Note to self:

STAY AWAY from XMOT7's house! :P

Good luck doing that on anything but the easiest difficulty settings. Dude is neither stealthy nor tanky.

And what about the final boss (Sunday)?

Hmm. Lots of games I don't really play anymore, but never really thought about it from an age perspective. A long time ago I loved Crash Bandicoot; playing it these days would probably annoy me. Just no longer interested in doing the same platform-y things over and over.

Also gave up on first-person shooters years ago.

These days most of my favorites are "slower" (eg, Rimworld, Cogmind, trucking sims, Minecraft) but I also still love older games (mainly of the rpg and rts variety) and newer games that hearken back to that era.

But anyway, for me it's not so much a declining appetite for violence as it is a lower tolerance for twitch-happy games.

As I've grown older, I've come to lose my taste for mindlessness, violent or otherwise.

A lot of AAA violent games are pretty conservative and formulaic once you get past the violent bits, hence not that interesting to me.

I play games to thread new neural pathways, not waste time in the well formed grooves of my brain.

Absolutely, the whole point of Postal is doing the things that no well-adjusted person would ever actually do. IMHO, Postal 2 is even more so as the 3dness of it makes for a more realistic world.

And let's be honest about it, how many people haven't fantasized about some of that stuff on a particularly bad day?

Nah, you're fine. Quake 4 just isn't an enjoyable shooter.

Me too, but only with (hyper)realistic graphics. I still enjoy turning my enemies into giblets in Unreal and Quake.

Sort of.

I was injured a few months ago and since then I can no longer stomach violent shows like The Walking Dead or Dexter any more.

I don't seem to be bothered by games though.

I think it depends on how real it seems.

It is mostly a case of being jaded by the gameplay and dressing in my case. Unfortunately, I also have a very technical viewpoint: there is all kinds of bad design that can pop up, and I go "They could make that better". Makes it hard to enjoy the game itself, but it is kinda fun hunting down bugs and flaws.

In any case, I been slowly but figuring out the stuff that I don't like. I don't like it when a game wastes my time with randomized loot or lacks the ability to hi-light usable objects. Original Sin 2 commits this, and odds are that I won't be buying Larian games because they don't make me feel good.

When it comes to violence, it seems like I have a high tolerance - but violence also usually bores me. Shadow Warrior 2 and Borderlands something or another put me to sleep.

Kind of. Mostly. Back then I did not mind mass murdering my way to a games goal and had my laughs with Mortal Kombat finishing moves and similar. Now? Sometimes I need my occasional berserk rampage; but overall I really appreciate if I have peaceful options in a game; having more fun talking sense into NPCs then beating sense into them. Give the times I do get violent on some chosen few really evil bastards more relevance too IMO. The Mortal Kombat finishers these days? I don't laugh anymore. Maybe its just taste or because they became so much more realistic looking or a mix of both but I could not stomach it anymore. Is there a wuss edition for people who only like the pretty graphics and choreography? :P

Letr's mak a wishlist entry for Mortal Combat: Unicorn Edition :)

Yeah, could be fun to rip a unicorns spine out and then beat my little pony with it.

Well ... that's not quite what I meant ... :D

It may not be directly related to violence itself (because it's not about grit and gore), but with the passing years I grew tired of physical fights in movies. As a kid, I loved Terence Hill and Bud Spencer movies, which are 90% (silly) fistfights, and those were the selling point. Fights were a reason to watch a film. Now they bore me, they BORE ME, to no end. I enjoy the odd Marvel movie for its charismatic actors and fun banter, but whenever one of these obligatory epic 40 minutes fights start, it's really "oh shit, there we go again" yawn. Punch into wall, punch back through other buiding, punch back into ground, got it got it, can we skip to the moment one arbitrarily decides to flee or to stay down (arbitrarily because being hit by a thrown bus has no effect on anyone until the script decides it has) ?

I've felt like that for a while now, especially in conventional fights where the victor is obvious (like the last confrontation between the good guy and the baddie). One exception is the James Bond fights, which are often more like point and click adventures - which fighter will use which piece of furniture which way. And the Ant Man fights had the nice touches of the camera zooming out and replacing a traditional crumbling building by an electric train falling over with a little 'thump'. So, a bit of inventive strategy, a bit of humour, can save a fight. But the super epic punchy run-off-the-mill alpha-badassery smack-a-thons just make me check my mobile phone.

Jaded, maybe.

Lol, I'd vote for that. ( :