So you ever get that feeling where you're playing a game, and you might be enjoying yourself, then you come to a point in the game where suddenly something in the story causes you to believe that there's an entire new half or quarter of the game left to complete, and you are suddenly tired and wanting to give up?

I've been recently playing Vampire: The Masquerade- Bloodlines, and again, I stress that I've been enjoying myself (it's not an unenjoyable game, despite all the bugginess), but it has been quite a journey, and then suddenly, one of the characters say "Oh, you need to go to this new area to do this new quest for me". Now the list of potentially accessible areas are shown right from the start of the game, so I really shouldn't have been surprised here, but the idea that there's a whole new fifth of the game remaining makes me a bit...tired.

After I experienced that, I thought back to many of the other situations where I felt similarly. One was Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning. I'd been playing in the starting area for ages, again, enjoying myself, plodding along the story, and then at one point, instead of the foresty place, a new area opened up- the desert, and I thought "Wait, so there's going to be approximately the same amount of time I've already spent , spent again in this new area?!", and again, I got that sense of tiredness.

This also happens not relating to opening of new areas. You know that trope where you fight a boss, and then the boss kills you, or you can't defeat it, or it escapes, and the story implies that you're going to have to build up to defeating it again much later? Often it is applied at the start of the game, as an impetus to set off on your journey. But then there are many games which have this occur several hours in, which can again stretch the bounds of your engagement with the game.

Guess what I'm saying is that I feel there is a certain amount of "game" that game has to offer- rules and frameworks for moves/abilities to be used in to interact with the game world, and a game might continue to do the same so that and you wouldn't notice (or you would if you weren't enjoying yourself), up until the game tells you "Oh, there's a whole lot of this stuff left to go", and you start questioning whether you need to continue.

So in a simplified example, you're playing a game, with the default punch and the gameplay is new and interesting, and you're engaging with it happily. You play several hours and you unlock Ice Punch, and that adds an interesting variation. Several more hours in (again, not unenjoyable), you unlock Lightning Punch, and the seams are starting to show. You open the skill the tree and realise there is still a Fire Punch, a Wind Punch and an Earth Punch, and you start questioning the worthiness of continuing the game.

I'm not alone in this, am I? You guys have other examples?

These are the perfect moments to take a break from the big game and clear my mind with a shorter one (point-and-click adventure games usually do the job).

I don't think I've ever completed a game where I did that. Games mechanics take time getting into again, and especially when you're talking about mechanics as complex as an open world RPG, for example, reaquainting yourself with them can be a chore in the middle of a game (still haven't finished the original Deus Ex, btw).

I got that with shadow of Mordor. Was an ok game, got all the way up to the big battle, then another area opens up, more or less exact copy of the first. Forget going through and collecting herbs and stuff all over again!

I also find, as I get older, that I really don’t like spending too much time on things. I am playing m&b with mod banner page at moment, and just done perisno, but it’s weeks of play to get through and you realise that’s weeks you will not get back. So I tend to move more to shorter games anyways.

Got it a little bit with Wasteland 2. Once you reach LA, and it becomes clear that you're only at the halfway point. The game's great, but I felt it would've benefited from that section being a little shorter. Not sure.

If the break is not too long (5-10 hours), I usually find that the fatigue with the old game is gone and I even miss playing it, and I haven't forgotten yet the mechanics or the plot. If there are chaptera or unlockable areas, the beginning of one is a good point to take a break. Of course, each gamer's different so this might just not work for you. I am very stubborn that way and once I start a game I rarely abandon it, so even if I take a break it never really leaves my mind.

I remember that exact bit, and I almost felt like giving up there as well! I dunno, I can't really play a game from start to completion in a continuous 5-10 hours. Even for a short adventure game, I'm going to be on that at least a week. It is a very rare short game that I finish in a day or two.


Makes me wonder, as a game designer, if there was a better way the developers could have paced their game, or is it simply that most games don't need to (and shouldn't) be 50 hour long "epics".

I first thought this would be about polyamor stuff, like engaging and living with several hot chicks or something. Or maybe a free-spirited relationship where everyone does what they want. Anyways. I recall in Fallout 2 feeling, when entering a new town (that gambling town run by mafia, I don't recall the name): "God damn, so many new NPCs, subquests etc., blech!". I just didn't feel like trying to learn so many new characters, conspiracies between different factions etc. yet again. Now that you mention it, I stopped playing the first Monkey Island game about the time the "world map" (or the island map) opened up. I felt like "Gawd, so many new places to visit with their own puzzles and items and shit, do I really have to?".

