/videogames/ - Vidya Game Lounge

>>537
Congratulations: you're no longer a simpleton (rating animoo stories over even the driest of history books aside).

You've now realised how much valuable time pointless shit can drain from you, and you're capable of re-prioritizing important shit.

>I look towards hours of completion for a game and hope for something <5 hours. Anything more than that and I feel as though it's just adding padding.

Not so long ago, I probably would've called you a goat-fucking, haram casual, but I can understand where you're coming from. Nowadays, every fucking genre is a collect 'em up; and that's not even including e-peen-waving bullshit "extras" like "achievements".

I know some older games, particularly (C)RPGs had a lot of content, and I'd often invent challenges within game-worlds to extend their life; but doing the majority of my gaming in the 16-bit, platform-dominated era means that games nowadays just seem a hell of a lot bigger. While I think it's great for people with enough time to sink into them, for me, it feels like a lot of bloat.

I don't think it's casual, it's just a shift in priorities as people get older and have less free time.

Lately the only games I've been playing are city builders and simulators like Prison Architect. I find it relaxing, like maintaining a garden.

I don't think I've ever put more than 500 hours into a single game. I've owned TF2 since the Orange Box and I only just broke 300 hours played after all these years (and that's not even the true in-game time according to time across all classes).

I've always been like this and it's difficult for me to break 100 hours in most games that don't involve grinding or copious side content. I attribute it mostly to being interested in a wide variety of genres and being a collector, but it's difficult sometimes. I see the games that I played the most that I would call my favorites, and it shames me that even though I claim to love them I'm still not as dedicated as other people who only play them casually.

Is something wrong with me?

>>543
>Is something wrong with me?

Yes, you're acting like a faget. You don't "claim" you love those games, anon: you do love them. Just because you haven't spent as many hours in front of it, doesn't mean your affection is any less real.

If you were worried that maybe you hadn't done as much an a game as other players, like 101%'d it or something, your concerns might be valid.

But love doesn't equal time, anon. It just doesn't.

>>541
>Prison Architect
>relaxing
>like maintaining a garden

kek'd

>>553

My prison is a panopticon. Riots don't get very far here. Also, all my problem prisoners are stuffed into solitary for all enternity and kept barely alive through nutrient injections.

>>565
Sounds so.. Relaxing..

I feel like my attention span is just so much shorter as an adult than it was as a kid. Add to that, a lot of gaming experiences today just don't feel fresh or exciting to me anymore. I don't feel the need to explore things because I've seen it all before, even if it's done better now. There's also the fact that when games were still new to me, there was more of an established 'canon' of good games that everybody had to play, and it was much smaller. These days it's very hard to find games that legitimately live up to the hype, and the market is so crowded that I'm really surprised there hasn't been a market crash within the past decade.

>>610
Are you me?

>>613
Another thing to add to that canon is when your realise how many good retro games you still haven't got to, particularly for less well known systems: you get such a huge backlog that it's hard to know where to start.

>>627
The issue with retro games is that often they have slight quirks that make them incompatible with gamers today.

For example, graphics. Most 8 bit games look awful, as do N64-era textures. 16 bit is still going strong, but everything less than that seriously affects the enjoyability of the game. I don't need my games to be ultra quality, but I dislike jagged edges, clipping and blurry, blown up textures.

There's also the secrets of the older games being much, much harder to find without external aid. Back in that era, Nintendo Power and the manuals were expected parts of gameplay. Nowadays we expect everything to be inside the game. This is, in part, due to everything about the game being laid out online. If I start looking up secrets for a game, I may as well read the whole walkthrough, and that's just lame. The result is that games like the first Zelda become nigh unplayable without external assistance.

The lack of saving is another big difference. Many older games implement a much harsher lives system, as though they were still arcade games. There's also an arcade design mentality that the game should kill you as often as possible to get you to spend more quarters. Now, overall, I think I prefer that added difficulty depth to the collectathon difficult of modern games, but it still irks me when I have to replay large amounts of a level to have another crack at the difficult part. (That's a more defensible design choice, mind.)

How to play them is another big one. Do I buy these games again, at the rather painful prices, to play them on my consoles and the like with modern controls? Do I emulate them on my computer and pray that the emulation is accurate? If so, what controller do I use? Is a keyboard or Xbox controller closer to the original NES controller? Should I buy a NES controller for the computer? What about save states? They weren't part of the original game, but some of the online purchased versions offer them. What about using them on emulated versions?

Then there's the infatuation with grinding that the older RPGs have, alongside the idea that you can very easily screw up your character if you level up wrongly. This is compounded by the stat systems of older games being less than transparent. (I'm thinking, in particular, of Final Fantasy VI here.) I don't like the idea of experience systems. I stop going on the main quest to kill rats in a field, so that I can play the main quest without being underpowered. Yet if I spend ages searching through a dungeon with random encounters (shudder), I end up over-leveled and curb-stomping. I prefer it when the only 'levelling up' that occurs is through in-game plot progression, and in the player's personal skill. Modern games tend to be better about this.

I'm mostly worrying about small things, but they bug me.

Same here op.

I cant enjoy any slowpaced games anymore, though i still boot them uP once in awhile.

I only play multiplayer games with a friend nowadays, and only after 7pm. Hell, i work 6 days a week but i rarely ever play on a Sunday.

>>537
I feel the same on the story and boredoom aspect, OP.

The reason I play games now is for the gameplay. Everything else is secondary and should only support the gameplay.

My recomendation to you is:
Super Meat Boy

The game is as long as you want it to be. From 3 to 7+ hours. And the Gameplay is PRIMARY.
I completed it with 91% of the bandages, on keyboard. You're free to choose what device you're more used to.

I like keyboard for being able to control better were or not I'd go neutral on the movement before changing directions. Going neutral completely stops character movement where changing directions faster makes it slide.

Another tip: You'd like to almost always hold the Jump Key when doing misc jumps and walljumps.

>>645
Hi friend.

If you'd like to try emulating and you wish for accuracy you should try bsnes (now Higan). It emulates SNES and GameBoy with 100% cycle-accuracy. It is heavy on your CPU, tho.

No way dude, I'm the same way. I do feel like games overstay their welcome these days but is partially me justifying my lack of attention too. Who knows? I can just say that my interest is often lost after the first few hours. Maybe I don't really like most video games at all and am just desperately trying to stay relevant and retain a sense of identity.

If the only reason to play a game is because there's something locked behind a grindwall and you don't enjoy the grind, drop it. It's gameplay or nothing in my book.