Am I too old for gaming? Or do games just lack the intrigue any more for seasoned vets?

I have played video games since I can remember. My aunt and uncle had an original Pong machine, and I played pretty much every major (and many minor) game console, computer system, and arcade game out there since then (Atari 2600, Activision, Dreamcast, Intellivision, Commodore 64, TI-99a, Apple IIe, TRS-80, Tempest, Galaga, Pac-man, Tron, Playstation, PS2, XBOX, Gamecube, X360, PS3, and many more I can't recall immediately).

I had a good ten years that I was hardcore into combat flight sims in the mid 1990's through early 2000's with Janes, Falcon 4, IL-2, EAW, etc. Loved Descent 1 & 2, Freespace, Starcraft, Mechwarrior series, Call of Duty, C&C Generals, Silent Hunter.

Although lately it seems that I just can't get into anything new, or anything retro for that matter. I play BF2 and that's about it. I've started Riddick Dark Athena, but quit. I started Witcher, and quit, I started Dead Space, and quit, I got 75% through Red Alert 3 and quit. I sampled most games, but never enough to make it all the way through. So far I am having fun with Prototype, but I can't see myself through the whole thing either.

Is it that I'm getting older (I'm 36 now), or games just rehash old ideas that it's hard to get excited any more? Maybe it's time I take a break and come back in several months or a year and maybe that passion will come back. Or maybe the gaming world needs a refresh? I don't know. It'd kind of depressing. It used to bring me joy and fun. But now it's just like a chore. Maybe games are too complex any more? Who knows.

Maybe I'm thinking too hard and should just go play.

 

i'd say of all the games i have played, 5% get played to the end.

i dont think it is unusual or depressing.

i played through over half of fallout 3, halo 2, GTA san andreas, final fantasy 7, metal gear solid, sonic the hedgehog 2, and gears of war.

i didn't finish any of those games, but they were all great.

 

I'm 43 and about the only game I play any more is Fallout 3.

I enjoy the concept and the ability to do what I want without being totally scripted.

 

I guess these days I just like to sit back and relax and have fun with a game. Some just seem so demanding, so involved. Which is good in a way, but rarely can I play a game and drink a beer while playing any more. There never seems to be enough down time LOL!

I think I might get back to Fallout 3 or Mass Effect though. I really did enjoy those to a point. But when the gameplay becomes a chore for a while ( I hate games that you have to grind a lot - WoW anyone? ) I tend to quit. I don't want to replay the same scenario ten times just to get to the next level. Just either make it easier each time, or give me the option to skip it.

I guess maybe I'll get into ArmA II since I loved Operation Flashpoint, and never really played ArmA for some reason. That might spark my passion again!

 

If you haven't yet, I recommend you give the Half-Life series a try. Simply the best sci-fi shooters ever, and Half-Life 2 broke all kinds of technological boundaries with the Source engine.

If you like the kind of more casual game you enjoy a beer while playing, I highly recommend Team Fortress 2. It's the most fun I've ever had in a multiplayer game. The Unreal Tournament series is good as well, particularly UT2k4 and UT3.

 

I find that I don't have the time to play anymore like I used to...

I have to enjoy games that come in bite-size bits...

I just don't have the time to learn a new flight sim control system...I loved MechWarrior 2 and still have very fond memories of playing it with a MS Sidewinder Pro...but trying to remember the keyboard layout now for group firing, jump jets, etc, would short circuit my brain...

I loved the story-based games that would end after 30-40 hours...Fallout and Baldur's Gate...but I don't have the time to invest in Fallout 3 or Oblivion...(and 'open-ended' irritates me...please, developers, herd me along like Half-Life 2 does...I don't have a lot of time, and I especially don't have time to wander around pointlessly in a fictional game world...yes, I'm looking at you Far Cry 2)...

