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What drives you to finish a game?
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I have to ask, though: If you're getting bored by the sidequests, then why not just leave them and just finish the game? Is it a completionist thing?
I had the same thing almost happen to me with Mass Effect: I started dicking around in the uncharted worlds and start to get really bored ... so I just ignored them, played through the rest of the (much more awesome) "campaign" planets and had a blast. I wish I had ditched the sidequests hours ago.
I've got a friend who modded his 360 and he's just terrible with how he talks to me about it. If the discs cost him $2 each he doesnt want to spend $2 on a game that he wants to play but got shitty reviews, to even pirate. Even games that get like 7's. He wouldn't even pirate Halo Wars because he wasn't sure if he should use the disc, when they only cost $2 each.
And here we pay $60 for a game and he will literally talk like he's having a midlife crisis over not being sure if he should burn the game or not (he has a huge harddrive and a 1MBps connection so he downloads first thinks later).
D:
then like asiina, once i decide i should go back and finally finish that game i've forgotten what the fuck i was doing and where to go. that or the skills i had learned to defeat the end game enemies are atrophied to shit and its just a depressing grind to get through parts that i probably would have blown through had i just finished it out the first time.
This too. I have Myst 4 and 5 staring me in the face. I love the series, but just don't have the time to really get into them, which you really have to do to enjoy them.
steam profile
Games Recently completed (last year in a half):
* = Multiple times
Dead Space*
Ace Combat
Halo 3*
Gears of War 2
Star Wars TFU*
Call of Duty 4
God Of War 2*
Shadow of the Colossus
Rainbow Six Vegas 1 & 2*
Games I Want to Finish
GTAIV (in progress)
Metal Gear Solid 3 (So I can play 4)
FF6 (Because its an amazing game that I just never devote time to)
Forza Motorsport
Splinter Cell: Double Agent (got boring)
FF12 (Grindfest if I ever saw one)
Ninja Gaiden 2
God of War: Chains of Olympus (in progress)
Call of Duty World at War (in progress)
Devil May Cry (whole series)
"Faster, Faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death." -HST
Part of it. Sometimes there are reasons to do sidequests, like to get great weapons and such. FF7 and FFX were incredibly guilty of this. FF7 I did the entire chocobo breeding TWICE cause I could never manage to get a golden one. I've since learnt that this was because of the way FF7 chose what kind of chocobo to give you, so my constant breed -> get the wrong chocobo -> restart the game was never, ever going to get me a golden one. Very, very frustrating experience there and I didn't finish the game for so many months after I got to the third disc. With FFX, well, I tried the end boss once, it was too hard, so I went back to get new weapons and to grind a bit. I did most of the weapons bullshit sidequests in FFX, including the butterfly hunt, the chocobo race where you had to get a negative time, and the lightning dodging. I did ALL that shit. Then when I finally went back to try the ending over a year afterwards I had overlevelled and beat the game in like, 4 turns.
I've had the exact opposite experience with sidequests. I skipped most of the FFX stuff (didn't get Seymour's Aeon, didn't do the race, the butterfly, or any of the other ultra special weapon things). I found that after I went through the cave to get the aeon that can't be hit and you pay 1g to use or whatever, all my characters were overpowered the rest of the game. If you do sidequests in Oblivion you'll have no problem destroying the main quest. All GTA IV sidequests are good for is cash towards the 500K trophy. The list goes on...
Mostly the only reasons I've ever found to do sidequests is getting extra story/gameplay and a sense of accomplishment having done them. They've almost always overpowered me for the actual game, which doesn't bother me because I don't think a game's given me serious trouble since Thief 1.
But really with RPGs I want to finish them, but I find myself bogged down so often with all the sidequests that I can never just leave behind. How can I finish the game when I know there are things left to do? Especially things story related (like getting Seymour's Aeon or doing Vincent's sidestory or doing pretty much any quest in Fallout 3).
