Let's talk about beating games

[Erik_Twice]

We spent a lot of time arguing about what counts as "beating" a game some time ago but we haven't really discussed how we approach that in the first place! Think of this as the philosophical counterpart to the Games Beaten thread or a general rant place for anything related to beating games.

Some questions to kickstarter a conversation:

1) Do you have problems focusing enough on a game to beat it?
2) Other than losing interest, is there any recurring reason why you abandon games?
3) Conversely, is there something that makes you far more likely to beat a game?
4) Do you finish bad games or games you are not enjoying too much?
5) Have you ever tried to beat a whole series? Which one? Did you succeed? (Falcom hates him! You won't believe the series BoneSnapDeez will beat next!)


Bonus X) What's the game that required more effort from you to beat?
Bonus Y) What game you would really love to beat but won't for the foreseeable future?
Bonux Z) Aren't you ashamed when you open your Steam library? Shaaaame


My answers:

1) Do you have problems focusing enough on a game to beat it?

I used to really have problems focusing on a single game, I mostly jumped from one to another at random or went back to the same four "unbeatable" games because I was too lazy to actually get invested into a game. Then I started writing reviews and things changed for the better.

Interestingly enough, I don't write that much lately but I still focus on beating games and play far more regularly.

2) Other than losing interest, is there any recurring reason why you abandon games?

I think I abandon many games because life gets busy and by the time I come back to them I get lost or my skills have deteriorated to the point it's not fun.

I also abandon many games because lately I can only play games on the go because I have to dedicate the time I have in front of my computer for other things.

I didn't beat Gradius II for a combination of these two reasons: I had to stop playing it when I was extremely close to an 1CC and it's not properly emulated by my open console so I can't pick it up again. (Playing it on and off like I'm doing with Wizardry 8 is not a very appealing option, it requires a lot of consistency)

3) Conversely, is there something that makes you far more likely to beat a game?
Right now it's extremely unlikely I beat a game I cannot play on the go or in short bursts because of time constrains.

I am far more likely to beat strategy games than any other genre because I'm quite good at them and so it's unlikely I give up or get stuck because I haven't played in a while. It also helps it's a genre I favour.

4) Do you finish bad games or games you are not enjoying too much?
Unless I want to review them, I don't.

5) Have you ever tried to beat a whole series? Which one? Did you succeed? (Falcom hates him! You won't believe the series BoneSnapDeez will beat next!)

Other than pie in the sky dreams, I don't think I have. I do want to beat the whole Fire Emblem franchise, but I'm too poor to afford Path of Radiance and Thracia 776 still doesn't have a good translation so it's on hold.


I really want to hear what you guys think on the topic

[o.pwuaioc]

1) Do you have problems focusing enough on a game to beat it?

Often, but sometimes when I really am into it, I'll beat it. Lately though the games I've beaten are games I've beaten before or NES games I never quite beat when I was younger.

2) Other than losing interest, is there any recurring reason why you abandon games?

Less lose interest and more want to not limit myself to only a few games, so I like to play a lot of different stuff sequentially but for a short time. Every so often one grabs my attention and holds it.

3) Conversely, is there something that makes you far more likely to beat a game?

Fun, not too long, not too difficult.

4) Do you finish bad games or games you are not enjoying too much?

Never.

5) Have you ever tried to beat a whole series? Which one? Did you succeed?

Not intentionally. Usually they'll last longer than I'm willing to let them. Perhaps mini-series, so I've now beat most of NES Mega Man, NES Super Mario Bros, etc., but I haven't beaten all of the Mega Mans, which would include 7-10, so...

Bonux Z) Aren't you ashamed when you open your Steam library? Shaaaame

They're there for life. I'll get to them when I get to them. I do want to make a dent this summer, though. Never beat Half-Life, so I'm playing through that now.

[MrPopo]

In general I find myself bouncing between three or four games at a time. Sometimes a game grabs me enough that I'll go heads down on it, but usually I'll spend a few hours with one game, a few hours with another game, and go on like that.

The main reason I tend to stop progressing on a game is when I feel like I'm no longer making progress; is the game deciding it feels like killing me over and over, am I wandering around lost trying to find some kind of a quest trigger, etc? Usually in those instances I need to get some distance and can come back later.

So if I'm making tangible progress then I tend to get more velocity and stay on a path to completing things. I enjoy seeing the story of a game (which isn't just the plot of an RPG, but the entire experience), so if I'm making my way through that has enough of a draw to keep me going. A game I would consider to be truly bad is one that sits in the realm of killing me over and over, blocking progression AND it doesn't have anything interesting enough about it that I want to get over that hump. Odin Sphere was merciless and a lot of my deaths felt like it was due to bad coding in the engine (dat slowdown) but I really liked the world they built and wanted to see it through.