But I think that games have actually become too complex for me...I could never play Defender in the arcade, but there were plenty of other games with just a joystick and just two or three buttons...then along came Mortal Kombat with as many buttons as Defender and secret moves and combos and I knew my time at the arcade was over...

Now, if I want to enjoy Halo 3, I have to spend 30 minutes trying to remember all the control nuances...

Look at Madden...what doesn't the game do? It requires not one, but two analog sticks...you can spend days making a playbook and perfecting your truck stick...in fact, if you want to be competitive, you'd better spend days...the game almost requires a college level course to master...Mutant League Football was so simple and to the point and fun for me...

Game critics keep on tossing around phrases like 'non-linear', 'sandbox', 'open ended', 'incredible depth of gameplay', etc...I just want my X-Com and Master of Orion simplicity...

But I'm worried about your lack of interest in retro play...that could be a problem...right now, Metal Slug on mame or NeoGeo keeps me going...

 

Yep...you're a kindred spirit...

I'm one of the few who can't stand WoW...I played for about a month with my brother and one of my high school buddies...they both still play and swear that the expansions have provided a story worth finishing...(see my previous post...if there's no end, then I don't want to play...and I don't consider earning 50 different achievements an 'ending' or unlocking 20 costumes...what insidiously horrible game design paradigms...)

I thought it played like a dressed up Diablo 2 in the Warcraft universe...but it never ended...after sinking 50 or so hours into it, I still didn't have a mount and I found myself looking around for rocks to mine...I woke up one morning and felt like a bad hangover...what was I doing with my gaming time?...*shudder*...never again...

 

I get a bit mad at myself for not finishing games these days too, I have like 5 games that were pretty good that I didnt finish.

Esp RPG games, you put so much time into them and then never finish it to have it all pay off and see the ending.

RPG was always my flavor of game, when I was a kid I just loved games like Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Zelda, Final Fantasy.

All the newer incanartions of these games can never hold my interest the same way or make the same kind of impact, but a childs mind is much more responsive to things and easily arroused.

Im having fun in prototype right now too, I think I will finish it because the missions give new moves and also because I dont think it will take long to beat, but i dont see myself replaying a harder difficulty or trying to find all the landmarks or get a gold on all the challenges.

I play the online FPS games most often I think because there is nothing to beat, you just play and have fun, also unlike many single player games or mmo's and things that demand so much time to play. A FPS you can play as little or as much as you want and get off the game when real life duty calls with no penalty or problems.

 

Ok, retro play isn't taking a toll so bad. I've been revisiting Freespace 2 and loving it. And recently installed KOTOR 1 & 2 since I never finished those.

I am actually scrapping together a PC from spare parts (kind of scary that I pretty much have everything) to build a Windows 98SE machine to play classics like MechWarrior 2 + expansions. I hope Gog.com makes them WinXP / Vista compatible though.

Time is definitely a factor though. Two infants (well one toddler now I suppose, 18 months), unemployed, but back to school keeps me REALLY busy. Maybe I just need to relax. Pick a game or two, even if retro, to relax and enjoy.

I do know that Starcraft 2 will be very welcome though. I look forward to that. Too bad it probably won't be out until end of this year!

 

All us old farts should start a gaming society for, well, old farts! If I had time, I would do that. So many ideas, so little time. Anyone know how I can never sleep again?

 

team fortress 2 if you haven't played

just fun to run around killing for no reason screaming "medic medic"

 

Sorry about the employment situation...the same brother and high school buddy that contaminated me with WoW are going through the same thing right now...and I always hated school more than work...most of the time, you can leave work at work, but, with school, there's always a paper to write or a test that needs some study...

And yep...two sons are where the bulk of my time is going...6-year old (who loves games...he loves Force Unleashed and all the Lego games...I can't stand the Lego games [unlockables...ugh] unless I relax and just play instead of trying to collect everything...Force Unleashed was one of the funnest games I have played in a while...short, cool and has an ending...helped him with it from start to finish) and a 2-year old...all of us (wife included) enjoy the Buzz! Jr games together...even the 2-year old plays...

