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General and Gaming => Classic Video Games => Topic started by: dreama1 on February 08, 2020, 05:25:43 pm

Title: What's your breaking point with a video game?
Post by: dreama1 on February 08, 2020, 05:25:43 pm
What's your breaking point with a video game? How many hours would you consider reasonable or honourable before you quit/drop it?

Has anyone actually hated a game but sunk maybe 10+ hours into it and actually ended up loving it? or it's just some sunken costs fallacy.
Title: Re: What's your breaking point with a video game?
Post by: oldgamerz on February 08, 2020, 06:13:33 pm
Any game where you need to get stealthy in a 3D first or 3rd person camera angle environment. But As far as hours go it depends on how frustratingly difficult the game is, I usually drop a game when it becomes a choir to play.

Here is a whopper of a game that for me, went from all time favorite to I don't want to play this game again feeling.


Red Faction 1 for the PlayStation 2 where I played and loved the first part of the game, but then comes the mission where I have all my guns stripped from me, except for a pistil with vary limited ammo.

And I need to pass a stealth mission. in which when ANY NPC or hidden camera sees you. It triggers an alarm and you all of a sudden get infinite amount of guards that spawn into the level. And they do not drop ANY ammo when they die, pretty much all you can do once your seen is to die and do the whole thing over.

I watched someone on Youtube that got farther then I did in the original Red Faction for the PlayStation 2, and he said there is another stealth mission soon after that one on an even more brutal difficulty.

Red Faction is so difficult that the guy I saw I YouTube said out right flat he did not ever finish that games campaign.
Title: Re: What's your breaking point with a video game?
Post by: pzeke on February 08, 2020, 07:08:19 pm
I used to get annoyed with Slippy whenever I played StarFox 64, but I'm sure most that played the game did as well. This is also true for Ashley Graham from Resident Evil 4. "Leon! Help!"

That aside, back when I was a kid not being able to beat a stage or a boss would break me the most, but these days I'm long past that. Nowadays as soon as I my patience starts to get tested, I put the controller down and move to another game or away to do something else. Playing games in the hardest difficulty as often as possible I would say has kind of coarsened me a bit.
Title: Re: What's your breaking point with a video game?
Post by: kamikazekeeg on February 08, 2020, 07:56:12 pm
I don't think there should really ever be a minimum time one should have to put into a game before dropping it, like I've played something for a half hour and known right there that it wasn't for me, or I've put 30 hours into a game and hit a point where I'm just like "This isn't doing it for me anymore." Like I put 30 hours into Persona 5, dropped the game, I was kinda fed up with it. 

On the other hand, I put 30 hours into Red Dead 2, realized that I was getting fed up with it, but wanted to finish the story and then dumped another 20 hours or so into it to beat it, which really wasn't worth all that time, but yeah that's definitely the whole "sunk cost" thing for sure.  It just depends on the experience the game offers as Persona 5 is a very limited experience, while RDR2 still offers a pretty open experience to tackle things how I want, which is more enjoyable for me to deal with.

I don't really know if there's a game I've ever forced myself to play and then actually liked it more after not really liking it to begin with.
Title: Re: What's your breaking point with a video game?
Post by: dreama1 on February 08, 2020, 08:40:36 pm
Any game where you need to get stealthy in a 3D first or 3rd person camera angle environment. But As far as hours go it depends on how frustratingly difficult the game is, I usually drop a game when it becomes a choir to play.

Here is a whopper of a game that for me, went from all time favorite to I don't want to play this game again feeling.


Red Faction 1 for the PlayStation 2 where I played and loved the first part of the game, but then comes the mission where I have all my guns stripped from me, except for a pistil with vary limited ammo.

And I need to pass a stealth mission. in which when ANY NPC or hidden camera sees you. It triggers an alarm and you all of a sudden get infinite amount of guards that spawn into the level. And they do not drop ANY ammo when they die, pretty much all you can do once your seen is to die and do the whole thing over.

I watched someone on Youtube that got farther then I did in the original Red Faction for the PlayStation 2, and he said there is another stealth mission soon after that one on an even more brutal difficulty.