I complete every game I play and have done for as long as I've been playing games, depending on how much I like the game I would have went for the 100% so for instance I completed every GTA to 100% but games that I don't like, say DMC I just play through the normal storyline.
The danger now that being such a completionist and with the introduction of trophies I try to get them all. Some of the multiplayer ones are ridiculous and in that respect I wish developers would just wise the fuck up and not put in a trophy that logistically takes like ten days of straight MP to obtain. Especially since the PS3 has a fairly weak MP community.
I also bought Dead space, I hate survivor horrors games because I'm such a pussy when playing them (HL2 scared me), I promised my self after RE:VeronicaX I'd never buy another one because I was compelled to finish it even though I was scared shitless. Now with dead space, before trophies I would have had to finish it at least once but nowadays with the trophies I'm trying to get them all and with there being no MP trophies they are all relatively easy/quick to obtain so I will have to play through on impossible to get the platinum. God damn EA and the hype surrounding this game, why did I buy it, why?
I very rarely play a game with intentions of beating times or increasing difficulty. I play a game like it's a movie and I will generally play on standard difficulty and will more than likely use weapons/ammo cheats simply to advance the storyline.
That's about all that was good about it, shy of the music and graphics.
Back in the day, just having a game under your belt was sort of like bragging rights with my friends. Like "yeah I beat Mega Man 3" and stuff like that. Being able to just talk about the game was fun enough but being the one to explain how you beat it felt good sometimes.
As far as I can remember, exceptions:
Odin Sphere - boring
Robotech PS2 - too hard
Jak 2 - too hard
FEAR - boring
PN03 - final boss is too hard, played the hell out of it though
FF3 DS - too hard
Second Sight - controls sucked, couldn't play for more than 5 minutes
Rogue Galaxy - battle system became exceedingly irritating and the story wasn't good enough to tolerate it
but even if I grow to hate a game, I'll likely finish it. like Lost Odyssey. Sometimes you learn more by playing a bad game/watching a bad movie than with a good one.
If I don't finish a game, it's usually because I stopped playing and by the time I have time to go back, I'd forgotten where I was and what I was supposed to be doing (Metroid Prime 2 took me 2 years to finish because of this...)
Then there are games like Phantom Hourglass, in which you have to do something repetitive and it just gets plain annoying. I would finish a dungeon, realize that I had to go to the damn Ocean King temple yet ANOTHER time, and just turn off the DS. I still intend to go back and finish it. But I hope they never use that concept in Zelda again. Bah.
Wii Code: 2238-5196-8768-3730
Final Fantasy III Code: 2793-2219-0130
Star Fox DS Code: 404-388-375-490
PM me if you add any of these.
Good luck. I am really thinking about just saying fuck it and play another game. I don't want to put the square, circle, and triangle blocks together again damnit.
Shit like that is EXACTLY why I a)Hate this dungeon and B)used a walkthrough every time I've gotten to that shitty part.
Wii Code: 2238-5196-8768-3730
Final Fantasy III Code: 2793-2219-0130
Star Fox DS Code: 404-388-375-490
PM me if you add any of these.
Last Remnant is another good example. I've been told there's a good game in there, but the unbelievable tedium of the first few hours basically forced me to play something else. It was so bad.
Another problem is glitching. This is why I tend to be a little anti-PC. For instance, I was getting towards the end of NWN2, and I ran into a bug where you get stuck unable to zone out of your stronghold. I was caught with a few saves in my Stronghold, and a few from around 2 hours earlier in the game. By the time I found a way to fix the glitch, I had absolutely no desire to finish the game (despite being around 2 hours from the end of a 40+ hour game).
You are my brother.
Story is usually the driving force, unless the game is just a blast to play, then I'm really sad when a game does finally end.