I definitely enjoy beating whole series, though I do make determinations as to what counts as part of the series. For example, the last couple games in Ultima, Might and Magic, and potentially a few other long running PC games are considered to be terrible, and I don't plan on playing those. But I don't let things like early entries being clunky because they're 25 years old stop me; I'm currently making my way through Might & Magic I and enjoying working within its idiosyncrasies.

[noiseredux]

oh thank goodness. I was scared this was going to be another "when do you consider a game beat?" thread. Kudos.



1) Do you have problems focusing enough on a game to beat it?

Not especially. In the last year or two I've gotten very into the mindset of "I buy a game because I want to play it now." And that way of thinking seems to have boosted my probability of beating a game. I think. Though there's still too many games I want.


2) Other than losing interest, is there any recurring reason why you abandon games?

If I get annoyed then I just feel like "I'm getting too old for this shit." There was a part in Ori And The Blind Forest that I just couldn't figure out. So that's it. Not having fun. Next! Seems to be current feeling on Wolfenstein Old Blood, too.

"Too long" can also apply. There's games I loved that I just had my fill of before the end credits rolled. On the other hand, it's possible I could hit 100 hours in GTA5 without ever beating it. There's some games where "beating" isn't even necessarily my goal.


3) Conversely, is there something that makes you far more likely to beat a game?

No one thing. XCOM challenged me with a wonderful turn based system that kept me addicted. that I just adored spending time with. Bioshock Infinite gave me a story that compelled me. Dragon Age Origins provided characters I truly cared about. It's not one specific thing, but generally there needs to be some thing that hooks me.


4) Do you finish bad games or games you are not enjoying too much?

It's rare, but it's happened. I recall Guitar Hero 5 being one such case. It was a horrible entry that was hugely frustrating and yet my wife and I felt compelled to beat it just to feel like it hadn't beaten us.

I recently mentioned having a similar feeling w/ Dragon's Lair.


5) Have you ever tried to beat a whole series? Which one? Did you succeed? (Falcom hates him! You won't believe the series BoneSnapDeez will beat next!)

I feel like I often have hopes of beating whole series - or at least playing all the games from a series - that I enjoy. I'm not really sure if I've ever succeed though? Hmm.


Bonus X) What's the game that required more effort from you to beat?

Most effort? Not sure. Most time? Probably XCOM. Haha.


Bonus Y) What game you would really love to beat but won't for the foreseeable future?

GTA5 comes to mind - but again it's just so long. It feels like it would require me to play nothing else for a long time. And I just am the type to juggle 2 or 3 games a month.

The Dark Souls games always sound so interesting to me on paper. But I rage quit after like 20 mins with them. I just don't have the patience.

Bonux Z) Aren't you ashamed when you open your Steam library?

Absolutely not.

[fastbilly1]

1) Do you have problems focusing enough on a game to beat it?

Not often, if I start a game I will finish it eventually - it might take a decade or two though. I will play three or a dozen games at the same time though.

2) Other than losing interest, is there any recurring reason why you abandon games?

Time. My game time is often in the range of 10 hours a week (sans cellphone games), so if a game takes an hour to get into it, I am not likely to start it

3) Conversely, is there something that makes you far more likely to beat a game?

Concepts

4) Do you finish bad games or games you are not enjoying too much?

Yes

5) Have you ever tried to beat a whole series? Which one? Did you succeed?

Every Zelda game released but Skyward Sword, and I am working on that (yes including CDI and Game and Watch). I am closing in on games Mario is in aswell.

Bonus X) What's the game that required more effort from you to beat?

FF7 is still a thorn in my side

Bonus Y) What game you would really love to beat but won't for the foreseeable future?

Witcher 3 - I need to beat 1 and 2 first.

Bonux Z) Aren't you ashamed when you open your Steam library? Shaaaame

Why would I be?

[MrPopo]

oh thank goodness. I was scared this was going to be another "when do you consider a game beat?" thread. Kudos.

We all know you consider a game beat when you realize you'll never make it to the proper beating point of the kill screen.

[SNESdrunk]

Interesting thread...

1) Do you have problems focusing enough on a game to beat it?

Nope, not really. I stick with one game at a time for a few days. If I can't beat it, I can't beat it. With RPGs I'll stick with just that one until it's done.

2) Other than losing interest, is there any recurring reason why you abandon games?