Red Faction is so difficult that the guy I saw I YouTube said out right flat he did not ever finish that games campaign.
Could of swore you were talking about metal gear solid. What do you think of metal gear solid then?
Title: Re: What's your breaking point with a video game?
Post by: dreama1 on February 08, 2020, 08:44:51 pm
I don't think there should really ever be a minimum time one should have to put into a game before dropping it, like I've played something for a half hour and known right there that it wasn't for me, or I've put 30 hours into a game and hit a point where I'm just like "This isn't doing it for me anymore." Like I put 30 hours into Persona 5, dropped the game, I was kinda fed up with it. 

On the other hand, I put 30 hours into Red Dead 2, realized that I was getting fed up with it, but wanted to finish the story and then dumped another 20 hours or so into it to beat it, which really wasn't worth all that time, but yeah that's definitely the whole "sunk cost" thing for sure.  It just depends on the experience the game offers as Persona 5 is a very limited experience, while RDR2 still offers a pretty open experience to tackle things how I want, which is more enjoyable for me to deal with.

I don't really know if there's a game I've ever forced myself to play and then actually liked it more after not really liking it to begin with.
I think people are more touchy about it when it comes to JRPGS perhaps. About the time they should provide before they quit out.

For books most would say 50-100 pages or tv shows 2-3 episodes perhaps.
Title: Re: What's your breaking point with a video game?
Post by: emporerdragon on February 09, 2020, 01:57:05 am
I don't really have a set time criteria, but what makes me want to shelve a game is when large amounts of my time get wasted or lost, forcing me to replay large chunks of the game if I want to continue.

The most egregious example for me would be Fable III. In the second half of the game, you're given 1 year to prepare for the final conflict, broken up into little chunks that usually equate to a quest and a decision that would take about 30 days off of the timer. However, with no warning, the game suddenly jumps from 121 days until the conflict to the day of the conflict. And because all my funds were tied up in real estate instead of the treasury, I found myself in the final mission leading up to the worst possible ending. Then the game autosaved. Even though I had only about 20 minutes of game left, I was so done with the game then that I just shelved it for several years.
Title: Re: What's your breaking point with a video game?
Post by: hoshichiri on February 09, 2020, 10:11:05 am
I don't really have a set time criteria, but what makes me want to shelve a game is when large amounts of my time get wasted or lost, forcing me to replay large chunks of the game if I want to continue.

Basically this.

Sometimes it's a boss, sometimes it's a jump, but if the game throws a situation at me where its 'do this thing to my exact standards, or you'll die & have to repeat it' with no gains made from previous attempts & no way to go back & improve your odds- I do tend to rage quit on those.

The most recent one I can think of was Drakengard 3, where I played all the way up to unlocking the final branch, and (minor spoiler) found out you need to have every weapon in the game to even access that final part. Since things had been pretty straightforward up till here, the grindfest was jarring, but I bought up everything- and learned there was one more weapon I had to earn from an optional mission. Kill baddies, collect items... on a timer... in the FOG. Even the online guides say it's largely dumb luck if the correct baddies move far enough into the area you can see to kill them & get the items in time.

I ended up watching a longplay go through the final chapter, I genuinely don't know if or when I'll finish that one properly.
Title: Re: What's your breaking point with a video game?
Post by: oldgamerz on February 09, 2020, 10:43:37 am
Any game where you need to get stealthy in a 3D first or 3rd person camera angle environment. But As far as hours go it depends on how frustratingly difficult the game is, I usually drop a game when it becomes a choir to play.

Here is a whopper of a game that for me, went from all time favorite to I don't want to play this game again feeling.


Red Faction 1 for the PlayStation 2 where I played and loved the first part of the game, but then comes the mission where I have all my guns stripped from me, except for a pistil with vary limited ammo.

And I need to pass a stealth mission. in which when ANY NPC or hidden camera sees you. It triggers an alarm and you all of a sudden get infinite amount of guards that spawn into the level. And they do not drop ANY ammo when they die, pretty much all you can do once your seen is to die and do the whole thing over.

I watched someone on Youtube that got farther then I did in the original Red Faction for the PlayStation 2, and he said there is another stealth mission soon after that one on an even more brutal difficulty.

