before deciding I really didn't like them enough to play them again.
 

Vausch

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Depends on 2 factors:

How much I paid for it, and how long the shit continues.

If I paid 60 and I don't like the game within 2 hours, it's done.

If I go more than 2 hours doing something that is slow, samey, tedious, boring, interminable,and isn't even feeling like a fun grind like say getting the parts for a weapon in Kingdom Hearts, game goes to the "trade-in" bin.
 

Dirty Hipsters

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Typically about 2 hours.

My philosophy is that if I'm willing to waste two hours of my life watching a shitty movie I'm willing to spend the same amount of time playing a shitty video game before I decide I'm finished with it. I can figure out whether or not I like the mechanics of the game in 30 minutes, but I tend to give it 2 hours to see if the story will be interesting enough to get me to play regardless of how bad the mechanics are (I have yet to find a game I wanted to play that had shitty mechanics but an ok story).

There are some exceptions, like in the case of RPGs were 2 hours just isn't enough to get into the story. I gave Mass Effect 5 hours before I decided I just didn't care enough to finish.
 

shrekfan246

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KoudelkaMorgan said:
It varies greatly sometimes. I knew I hated Bayonetta after about 2 levels. I knew Eternal Poison wasn't for me after 1.

Yet I played all through Arkham Asylum and Darksiders before deciding I really didn't like them enough to play them again.
Peaches go well with cream, don't they?

I think there's a bit of a difference between not liking something and not liking it enough to play it a second time, though. But that may be because it's pretty rare that I go through games multiple times...
 

The Lugz

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krazykidd said:
Pretty simple question . How long will you play a game before deciding you don't like it and call it quits.

And bonus question : what was the last game you quit because you didn't like it?
depends how horrifically bad it is,

i've seen some reviews on youtube balked at the art style or the gameplay and just quit the video ( before even listening to anything, so if that counts literally negative ownership time.

and mmo's are my most played before quitting because people just end up aggravating me too much

i gave up on remember me AND metro last light

but decided to give both of them another shot after seeing some reviews and comments about the later game so i finished them and i'm kinda glad i did.

the only games ive given up on totally are Scratches
( 2d point n click, supposed to be a nice story, except it bugs out all the time.. )

and Off-Road Drive
which is just a bad bland game that is oversold, and stupidly expensive for the content.
( don't even bother googling it, it's that bad )

oh, and every mmo i've ever tried obviously.. or i'd still be playing them because.. mmore .. mmore!! AGH!!!
 

AuronFtw

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Depends entirely on the game. Sometimes it's buggy as hell, sometimes the input is just awful, sometimes the characters are just hilariously poorly done, sometimes the voice acting is really annoying.

Depending on the type and severity of shittiness, I quit earlier or later. I quit kotor 2 after about an hour despite loving the first one, pretty much everything about it was just worse. Occasionally games will have someone you just want to kick in the teeth, but every single npc in kotor2 was like that, so I just peaced.
 
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kinda depends on the genre, i'll usually play rpg's for about 2-3 hours (USUALLY, depends on how fucking boring/dry the story is) before i decide to hit it it or quit it, and shooters (as in CoD/Battlefield type shit) I usually can decide if i'll like it or not in about a half hour, if it's an fps it'll probably take even less than that.

RTS's i'll give about 2 hours, depending on how annoying the UI and learning curve of the mechanics are, and what the goal/objective is (I like empire earth where there is alot to do, while games like starcraft it's just build/spam/build/spam while micromanaging to the millionth degree)

fighting games (outside of dissidia, love that game) i can play for a half hour max, i get really annoyed/bored with them fast, so i can't stand them regardless

edit: the last game i put down probably was the black mesa mod, even that great mod couldn't save me from beating that damn game.
 
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I'll usually spend a few hours if I'm unsure which side I'm going to lean on. For example, I wasn't sure if I liked Bioshock, but the more I played it, the worse it got. Since I did actually like the beginning, I finished the whole thing just to see if it got better in the end (it did not). That's one of the rare games that, in the end, I didn't like, but completed it anyway.

On a more common basis, if I don't like something with the first few hours of gameplay, I feel justified in quitting and assuming the rest is just more of the same. I see no point in finishing a game to completion, if I'm going to hate it and have zero fun the entire time through. That seems silly.
 

Racecarlock

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doomed89 said:
Racecarlock said:
The whole damn story mode. If I'm going to not like a game, it's going to be based on hours and hours of bullshit. I still avoid some games based on gameplay videos and reviews though.
So you waste hours doing something you don't like just to feel justified in saying that's crap?

I normally play to the end of the demo, unless I really hate it and can't even make it that far. If there's no demo I usually just watch gameplay videos and READ user reviews to see if I'll like it. I'm less likely to call a game bad if I haven't played it but when it's obviously crap I will after I've researched it like FFXIII.
Don't get me wrong. I read plenty of reviews before going in. But I guess I have that same kind of spirit that AVGN and AngryJoe and other reviewers have. I will not let a bad game beat me. I have to see every single shitty part so I can warn other people not to waste their money.
 

Shoggoth2588

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It depends on the game really. I didn't like Final Fantasy XIII from the first quarter hour but when I found out about chapter-based level caps that's when the rage started building to the point that I no longer wanted to play. Grand Pulse (or whatever it is 11 hours in) was where I stopped because I just felt lied to by that point.
 

Zykmiester

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I like to give a game a couple of hours of gameplay time. If the story or gameplay hasn't made me want to continue after 2 or 3 hours than I will usually refuse to give it any more of my time. I don't accept that it gets better later as an excuse for a crap game like FFXIII.

The last couple of games I gave up on were Monster Hunter Tri Ultimate and F.3.A.R.