The most recent game I haven't finished yet would be Fallout 3. Partly due to reports of its terrible ending, but mostly because outside the exploration aspect and some of the combat, everything else about the game just rubs me the wrong way. I just have a really hard time caring what happens to the characters and story in the game. Maybe if I get a couple of mods in there and play as an evil bastard it would improve the experience :twisted:
Maybe.
Steam: CarbonFire MWO, Planetside 2, Origin: Carb0nFire
GTA4. The gameplay was quite fun to me, and I wanted to find out more about Niko. Going on through the story gave me more of the former without requiring me to do the more... tedious parts of GTA, like finding all the jumps or shooting pigeons, and handily gave me more of the latter too. I spent minimal amounts of time doing non-story stuff, and pretty much powered through it.
Fallout 3. The gameplay wasn't horribly compelling to me, but I loved the setting, writing, and story hooks. I played through it, doing maybe 1/3 of the sidequests, and ended up reaching the end. Beaten mostly for story reasons. Even though the ending was a little abrupt, the stuff on the way was all quite enticing. Also, I was kind of rushing through it because last fall is a cruel mistress for backlog.
To give a rather different example, Planescape Torment. A game entirely carried on story. Does not disappoint there, but the (non-dialog) gameplay is sorely lacking. This game is basically a really good book to me. I'll pick it up, and just go through it in as close to one sitting as I can.
For an example of something I didn't finish (and there's a LOT of games I have but haven't finished -- my backlog is frighteningly large), Gears of War 1 is an example. I've started new saves more than a couple times but haven't made it further than chapter 3 or 4 on average. The gameplay is fun but highly prone to repetitiveness in large doses, while the story doesn't really have much traction besides some likable characters, like Cole. I have, however, completed Gears of War II. Probably because it was on a rental, and the knowledge that I had the game on a time limit drove me to actually finish it.
I mean, the moves were flashy, but not the flashiest i've ever seen. The story was completely predictable but I still was thoroughly invested in the story, and actually looked forward to plowing through just to see the next cutscene. The gameplay was simple and yet I couldn't put it down.
Whatever it did, it did with flying colors.
Looking at my gaming history in the last couple of years though, it's pretty clear that story plays the minor role in how I decide to spend my gaming hours. Gameplay, gentlemen, is what it's all about; and I'll be goddamned if, in this age of youtube and Let's Plays, I'll put up with piss-poor or even mediocre gameplay to get to the end of a storyline which most likely doesn't even belong in a video game in the first place.
I mean, my favorite games of the last few months have been Shiren the Wanderer (no story to speak of), Etrian Odyssey II (same), Geometry Wars Galaxies (pewpew), and just last week I outright abandoned Deadly Creatures, a 50 dollar purchase, for RE4 Wii, which I picked up for like 10 bucks. Deadly Creatures had some great storytelling, and a really innovative way of presenting it, but when it came right down to picking between Billy Bob Thornton's earth-real drawl and RE4's unmitigated cheese (which I'd already beaten several times on the GC), it wasn't even a contest.
RE4's gameplay entertains me from start to finish, because popping heads and knifing fools never gets old. Slapping rats around with a scorpion is cool and all, but it wasn’t great – and why waste my time on average?
Edit: on the topic of No More Heroes, I'd say it was probably the story and boss fights in equal part that pulled me through. NMH had enough going for it gameplay wise, even despite some really rough and dull patches, but I'll admit that even without the funtastic combat and quirky minigames there's a good chance I'd have finished eventually.
Other than that, unlockables and collectibles keep me going through. 200 pigeons in Liberty City was a dream (well, is a dream; I've still only found in the 170s), and games that have good incentives for Achievements/Trophies (Uncharted, Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection) will keep me playing through.
Xbox: UnbreakableVows | PSN/Wii U: UnbreakableVow | 3DS: 1521-3241-9354
Final Fantasy Tactics A2 would have been roughly 300 times better if it had a New Game+ with all of your weapons unlocked. I say this because the story and missions themselves were garbage, and the prospect of going through them again just to enjoy the deep and entertaining clan creation and class mixing aspects is just unconscionable.