 

World of Warcraft branded Mountain Dew? Saw it in Wal-Mart last week...now, they just need Wrath of the Lich King corn dogs...

 

Well, I look forward to when my kids can use the PC more, and enjoy video games. I have an 18 month and 6 month, and a wife that, well, let's just say, puts in less than her fair share (she's unemployed too ATM), and it's quite busy.

I look forward to doing video games with my kiddos, even though I know some people cringe when they think of the idea of kids playing video games. These days, as long as they don't spend all their time, they help with hand/eye coordination, and kid games have lots of educational value too.

I loathe the day though that they can kick my butt.

 

Oh NO! Popular stuff will market anywhere I guess. I never liked Mountain Dew, even though my college roommate probably drank a gallon a day of the nasty stuff.

 

Im 34 and i definatly play games in a different manner than when i was young, i have alot of games im currently playing through at the moment, i guess with age we start to mellow abit and the need to beat a game isnt so intense.....i play a game these days based on how i am feeling...and because of that i dont finish as many games as i used to.....i still really enjoy gaming and guess i always will...but my outlook is different and because of that it goes to reason so to will the way i see gaming change....

 

*laugh* It's already happened to me...the six year old started with the Lego games which are more cooperative than competitive...and then we moved on to Ratchet and Clank when he was five or so...the first month, I would let him win 10 to 8 or something close to that...then I found out that if I let him get too far ahead that he would whip me (and mock me...'Daddy, I'm going to pancake you with the jeep'...wonder who taught him that? *scratching head*)...and then I had to start playing serious from the get-go...and then I reached the point where no matter how hard I tried, he usually beat me...and then I started throwing my PS2 controller just like the good old days with my brother...(actually haven't thrown it...if momma caught us losing our tempers, it would be the end of gaming for both of us...)

Then we moved on to Metroid Prime...chalk another one up for him...then I figured that there was no way that he could beat me on Ace Combat 6 due to a more complex control scheme and having to use the radar to find your opponent...after I showed him how to use the radar, it was all over for me...

Guitar Hero is all that's left to me...his small hands just can't do it yet...

 

If you were a fan of XCOM and MOO, do yourself a favor and check out Jagged Alliance 2, Silent Storm, and the latest incarnation of Heroes of Might and Magic (Tribes of the East, I think?).

 

Are you currently using Vista or XP?

I have everything running (either under DosBox or XP with patches/compatibility tweaks) that I've ever owned with the exception of Crimson Skies (I miss that game)...

And Crimson Skies isn't an OS issue...it's an nVidia issue...somewhere along the line (around 80.xx or so), nVidia broke compatibility with a power-of-2 something or rather so now the game (and particularly the menus) don't display right...I'm unwilling to play the game in software mode (ugly) and I'm unwilling to go back to drivers that old because I'll lose functionality on newer games...we had a very vocal group on the nVidia forums demanding/begging for a fix, but that was over a year ago, so I doubt anything will happen unless some intrepid programmer somewhere gives us a patch or a wrapper...

I couldn't get X-Com: Apocalypse to run either...but then Steam put it up for sale and $5 later...voila...Apocalypse is running fine...that alone turned me from being a Steam hater to a Steam lover...and now the weekend sales...oh gawd, yes, the weekend sales...

 

Awesome

My Father/Son project was to build an arcade, I didnt trust the kids with game controllers as they can pull the cord and make the system fall or something.

So now I have indestructible authentic arcade controls and its interfaced with my PC (Mame with like a thousand games from the good ol days to many of the new ones), Dreamcast (MVC2, Powerstone, Shooters like GigaWing), Gamecube/Wii, Playstation2, and Xbox.