I always get that when I arrive at towns or cities in RPGs, the realization that the next hour or more will have to be spent listening to guards and shopkeepers and tavern patrons telling me their life story so I can learn what's next and collect all kinds of minor fetch quests ...

Funny that you'd mention The Secret of Monkey Island. I have just started a new playthrough. I felt like playing a shorter game and I wanted to try the Ultimate Talkie Version. I love this game so much I could probably finished it with my eyes closed, but I still can't get enough of it.

Legend of Grimrock II I think. It's a pretty long game and when I finally reached the big boss fight and won I felt a real sense of achievement. Then the outro plays... and it makes it pretty obvious that while it is A ending it is not THE ending. What you're really supposed to do is not take that final "exit" and keep playing, explore a new area (or areas?) and find the REAL final boss.

I said fuck that. I didn't have it in me to keep going after I just had my moment triumph and "you escaped the island!" outro. Besides, I know there's basically no "role playing" in that game, but I still could not see my group of survivors not taking the way off the island, the thing they were looking for the whole time, and instead going back to exploring the labirynth of danger and death because "yes, we do finally have a safe way out... but that pyramid of certain doom looks so inviting!"

I didn't even think of that! I had a similar experience with Hollow Knight. I loved the game to bits, but when I got the 'false' ending with the implication that I needed to play much more for the better one, I left the game, satisfied.

As good as Half Life 2 was, there were several mid-game sections that dragged quite a bit ("yet more canals? You're spoiling us!"). I find that as you get older, excessive "unlock / grind fatigue" or "Excel gameplay" / "number chasing" games (where you start out abnormally weak to showcase the importance of levelling up / unlocking something for the sake of it vs enemies that are also levelling up for the sake of countering you countering them countering you countering them, etc) starts to feel more like cheap padding than some clever character progression mechanic. Ubisoft style skill trees in particular where every trivial upgrade "Carry $150 vs $100 in your wallet", "run 2% faster", etc, often feel like they "exist for the sake of existing" to try and make an FPS feel smarter than it actually is or because all you apparently need to get an "RPG" genre tag for modern games is tack on a shallow level-up system / skill tree onto an otherwise obvious pure FPS.

What I love about games like Thief, Commandos, Bioshock, etc, is that they've long proven that you don't need skill tree / unlock / level-up based grind to keep things interesting from start to finish through well implemented core 'game-loop' mechanics + an engaging plot or creative / challenging level design.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps wore me out earlier this year. The game is a masterpiece...but the constant pin point precise platforming just went on too long, plus constantly having to learn new mechanics even near the end. I got to the final part before the end boss...ready for it to be over, and saw that I had to go destroy 8 somethings at all corners of the area before the final boss. It felt like a movie that has one plot twist too many. I simply couldn't be bothered. I just lost all drive- something very rare for me. Maybe I'll return to it, but it's a hard game and I'd have to re-learn it, not just mechanics but also that hard to define "muscle memory' you adopt in platform games.

Otherwise I usually play even 150 hour games straight through, no problems. Occasionally if things get a bit boring I use my old mid game break stand by- I've always got the most recent Forza game on my Xbox ready to go. A few hours of racing and I'm ready to return to the big epic game I took a break from. Racing games make great short breaks because you don't have to relearn how to drive, we all know how to drive (okay maybe not with a pad, but I use steering wheel and pedals), just a few laps to get the feel back is all you need. I also reserve short easy walking sims for mid game breaks as well- got lots of them over the last year as free Epic games.

With KoAR it was actually the opposite for me. When I first left the prologue dungeon and glimpsed at the world map I was like "Whoa, this is going to be one big adventure!". Then it turned out "hubs" were way smaller than I thought they would be and game itself turned out to be pretty much a short single player MMORPG.

More on topic, after quite some time I recently found out that I never really feel like playing anything specific at the moment - I either feel like playing games overall and I have fun with pretty much anything, or I don't feel like playing at all and even the best of them feel like a chore. When I hit a wall like you describe it usually means that recently I've played too much over too short period of time, so I take a week or two off games and then come back with a fresh mind.