Final Fantasy XII was just a lot of things I do not enjoy whatsoever. I won't call it a bad game here, because I don't want to derail things. But, to me it really is a bad game.
Ninja Gaiden Sigma, one of the reasons I gave up on it was because I have Ninja Gaiden on my OXBox, and when I finally beat it, I felt so so so good. But I remember all the bad times, so when I got to a part in Sigma where I ran into a wall of deaths that -wasn't- one of the bad times, I literally said "Fuck this." and played something else.
However, going into the discussion of 'Fun' and it's impact on value, I got both of those games on the cheap and do not regret the purchases of them. As far as Ninja Gaiden Sigma goes, what I did play and get through had the same "Ninja Gaiden" effect on me (I.E. Cursecursecursecurse haha, finally made it past that part! Yes, who's awesome! Repeat) so I'm fine with it. And as far as FFXII goes..well...at least I'm not speaking from ignorance on it. (I did make it quite a ways in, I think.)
I don't know how much of an incentive trophies/achievements can be for me when we're talking about beating a game to 100% however. For GTA IV, when the trophy patch was brought in, I had no qualms starting again and working towards getting them. I even did my first run-through of the game again to get the Liberty City Minute. The only problem is the MP trophies; I don't do a lot of MP. So I've given up, more or less on getting "100%" of it. I also kinda gave up on Dead Space, since Impossible mode literally kicked me in the teeth and told me to find my mommy in chapter 2. At a part that I had no problem with in Hard. I want to beat it, because I love Dead Space, but I don't know if I can be that good.
On the flipside, however, I've beaten Uncharted: Drake's Fortune...possibly five times, at least four. Only twice because of Trophies. Mostly because of just how it plays and looks and sounds. It really is just a fantastic game. To that end, I would say that story-telling and the feel of the game itself and how it clicks with you are definitely the biggest two reasons to keep playing a game to the end, and sometimes beyond.
tl;dr: I try my best to finish the games I get unless they bore me to death (FFXII) or kick me in the teeth repeatedly until I cry like a girl (Ninja Gaiden Sigma, Dead Space: Impossible Mode). Trophies/Achievements are nice incentives to beat a game to 100%, but it comes down more on the story and the feel of the game than anything for me.
If I had to guess, most of that 50% comes from people making poor purchases. Grabbing a game they aren't really going to like and losing interest half way through.
An example of a situation where I loved a game put did not finish it would be Etrian Odyssey 2. I got to the last story boss, but found I needed to grind a bit (simplification) to beat it, so I happily put the game down. Maybe I'll come back at some point, but by my standards I've beaten the game, the rest is just a time sink.
That might not have occurred had there been any expectation of a final story element, but without a strong story I didn't mind stopping a bit early. Does that mean all games need story? Not really. Being worth my money isn't a matter of the whole game being perfect, but when a game is enjoyable enough to play through completely, or even played through multiple times it reaches a much higher level of quality in my mind.
Bioshock or Mass Effect for instance were worth much more that I paid for them since I've played them both cover to cover a large number of times. I actually re bought both of them on Steam so that I didn't have to worry about losing them when I changed computers, and didn't bat an eye at the 20/30 dollars more they cost since in my mind I was still getting my money's worth.
There is this strange hoarding / "collecting" mentality related to this and other hobbies i have, where i need to have everything related to the activity, and end of buying lot of stuff i don't really enjoy to the fullest.
So, i played the hell out of Patapon for the past 2 months (balancing between work and school), until a couple of minutes ago that i finished the last mission.
I think one of the things that have me hooked up to a game it's the story, combined with character development, the fun factor and playability. Last year, i played and finished FFIV Advance, my first Final Fantasy ever; and fell completely in love with the game. Right now, i'm playing FFV, and have FFVI on the backlog. I know there are newer games, specially on the PSP with better graphics, but I need to play these 3 games and enjoy the story from beginning to end.