So we have thousands of games at our disposal no way he is gonna beat me in all of them when he is older

The ones I play with him the most are Naruto Shippuden EX3 for the Wii, Guilty Gear X Reloaded for the Wii, Dodon pachi for Mame, and some of the arcade beat em ups like Xmen and the simpsons.

Pictures do more justice than words - http://picasaweb.google.com/masakakoi/CustomArcadeControlPanel#

I currently cant wait for street fighter 4 to come out on PC and put together the NBR fight club so I can give my joystick some use, lately I have not been using it much.

Later in life when the kids are older and we can toss there kiddy toys to make room for it I am going to build another arcade with an old PC for them that is a stand alone cabinet instead of my unique computer desk mod, but to save space and make it more cool I plan to use projector for the screen and have it on the wall with a showcase type stand up control system.

 

I've done Jagged Alliance, Jagged Alliance 2 and Wildfire...I believe all of those are available on gog.com...

I still have Silent Storm and the expansion installed on my laptop...love that game...very underrated...

And I have HoMM2, HoMM3, HoMM4 and HoMM5 (but neither of the expansions) installed on the laptop...along with Fantasy Wars, Elven Legacy and King's Bounty: The Legend (same publisher as HoMM5)...

I luvs my TBS...

 

I'm running dual boot 32-bit XP / 64-bit Windows 7 RC1 on my gaming rig ATM.

I love(d) Crimson Skies. I put so many hours into that game. Then it came on XBOX and the dang console controller has been the bane of my existence. I thought I would go online and kick some major butt. Of course I got my arse handed to me the second I stepped in the arena. Oh well.

If you managed to get MechWarrior 2 and all expansions running, then please let me know!

I think my Win98SE will do me good though. it's an old Shuttle SFF PC with Athlon XP 2400+ (actually I think it's Sempron), 6600 GT AGP video (a bit overpowered for the rig, but oh well), 1GB DDR RAM, and 160GB IDE HDD.

Although I may end up putting XP on it and using it for my little guys in a year or so to destroy. I already have a dozen or so kiddie games that they'd enjoy. Most of them though I believe run with Windows 98 anyhow (ok they're old and passed down from friends and family).

 

Wow...that is an incredible setup...did you gut all the console systems?

I've read about iPac and I spent some time trying to make a wiring harness for my cabinet (I bought an upgraded NBA on NBC/NFL Blitz cabinet and was trying to get it to work with Gauntlet: Legends and Dark Legacy...supposedly all Vegas hardware, but since my cabinet was upgraded from Mortal Kombat, some of the optical joystick and button pinouts weren't quite right...I could get the Gauntlet mobo to come up in attract mode...just couldn't play it...)...so I understand a little of the difficulty in doing custom wiring...if you designed that yourself to work with the iPac, I bow down to your greatness...where did you learn that? I was an ET in the Navy, and I think your project would have cost me more than a year of my life...

My friend keeps trying to convince me to convert my cabinet over to a mame setup, but I think I'll keep it as-is right now...everyone loves to play NBA on NBC, and everytime I hit the start button without putting a quarter in, it's like a long lost dream come true...

Those are incredible pictures of a very difficult, but well realized task...

 

I have MW2 running fine under DosBox...I'll have to dig out my Ghost Bear Legacy disc and try it out...I'll let you know...I don't think there was another expansion, was there?

I lost my Mercenaries disc many years ago, but I didn't enjoy Mercenaries as much as I enjoyed MW2...

Interstate '76 was the same engine as Mercenaries, and I have the Windows version (I don't think there was a DOS version) running fine under XP...you can even play it with my 8-year old Sidewinder Pro Force Feedback or Sidewinder Steering Wheel w/ feedback...

 

I made a mame cabinet. It's been destroyed since I had to make the room for the kids. But I have plans in the works for a new MAME setup that by the time I'm done my kids will be able to enjoy it! LOL.