Red Faction is so difficult that the guy I saw I YouTube said out right flat he did not ever finish that games campaign.
Could of swore you were talking about metal gear solid. What do you think of metal gear solid then?


 never made it off the vary beginning of metal gear solid because I automatically knew that Metal Gear Solid was a stealth game but I never bothered to play it, again yet. All stealth games and levels I played I dislike, but I did manage to get by in Metal Of Honor on the PS1 but that game glitches out and I can't play it at all. I keep going through the maps floor, I don't know why.
Title: Re: What's your breaking point with a video game?
Post by: bikingjahuty on February 09, 2020, 10:55:06 am
If the game can be beat around 5-hours I will often soldier through it even if it's terrible, however any game that takes longer than that to beat my threshold for tolerating it is around that 5-hour mark. I try to give games like RPGs a little more time since it's not uncommon for some RPGs to be fairly mediocre several hours in before the plot and game really start to pick up. However, even if there is an excellent game 10 to 15 hours in, I simply cannot waist my time that long with a game before its entertainment value pays off.
Title: Re: What's your breaking point with a video game?
Post by: seether on February 09, 2020, 12:37:01 pm
If a game is completely irredeemable I’ll stop after maybe 10 minutes and not waste my time.

If a game is just pretty bad, I will often speed through to completion in the shortest time possible before selling the game - just to see it through and pick up the trophies/achievements. Skipping all cutscenes and only doing main story etc.

Title: Re: What's your breaking point with a video game?
Post by: triggerhappymonk on February 09, 2020, 04:47:07 pm
my breaking point is when you try 20 times in a row to beat a single mission and can't beat it for 1 reason or another. dukes of hazzard racing for home for the ps1 has a mission where you have to follow Black Jack Parel and I never could get to the end of the stage.
Title: Re: What's your breaking point with a video game?
Post by: dreama1 on February 09, 2020, 11:20:19 pm
my breaking point is when you try 20 times in a row to beat a single mission and can't beat it for 1 reason or another. dukes of hazzard racing for home for the ps1 has a mission where you have to follow Black Jack Parel and I never could get to the end of the stage.
  You should thank your lucky stars every day you weren't born in the NES era then.
Title: Re: What's your breaking point with a video game?
Post by: zenrhino on February 10, 2020, 06:06:47 am
I have a high tolerance for mediocre video games..I normally see everything through to the credits. I think it comes through years of being a 'trophy hunter', which I have now thankfully left in the past.

I can think of one game I played and stopped because I was bored, and that was because it was the first graphic novel I had tried, a genre I will never bother with again.

What I do have a low tolerance for is games I simply can not finish, and this falls into two categories:

1) Horror games. I love the story and vibe of most horror games, but I just get way to stressed out playing them. I barely ever finish them. Resident Evil, Evil Within, Silent Hills...I've tried them all with no success. Metro or Bioshock are about my limit.

2) Metroidvania / platformers. I really struggle with a lot of these games due to a lack of skill and can very rarely get far in them.

I have two cases in point from this weekend actually:

First I tried Axiom Verge, and spent about an hour trying to get past the second boss. Then I read online that this should be child's play compared to the latter bosses, which are much harder. So I think, what's the point? I'm never going to finish the game!

Later the same day, I tried Resident Evil 7. Good grief! About an hour in and I shut that down and never want to play it again. Way, way too scary!

In both cases, I really liked the game, but will never finish it.

This leads me to an interesting question. I only started a collection very recently, with the aim of building a library of games I have beaten in the past or will beat in the future. Technically, as I know 100% I will never beat them, I should trade them in. But I do like the games and cover art. Decisions, decisions...
Title: Re: What's your breaking point with a video game?
Post by: kashell on February 10, 2020, 08:22:30 am
It depends on the game/genre. I usually try to see a game I'm enjoying for the most part through to the end, even if the entire journey isn't enjoyable.

The last game I quit after 10 to 15 minutes Dokapon Kingdom. I still can't believe that Sting and Atlus produced such a piece of crap.
Title: Re: What's your breaking point with a video game?
Post by: NickAwesome on February 10, 2020, 01:20:48 pm
If I'm just not feeling it, it's pretty easy for me just to be done.  Sometimes it takes 10 minutes, sometimes several hours.  Hard to quantify. Usually it's if I am having "fun" or enjoying myself, but sometimes a game is not necessarily "fun", but still engaging, and I'll keep playing.  Or maybe the mechanics are tricky, but I want to give the game a chance because once I figure it out, maybe I'll start enjoying the game. 