If I just flat out suck at a certain part. If the time I've played one small section exceeds the time I've played the entire game up to that point, it's probably time to move on. For example the snow level in DKC1 used to drive me insane. That "lets go insanely fast through this maze" part of Gradius III is laughably absurd, I quit on that for a while.

3) Conversely, is there something that makes you far more likely to beat a game?

There's not any one thing I can put my finger on that would broad-brush every game I've beaten, no

4) Do you finish bad games or games you are not enjoying too much?

No. An example is Secret of Evermore. I got fed up with the awful hit detection and once I got to that confusing, headache-inducing flea market, I quit.

5) Have you ever tried to beat a whole series? Which one? Did you succeed?

I've beaten Mega Man X, X2 and X3. I own X4, haven't beaten it yet, but I think I'll stop there.

Bonus X) What's the game that required more effort from you to beat?

Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts. Probably put 25+ hours into that before I beat it, by far the most for me for a platformer.

Bonus Y) What game you would really love to beat but won't for the foreseeable future?

Hagane

Bonux Z) Aren't you ashamed when you open your Steam library? Shaaaame

Ask again after the summer sale

[Ack]

1) Do you have problems focusing enough on a game to beat it?

No, as I tend to focus on one game at a time. I do break from this for my Thursday night game sessions on Steam, but usually I'm entirely devoted to one game and do my best to see it through to the end.

2) Other than losing interest, is there any recurring reason why you abandon games?

Frustration. I can tolerate quite a bit, but some games and some genres bother me to no end, so I struggle to get through them.

3) Conversely, is there something that makes you far more likely to beat a game?

If it is in a genre I enjoy, I will tend to give things a fair shake. I also tend to select which game to play based on length, which has made me avoid some parts of my collection. For years I wouldn't touch an RPG unless I was playing it with friends, from roughly 2005 to 2013. Wild Arms 3 actually got me back into the groove of things, and I've been steadily knocking out RPGs since then.

4) Do you finish bad games or games you are not enjoying too much?

I don't believe there are bad games, just poorly designed ones. I still do my best to get through them, so I've beaten the likes of the SNES Pit-Fighter port, Cliffhanger, Street Combat, and Brutal: Paws of Fury. It's fun to see how things turned out and where I feel the developers went wrong as well as where they went right.

5) Have you ever tried to beat a whole series? Which one? Did you succeed?

I usually focus on complete genre sets, like SNES fighting games. I have beaten all of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series and all of the Catacomb series. I have come close to completion in certain series:

Mega Man - The only original line I haven't beaten is Mega Man 7. It's also the only one I haven't played.
Doom - I don't think I've beaten Doom 64.
Half-Life - I still haven't gotten around to Half-Life 2: Episode Two.
Quake - I haven't beaten the first game, but I've beaten everything else.
Silent Hill - I haven't beaten the first one, the remake, or Downpour. I consider the SH arcade game and Book of Memories as spin offs and not part of the main line.


Bonus X) What's the game that required more effort from you to beat?

Nanobreaker on PS2. I hated this game. It just refused to click with me.

Bonus Y) What game you would really love to beat but won't for the foreseeable future?

I would love to 100% Killing Floor, but I doubt it will happen.

Bonux Z) Aren't you ashamed when you open your Steam library?

No, I will get through it someday. I have things arranged in categories so I know what I have played, what I have beaten, and what I have completed.

[Exhuminator]

>1) Do you have problems focusing enough on a game to beat it?

Not at all. I enjoy the feeling of victory and accomplishment that comes with beating a game. I enjoy reviewing games I have beaten. And most of all I enjoy adding a beaten game's notch to my HLTB belt (that I started about two years ago):

http://howlongtobeat.com/user.php?n=Exh ... ompleted=1

I only tend to play one single player game at a time though, and that helps a lot in focusing and finishing it. I wouldn't enjoy juggling multiple games at once and I think that would cause me to hardly finish anything.

>2) Other than losing interest, is there any recurring reason why you abandon games?

If I feel like a game is wasting my time due to contrivances meant to artificially lengthen the game's completion time, that's a huge no-no in my book (such as forced grinding). If a game throws mean spirited difficulty spikes in my face too often with no regard to its player's personal time investment, that's another no-go for me. Basically, intentionally bad game design will cause me to drop a game quick. Rarely do I stop playing a game due to shoddy frame rates, weird glitches, or bad graphics, that sort of thing I can look past.

>3) Conversely, is there something that makes you far more likely to beat a game?