Regarding MechWarrior 2, I believe it Mercenaries and Ghost Bears Legacy were the expansions. I can't get any of them to run on XP. I will have to try DosBox, although I think I have Windows 95 version. I dunno as I only have ISO any more. Box and CD's are lost or thrown out by now.

 

Well I had to do my project on a budget, with limited tools, materials, workspace, and actual space to put it.

So thats why I just "moded" my computer desk into the cabinet.

Total cost of the whole project was probably just over $200-$250

The only thing I had to "gut" was some dreamcast controllers as there is no encoder out there for them due to the dreamcast's unique signal.

 

I can help you a friend of mine has moded amost all the mechwarrior games to run on XP/Vista. Or you can just use dosbox to run the original dos based games.

 

I'm out of town with the family tomorrow, but when I get back, I'll go dig out GBL and see if I can't get it to work with my MW2 DosBox installation...

Do you use DosBox? If so and if I can get GBL to work, I can probably help you out with your dilemna...and you said a no-no word...i-s-o...

Off to bed for me...

 

I think when you’re younger you see yourself different, you’re less aware of your strength (physical and mind), of your enviroment and your fresh mind leads you to explore different possibilities for the future and what you’ll become. While the young mind is free of all the pain and hassle of a grownup life you have so much time and to potential to be whatever you want to be, and as such the imagination runs wild while you comfortably place yourself in that virtual players position. This is why while you're younger you might be more eager to engage a game and see it through, because there's more sense of accomplishment in it at that age.

Of course hormones/testosterone plays in this, but I'm not going too scientific with this.

 

All this talk about MW2 and Crimson Skies is making me nostalgic... I miss the days when I played them with my Sidewinder Precision Pro, which I still have!

 

we are the few??

 

I love when I actually go through a game all the way. It means it was a good game imo.

And man, I thought I was old... ;x

 

i'm 20 years old so i probably wouldn't understand how you feel. but i barely finishes half of the game i play. and i finished most of them for the sake of finishing them. in my 3 years of hardcore gaming life i only have 3-4 games that i truly enjoyed from the start to the end. most of them just gets dull after about half way through. everyone has their own special selections, and i personally enjoyed the process of finding these games.

for most part i agree with you that nowadays games became less and less innovative. because there is just that much the current technology can do, when someone does something right, others just duplicate it. and each genre are very well defined, it's hard to break that boundary. what many people are doing these days are mixing two genres into one game, some good examples being The Stalker series(FPS+RPG). Mass Effect (TPS+RPG) ,Fallout 3(FPS+RPG)the Total War series(RTS+TBS) and WarHammer 40k: Dawn of War 2 (RTS+ARPG). they are refreshing to some degree but certainly not as much as how the first Thief game defined stealth action genre 10 years ago, and that's the last game i can think of at the moment that's really innovative at that time

so year i guess what i'm trying to say is, if you find video games are getting boring, don't worry about it because you are certainly not the only one.

 

The problem is that it has become an industry.

In the early to mid 90s games had to be innovative, because the majority of the gamers were highly educated students or professionals. If a game was not innovative either by requiring a new way of thinking or had an innovative appearance, it was not successful.
Additionally it was a small market, where quality mattered.
Now (and since about 10 years) games are produced for the masses. And if you have a lot of people, you can sell them almost any trash. Intellectual gamers who want to see challenges have become a minority. And catering a minority on a mass market doesn't pay.

 

Oh yeah right. What do you know? I found the CD's!

 

You are right. I think consolization has really hurt PC's. I like consoles, but I think they really have dumbed down gaming. We've seen some great titles come, but again, it's rare, and then yes, there's a thousand copy-cat games with minor variations to the theme.

I think if the economy picks up again, things may change again. That was part of it in the '90's is that there was free flowing money EVERYWHERE. Anyone with an idea would get money, even if it only made a few bucks profit. These days if it doesn't make millions, then it's considered a failure.