For older games, usually the first 5 minutes tell you everything you need to know on whether you should keep playing or not.  For newer more complex games, sometimes it takes many hours to uncover all the various game mechanics. 
Title: Re: What's your breaking point with a video game?
Post by: shawndude82 on February 10, 2020, 04:17:19 pm
Pokemon.  I spend hours leveling up every little critter as high as I can, until I get fed up and quit because I haven't even made it to the first gym yet.  I know, I do it to myself.  It's the curse of having OCD.  Pokemon isn't meant for us.
Title: Re: What's your breaking point with a video game?
Post by: wolfen on February 17, 2020, 01:49:07 am
I don't drop a lot of games in the middle generally. I'm usually very picky and make absolutely certain I'm going to enjoy a game before purchase. That being said there are cases where I've tried to give a game a shot and it just wasn't working so I dropped it as soon as possible. Like Kingdom Hearts 2 for example. I loved Kingdom Hearts 1 a lot but I just could not get sucked into Kingdom Hearts 2 because the pacing was terrible and story uninteresting imo. So I guess my answer is that if I'm not actively enjoying a game it's getting dropped immediately.
Title: Re: What's your breaking point with a video game?
Post by: marvelvscapcom2 on February 18, 2020, 11:30:43 pm
I usually play up until the time that the clock jumps off of the wall and whispers in my ear,  it's cold black plastic arms wrapped around my spine.   the whispers turn into SCREAMS....   "time doesn't exist, it's a mental construct created by modern man"  and then the world melts around me.   And i'm sitting in a chair just holding the melted clock in my hands.   Pink panther theme song plays.  And I am alone with all that really exists in the universe.  my own thoughts....    Hideo Kojima....   and pain.    Only pain.     Napalm rain.    Ocean eyes.
Title: Re: What's your breaking point with a video game?
Post by: hoshichiri on February 20, 2020, 10:54:57 am
I usually play up until the time that the clock jumps off of the wall and whispers in my ear,  it's cold black plastic arms wrapped around my spine.   the whispers turn into SCREAMS....   "time doesn't exist, it's a mental construct created by modern man"  and then the world melts around me.   And i'm sitting in a chair just holding the melted clock in my hands.   Pink panther theme song plays.  And I am alone with all that really exists in the universe.  my own thoughts....    Hideo Kojima....   and pain.    Only pain.     Napalm rain.    Ocean eyes.

Apparently Death Stranding is weirder than I thought.
Title: Re: What's your breaking point with a video game?
Post by: kypherion on March 22, 2020, 03:38:15 am
Not being able to actually beat a boss, but that was moreso when I was younger.
Title: Re: What's your breaking point with a video game?
Post by: oldgamerz on April 20, 2020, 02:48:45 am
One of my primary
my breaking point is when you try 20 times in a row to beat a single mission and can't beat it for 1 reason or another. dukes of hazzard racing for home for the ps1 has a mission where you have to follow Black Jack Parel and I never could get to the end of the stage.

I'm usually the same way with my games, that is why I don't like movie based video games, or platformer's or RPG's for the most part.

My most recent breaking point was playing "Spiro: The Year Of The Dragon" for the PlayStation 1. on either the 2nd or 3rd skateboarding section, where you need to maneuver a Tony Hawk game like skate park. On a skateboard, with no way to slow down and stop the skateboard, and on top of that you need to do spinning trick on a bunch of half pipes without making a single mistake, one mistake you you need to do the whole thing over. this skate park is full of crap to run into, and mess your up

plus their is a timer AND you need to jump high and land all the while your moving on a skateboard without breaks to prevent you from crashing into the wall.

Title: Re: What's your breaking point with a video game?
Post by: oldgamerz on May 02, 2020, 01:41:03 am
I hate any game with the need to solve puzzles with that require a walkthrough or strategy guide in order to get past I ran across a few in some PC games I've played.

