What's your breaking point with a video game?

[dreama1]

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.

[oldgamerz]

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.

[pzeke]

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.

[kamikazekeeg]

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.

[dreama1]

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?

[dreama1]

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.

[emporerdragon]

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.

[hoshichiri]

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.

[oldgamerz]

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.

[bikingjahuty]

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.

[seether]

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.

[triggerhappymonk]

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.

[dreama1]

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.

[zenrhino]

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...

[kashell]

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.