On the other side, for you people who are into GTD, i have this big "open loops" regrets if i have all these games and don't play them or finished them eventually; regardless of game reviews or comments.
Just to give you an idea: i played the first James Bond game for GameCube (Agent Under Fire) and loved it; it was the first FPS i played in a long time (i used to play FPS on PC years ago).
So i finished it, and moved to play Nightfire, which i hated (even if it had some improvements on graphics and stuff over Agent Under..) but had to finish it, then finished GoldenEye Rogue Agent, which i really, really liked (even after reading all the hate and reviews online), then finished Everything or Nothing, a game that it's a complete garbage, in level design and user interface (you had to click around 6 times just to save the game) and now, i'm playing From Russia with Love, and i think it's great.
So, i guess i'm like The_Grinch: i have this backlog of games that i need to play and finish so i can move to my big ass wish list of games that i "need" to buy for GBA, GameCube or PSP (thank God i don't have money for a next gen console, or own a game PC).
For example, i started these games and for whatever reason drop them thinking i will continue playing and never managed to sit down again. It has been so long that i will need to start a new game on any of them:
Ocarina of time
A link to the past
The two best Zelda games in must of the people's mind. I just don't feel comfortable with Ocarina's user interace, i don't know why (it's almost the same as Wind Waker). I guess if i had played Ocarina first, instead of Wind Waker, i would have finished it. And i know the story is best.
Oh, there are some games that are plain bad, i try them and gave them away, like Gun (for GameCube).
New Game+ it's another plus: i want or plan to play again some of the games i already finished, like Sands of Time, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess & Viewtiful Joe, Beyond Good and Evil. The thing is: free time.
I do end up playing my DS and PSP games more often than my console games because it's easier to find the time to play on them; you can just squeeze in a few minutes here and there and it adds up pretty fast.
I try really hard to 100% every game I play, but if I don't have the time or don't want to grind, beating story mode is good enough. I don't care if I have to lower the difficulty or use a guide to get past a hard part to do so. And I usually have a guide handy when I play an RPG, ideally one that just covers missable stuff, because I don't have the time to replay such long games any more.
(Also, all this talk about the big dungeon in Phantom Hourglass makes me feel like a weirdo, in a way, because while I hated going through it the first couple of times, after that I started to enjoy it, and by the end of the game I actually looked forward to going back in and finding ways to whittle down my time as much as possible. Eh, different strokes.)
One thing that it's working for me it's alternating between two games of different genres. For example, i have been playing FFIV and now, FFV. I play a couple of hours of FF, and then switch to a 007 shooter (that's why i finished must of them).
Having the PSP, and World of Goo on the Mac, puts a higher level of complexity to my plan; but well, what the hell, right?
(i'm about to start playing Space Invaders Extreme for PSP... i guess that's a game you don't have (or can) finish, right?)
Last few months I've been getting games via Lovefilm rather than buying them and I've noticed that when the option exists of just sticking them in the post and getting a completely different set of games through, I'm finding it hard to settle into games. My acheivement list so far contains about 6 games of which I have 'Finished level one!' achievements only. I think, going back to the issue someone noted about piracy resulting in people not actually really playing the game - yeah. I'm finding the act of ownership of a game is compelling me to actually finish games more.
By contrast, I spent $30 on Folklore recently. I like the combat itself pretty well, but even though I'm not invested in the story so far, I keep playing it hoping that there's more of a payoff as I continue. It might take me longer to finish, but I feel that obligation that if I spent so much on something, I might as well give it the best chance I can to wow me.
The problem is that I have so many games now that I bought on the cheap, and can't motivate myself to play them, despite good things I hear. You know I've never played Planescape? $10 on a dual-jewel case, and I couldn't be bothered to install it for years.
Ka-Chung!
Ka-Chung!
EDIT: And now I've finished it. THANKS G&T THREAD!