Steam, and online distribution in general, in a way, is helping bring back those small developers. You don't need to sell a million copies, and publishing costs are minimal. Although I do like the sleeper games like Peggle, World of Goo, And Yet it Moves, while fun, they're still too gimmicky, and short lived.

Ah well, back to life I guess.

 

I've been gaming since I was 6, started with my first NES system.
23 years later now, and I still love my games. However, I am definitely not as hardcore as I used to be with gaming.
I find that now I don't finish every game I play. In fact, a lot of my games barely get played. I tend to buy just to say I have the game rather than play it through. I also prefer nowadays to play on my PC/Laptop and use FAQs which I never used to do.

My PS3 lately has become a glorified blu-ray player While my Xbox360 gathers dust, and I sold my Wii a long time ago, cause I'm too lazy to be moving while I'm gaming.

I don't understand now why MMO's require you to talk to the other people who are playing through Ventrillo or other such programs. I'm falling behind the times when just typing was sufficiant and you didn't have to hear about the problems of a 15 year old kid while raiding .

I'm starting to feel old >_<.

 

I'm 32 and have been gaming since my dad bought our first Atari ST computer. I cut my teeth on Sierra and lived and breathed Space Quest for years. All that to say, this thread has been theraputic to read. I appreciate you starting it, wingnut.

I echo much of what you've already stated. I'm wondering when gaming will finally end for me. I find very little pleasure in new games, but just discovered Dosbox and found a copy of "Autoduel". My kids (threeof them) have yet to begin gaming, though we do have a Wii in the house. Unless we're doing a family night, I don't even think about the Wii. Gaming has always been on the computer for me. I thought Fallout III would rescue me, but alas, I got bored pretty quick. There is nothing on the horizon that interests me either. I just want somebody to tell me a good story that I can run around in. Is that so hard these days?

 

These days game selection has to be really spot on to snag a keeper which will take a few months to properly finish, I'm not fond of the console platform's growing influence on the PC gaming market either but every now and then a decent game comes along that makes you sit up and take notice.

I still think the "Golden Age" of PC gaming has past, the 90s and early 00s still have some of the best games I've ever had the pleasure of playing.

 

I also feel like this a lot.
Although many of the newer games, I am in awe at the inovativeness, graphics or whatever. But somewhere along the way, the simple fun factor has disappeared for me...

I agree pretty much with Harley up there

 

i used to beat every game i bought....now im 22 graduated and work full time....im too tired by the time i get home to play and well when i do finish the days work its practically already time for bed....life sucks when u start working after college......ahhh it sucks

 

HaloGod2007 - I don't want to hear it! You're 22! I could burn the candle at both ends and still have energy for work, play, girls, booze, and other as sundry activities.

Just kidding. Life is hard out of college if you're trying to or have to make it on your own. But you're young, you still have hope! Me, I'm a once juicy grape that has shriveled into nothing but a smooshed raisin left at the bottom of a kid's lunch box.

BTW, your location says U of M Ann Arbor. I'm assuming you are/were a student there? I graduated from MSU (in 1994 - eek!). Go Spartans!

 

Chalk up another one - 39 here, and I'venoted very little interests me in the new stuff. I guess my problem is my favorite genre is turn-based strategy; I really don't like real time strategy much (seems to me it becomes a twitch-and-clickfest for the most part) and first-person shooters don't interest me much. Right now, as I type this, I've got my old friend civilization running on my laptop - so I guess I'm still gaming, just not as much as I'd like or with many new games.

I wish they'd do an update to X-Com for turn-based tactical combat; or a good fantasy turn-based game (recently found fantasy wars; that may interest me for a little while at least, though the difficulty seems a little wierd..)

Oh, for the record, 39 here - almost into my 40's...

Edit: see that?? Old enough I had already forgotten that I started the post with my age, so I put it again at the end...

 

Yeah, Civilization is a classic. Will always be on my hard drive.

Give Galactic Civilizations 2 a try though if you haven't already. Good space based TBS game.