I can't stand most platforming video games. Because most of them have a chance limit and if you use all up your chances or lives or continues you need to start the entire game over. If you're lucky, some games will let your start from a level through a save point. or even better, a checkpoint, or even better a save state!!

I also cuss and swear at games that require fast reflexes, or games that back me into a corner and don't give me a chance to fight back
Title: Re: What's your breaking point with a video game?
Post by: telekill on May 06, 2020, 08:42:40 am
I don't think that I have a time frame for a breaking point with a game. Hell, if the Uncharted 2/3 servers were back up or if the PS4 collection had the multiplayer, I'd still be playing those after hundreds of hours.

My breaking point is when I discover that I'm not having fun and won't have fun. I get rid of it at that point, but I'll give it a second chance after a break. Best example of this would be Zelda Skyward Sword. The motion controls were just absolutely horrible for me. I got to the first "boss" fight and couldn't beat him. I took about a year long break after mass frustration. Came back to it and beat the guy. I got a few more dungeons in and stopped caring about the game. I wasn't having fun and didn't care to finish it. The game essentially ruined me on Nintendo for the rest of the Wii's lifespan and the entire Wii-U lifespan.
Title: Re: What's your breaking point with a video game?
Post by: oldgamerz on May 06, 2020, 12:25:13 pm
I don't think that I have a time frame for a breaking point with a game. Hell, if the Uncharted 2/3 servers were back up or if the PS4 collection had the multiplayer, I'd still be playing those after hundreds of hours.

My breaking point is when I discover that I'm not having fun and won't have fun. I get rid of it at that point, but I'll give it a second chance after a break. Best example of this would be Zelda Skyward Sword. The motion controls were just absolutely horrible for me. I got to the first "boss" fight and couldn't beat him. I took about a year long break after mass frustration. Came back to it and beat the guy. I got a few more dungeons in and stopped caring about the game. I wasn't having fun and didn't care to finish it. The game essentially ruined me on Nintendo for the rest of the Wii's lifespan and the entire Wii-U lifespan.


yea sometimes for me too! when I come back to a game with a hard section of a game after I have time to think up a strategy in the back of my mind. I can beat that part of a game when I come back to it, usually. Sometimes we all need to stop playing a video game that is frustrating us and go back to it later. :)

That will save some of us money on a new controller or console :P
Title: Re: What's your breaking point with a video game?
Post by: ffxik on May 07, 2020, 12:01:44 am
Generally I know pretty quick.  I have had some "UNO reverse cards" on a couple and one which I just wouldn't let it get the better of me.  Yet it ultimately did.

Two games I didn't like right off the bat was Valkyrie Profile and Final Fantasy Tactics.  I borrowed FFT off a school buddy put five hours into it that evening, gave it back the next day.  On a whim borrowed it again month later and loved it, still do. 
Another friend brought VP by the house raving about it.  I played a coupe of hours of it, didn't like it.  Was at a mutual friends house who had borrowed it and watched him play it for three hours, still didn't care for it.
I bought it for $20 at a Gamestop because I had money burning a hole in my pocket.  Brought it home put it on the shelf for months.  Took it down because it was one I hadn't played to death, or at all.  It's among my top 5 Playstation games.  :-\

Games that I have put several hours into and haven't looked back, Grand Theft Auto III, I haven't played any of them since.  I only own GTA V by chance.  It came with the Xbox One I bought.  I haven't even bothered to install it. 
Unlimited Saga.  Played it for 30 minutes and decided that was more than enough.  Parasite Eve 2.  I loved the first one, was looking forward to the sequel.  Parasite Evil 2, more like.  Too much like RE for my blood.  I love RE but it just didn't feel right here.

The one I kept throwing myself at again and again was Saga Frontier II.  I thought at first I just didn't understand it.  Nope, I just didn't like it.  I wasn't going to let it beat me though.  It did, repeatedly.  So I got one of those cheat adapters and maxed out my parties stats, bull dozed my way to what I presumed to be the final boss.  Just to have it after a couple of turns pull some AoE wave attack that one shot my entire party.  It wasn't a fluke.  It done it regularly.  I quit at that point.  I traded it two days later.  I was done.