Biggest time sinks

[J T]

I agree with Ninja Gaiden NES. I've completed it a million times and I still love it.

I think fighting games are also huge time sinks. I've probably dropped more hours into Street Fighter II than any other game I've ever played. Now I play Street Fighter IV more than anything else. I've also played a lot of Mortal Kombat I and II, Samurai Showdown I and II, Killer Instinct and KI Gold, Virtua Fighter 1 and 2, and various others.

The thing about fighting games is you can always convince yourself that you have time for "just one more match." It never feels like a big time investment is about to happen until you look at the clock and realize that all of those 90 second rounds add up pretty fast. There's just so much depth to these kinds of games and you can always improve your game just a little bit more, so they become addictive.

[Luke]

^Heavily agree with JT on fighters. "One more game" turns into hours of play time. 3 out of five always turns into 5 out of 7, which in turn leads to etc....

NCAA and NFL football games can be very lengthy. A 5 minute quarter football game usually takes me longer to complete than a 9 inning MVP game.

[ieatramen]

Does call of duty count? Man I hate whoever thought of prestige mode. And come on... infinite levels of nazi zombies? Who would want to play that over and over again -ME! Sheesh!

And I found a patch to drastically increase the difficulty of FF6 so will be playing that through for the umpteenth time.

[t0yrobo]

Hmm, I'll say Bust-a-Move 4. I've been late for many things because of the 2 player in that game.

[Hatta]

Civilization and Nethack. Both have that "just one more turn" appeal to them. I don't play much of either anymore though. Civ got kind of repetitive after a while. Nethack is different every time, but once I ascended I felt satisfied.

I find that as I get older I have much lower tolerance for time sinks in games.

[Limewater]

Civilization and Nethack. Both have that "just one more turn" appeal to them. I don't play much of either anymore though. Civ got kind of repetitive after a while. Nethack is different every time, but once I ascended I felt satisfied.

Wow, you've ascended? How many attempts did it take you? How long was your successful game?

I had to stop playing before I ever got good enough to get too far. I'm afraid to pick it up again.

I love Nethack, because it has that "one more time" appeal, but each "one more time" is (hopefully) several hours of commitment.

[Octopod]

Everquest

[AwesomeMonstar]

actraiser, gradius 3, streets of rage 2, smash tv.


and even though it's cheating, final fantasy tactics.

[Breetai]

Any Civ game (I started at Civ1), any Simcity game (I first tried the original, but it was 2000 that got me addicted), any Fallout game (mainly 1 and 2), any Bethesda RPG (started at Daggerfall), any NHL game (EA or 2K) and... ummmm... shoot 'em ups are pretty addicting (especially if "Thunder" or "Soldier" is in the name or if your plane/thing that shoots has "options" that follow it around), as are arcade racers, platformers, puzzle games... ummm... and any other video game.

[Hatta]

Wow, you've ascended? How many attempts did it take you? How long was your successful game?

It took about 4 years of irregular play. I'd sink a lot of time into it for a couple months, and then not think about it for 4-6 months. By the time I beat it I was *heavily* spoiled. I had well over 100K turns in the game I finally ascended. Once I got my ascension kit together I wasn't taking any chances and spent a lot of time collecting backup items, making sure I had stashes everywhere, even had a spare wand of wishing with a few charges, etc.