If I enjoy a game's challenge and I feel like it's fair. If I become invested in a game's story. If I enjoy touring the game's aesthetic and aural content. If I want to beat it purely out of spite for whatever reason. If I find myself looking forward to playing it again throughout the day. If the game has a unique game mechanic. If it's a game I believe is an underdog or underrated.

>4) Do you finish bad games or games you are not enjoying too much?

I used to do this for lots of dumb reasons. I've beaten plenty of bad games I didn't enjoy in the past. I would practically beat every game I started playing. Over the past two years I have been reconditioning myself not to waste my precious free time on bad games, and to only bother finishing games that are at least decent. The end result is that I enjoy gaming overall much more now, obviously.

>5) Have you ever tried to beat a whole series? Which one? Did you succeed?

I have not done this, because I think intentionally doing so in rapid succession you risk burning yourself out on a series (if it's of any decent size). I do at least try to play game series in the sequence in which its titles were released, to appreciate how the series evolved over time. I have beaten all the games in certain series though, over time.

>Bonus X) What's the game that required more effort from you to beat?

Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millenium Girl's story mode on expert mode took me 115 hours to beat and was the hardest game I've ever finished. It was hard for lots of reasons. Mainly because I did not use a strategy guide or walkthrough to get through it, and most people use those for this series. I also did not use community support. I had no idea what I was doing in that game except for the things I taught myself. That said, despite causing me extra grey hairs, the elated feeling of accomplishment I had after beating its story mode on expert was unparallelled in my 33 years of gaming. So the victory was worth the effort.

>Bonus Y) What game you would really love to beat but won't for the foreseeable future?

Long assed JRPGs. Earlier this year I beat Dragon Quest VIII at 68 hours. It's awesome to go on a journey that long in a single game... but it can burn you out too. Especially when you only have time to game for about 2 hours a night. It takes a lot of commitment at that pace.

>Bonux Z) Aren't you ashamed when you open your Steam library? Shaaaame

I do not have a Steam licensed library because I do not support glorified DRM. I do not own a single Steam game because of that. I own lots of GOG licensed games though, and I'm not ashamed of it despite only playing 1/5th of them so far.

[Westane]

This looks fun...

1) Do you have problems focusing enough on a game to beat it?
Holy crap yes, and this feels like a recent issue. When I was a kid I'd play through anything put in front of me no matter how boring it was. A lot of this was because we rented our games, so there was always this mindset of "We paid money so you could play this game for 3 days!" and I was obligated to stick with it. Now a days, if a game doesn't capture my attention in the first 10 minutes or so, I'm out, and I hate that.

2) Other than losing interest, is there any recurring reason why you abandon games?
I've been playing a lot of old games lately, so there's the difficulty factor. I don't have the insane finger dexterity that I apparently did when I was younger, and beating games like Battletoads and Ninja Gaiden just isn't happening. To combat this I've taken a lot of interest in speed running games, as it offsets some of the required skill into formulas. I may not have the skill to navigate through a section of a game, but if I can memorize when to push buttons and how to consistently handle situations, I can get through otherwise impossible things, and look awesome doing it!

3) Conversely, is there something that makes you far more likely to beat a game?
These days it's story and intuitive gameplay. I like difficult games that are intentionally difficult, but I can't stand games that are difficult for arbitrary reasons like bad controls or poor design choices. I like fighting against enemies, not engines. A good story will keep me going as well, I can't believe I accidentally played through all of The Wolf Among us in one sitting... and loved every minute of it.

4) Do you finish bad games or games you are not enjoying too much?
600 Games project plug time? When I'm playing games "on my own time", no, if I don't see an appealing reason to keep going I'll quit. I have a job, two kids that don't sleep, and I only have so much time to give games. I'm not going to spend it not having fun. For my project though, yes, that's part of the point. Someone, somewhere, liked these games, and damnit if I'm not going to try to figure out why! Rygar comes to mind, I found it incredibly dull, but I finished it out of fairness. I finished A Boy and his Blob out of spite...

5) Have you ever tried to beat a whole series? Which one? Did you succeed?
I guess I'm working my way through the Arkham games, always meant to... I've beaten every game in the Faxanadu series!

Bonus X) What's the game that required more effort from you to beat?
I've played a lot of games recently that had me mentally BEGGING to quit, but then getting over it, bearing down and somehow clearing it. I'm talking in terms of game difficulty. Super C and Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge (Last boss) come to mind.

Bonus Y) What game you would really love to beat but won't for the foreseeable future?
Skyrim...

Bonux Z) Aren't you ashamed when you open your Steam library?
Nope! I have my game filter set to only show installed games