 

I have been gaming my whole life. My mom started me on Atari and commodore 64 and I still play just fine. But I do notice that as time goes by I get pickier and buy less games. I remember in the 90s and very early 00s I bought any game that looked decent, now I find a game and stick with it for a while with a few oldies getting reinstalled for fun.

 

Oh, yeah, GalCiv II was a blast - got out of it for a while, and only recentluy picked up the expansions (Dark Avatar, i think, or something? I forget...) and found it had changed some from what I remembered. I originally got Gal Civ II because of it's resemblence to my other favorite, Master of Orion II, which won't run outside of a dosbox setup anymore...

I really need to get my dosbox updated and running under Vista again, so I can go grab some old titles.

 

Its alright OP no worries.

 

Gaming has gotten more "meh" for me as I got older, while I still love it, I don't beat games like I used to. Remember when you were a kid and getting a new game was the greatest thing in the world? Well when you're older and got lots of money to blow on that kind of thing, it kinda takes that magic away since it's not such a rare occasion and you can do it at pretty much anytime, you don't need mom or dad's approval. At least that's how I feel about it, plus very few games on PCs are really geared towards the more hardcore players of yesteryear. We get alot of console ports now, and especially as Crysis 2 went multiplatform, I'm really starting to just not care too much anymore. Though I must say I really need to invest my time in older games that I've never played, but I'm going to need a much more compatible platform than just my Vista based laptop here which leads into another thing..........

And that's the ability to play games at super high, maxed out settings. I remember before I ever built my first desktop back in April 2007, I had to contend with just my underpowered, but gaming capable laptops. They certainly could run games but not most at high settings or anything like that, and part of the fun was just the tweaking process. For right now, very few games I play really require me to make such tweaks at all. Now it's all about Vista compatibility issues which I don't have all too much fun. I miss XP and 16:10 screen ratios of my last two laptops. Hell I miss the 4:3 ratio screen on my first laptop! Reasons like this, and the nostalgic feeling of it have been fueling my interest and desire to play mods to older games I love like Far Cry, BF2 and Half Life 2. I also want to delve into some of the old original Half Life mods, plus I need to make a play through in HL1 since I haven't in 2 or so years. I just want to do it on a 4:3 screen since that's the way I remember it!

*Sigh* Oh nostalgia, and there are so many PS1 games I need to play too.............lol now I'm all depressed

 

No ones ever to old for gaming............gaming is what hold us people from killing each other from everyday stress....IMO i think gaming has released most of my stress a game that i like to take my stress away is GTA:5 man when i play that game i grab my cold drink put my over sized headphones on and start killing innocent by standers to relief myself from stressful day....but what im trying to say is that if u think your to old for gaming then quit for a while then come back to it maybe in a month....... maybe u need a break from all the action.....

 

Awesome, my dad lives in Lansing, so I've been a Spartan fan my whole life. I'm a former Chippewa personally (CMU). I'm only 21, but I've been feeling the same way you do recently. I've bought a bunch of these new "high-speed" games, and haven't finish very many of them. I'd beat every game I'd ever bought multiple times until I stopped playing FF X-2, then never beat FFX XII, then I never beat Ninja Gaiden, and it just went of from there as far as console gaming went. It seems like all the console games, or console ports (PC) are either strickly Linear or strictly Sandbox.

Whatever happened to the games where there's only one path, but the game never showed you exactly what to do. Old school Zelda (NES) and Resident Evil (PS1) come to mind. While those two games took place years apart, and graphic generations apart, they were both fun during their time, took and incredible amount of time, were frustrating, but were still fun.

I believe this is because there's a sense of accomplishment for beating hard games like that, especially without a strat guide. However, I doubt anyone feels really special after "beating" oblivion or Fallout 3. They need to start making games without tutorials or a strange voice guiding you where to go, and just throw players out in the middle of a crapstorm somewhere and let them figure out how to play and what to do.