[digitalwanderer]

Seriously, it's becoming an issue and it's bugging the bejeebus out of me.

I can't game. I just can't get into them. There are some truly excellent games out and I can't lock myself into any long sessions with them, I'm just diddling around.

Sure my wife has been sick for a couple weeks which we just found out is walking pneumonia, and I've been having some behavoiral problems with my kids at school that have been taking up a lot of my time attention...but that's no excuse!

Oh, I could write it all off on the puppies. They've been a hell of a lot of work lately. They've already messed up my morning pretty well, and it's another muddy day out so I'll be spending another afternoon/evening cleaning floors and changing/washing linens and towels.

But again, no excuse!

A few weeks of 5 hours sleep a night when you're an old man who's under a lot of stress is nothing, NOTHING! I can't believe I even considered it.

So I've been having trouble getting into any lengthy gaming sessions and I miss that magic, how do I get it back?

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Find a game that really hooks you, instead of just playing "meh" games that you are only playing because they are there, rather than because you want to play them. Also stop flitting about from website to website - it's probably contributing to your ever-shortening attention span.

I don't do the "living with animals" thing, so I can't imagine how much time they take up. Maybe taking dogs for walks is a good break for fresh air though?

[John Reynolds]

I went through something similar in 2001. Nothing interested me for several months, not even the Baldur's Gate 2 expansion that had just come out. It passed away, but I remember it because it was so unlike me to not seek some form of electronic gaming (damn those mall arcades of the '70s).

[Sobek]

Originally Posted by digitalwanderer

Seriously, it's becoming an issue and it's bugging the bejeebus out of me.

I can't game. I just can't get into them. There are some truly excellent games out and I can't lock myself into any long sessions with them, I'm just diddling around.

Sure my wife has been sick for a couple weeks which we just found out is walking pneumonia, and I've been having some behavoiral problems with my kids at school that have been taking up a lot of my time attention...but that's no excuse!

Oh, I could write it all off on the puppies. They've been a hell of a lot of work lately. They've already messed up my morning pretty well, and it's another muddy day out so I'll be spending another afternoon/evening cleaning floors and changing/washing linens and towels.

But again, no excuse!

A few weeks of 5 hours sleep a night when you're an old man who's under a lot of stress is nothing, NOTHING! I can't believe I even considered it.

So I've been having trouble getting into any lengthy gaming sessions and I miss that magic, how do I get it back?

Honestly...you couldn't mirror my current situation any better (besides the wife/dogs/sickness bit :P ).

I've suddenly hit this boredom streak... FEAR is boring the hell out of me, I can barely muster up the effort to load Q4, Serious Sam 2 I haven't even installed because I just can't be bothered. Heck, even all of my old favourites just don't appeal to my anymore. Vietcong, NOLF 2, Battlefront...something's up.

I've been through this before, but not quite so bad. I just can't bring myself to actually play anything for longer than 5 minutes without falling asleep or..to be honest, without becoming bored shitless.

I know it'll pass but, come on. You, me, and even a few of my close friends are in this exact same situation, it's like a damn virus or something. None of us have any drive to play games, recent or otherwise.

[swaaye]

I think it's partly because of hype honestly. We get all hyped up over these games and then we actually get to play them but it's not as much fun as waiting for them and speculating what they'll be, how they'll run, what new things they'll have, etc. It's the old "thrill of the hunt" mentality.

I find that switching mediums or hitting another hobby help out. Like watch some of your fav TV or try some console games you've never heard of. Hit some websites for stuff completely unrelated to games. You gotta let the 'ol gaming spirit recharge

Goin outside for a bike ride or walk also is amazing at recharging the 'ol antisocial energy cells!

[silence]

yeah.... i played JK2 couple of times, while having some new games DLed, installed and deleted in less then 30 mins into the game.... more and more games simply miss my kind of "fun factor"......

one of main reasons why i DL first is to get taste of real thing before i go and spend money on game.... i dont trust demos with handpicked 10 mins of gameplay.... i rather DL and see what its really about....

maybe we are just getting old?

[Vadi]

I've got the same problem.

I remember when I bought SNES and my first PC games:

I purchased them looking at the package like I had chosen renting games for my NES before. Advertising on TV got me buying Starfox too.

Today I look mainly at reviews. I know I've got the best of the genre but I can't sit and enjoy them mainly becaus I didn't really chose them.

[Cartoon Corpse]

Originally Posted by digitalwanderer

Seriously, it's becoming an issue and it's bugging the bejeebus out of me.

I can't game. I just can't get into them. There are some truly excellent games out and I can't lock myself into any long sessions with them, I'm just diddling around.

Sure my wife has been sick for a couple weeks which we just found out is walking pneumonia, and I've been having some behavoiral problems with my kids at school that have been taking up a lot of my time attention...but that's no excuse!

Oh, I could write it all off on the puppies. They've been a hell of a lot of work lately. They've already messed up my morning pretty well, and it's another muddy day out so I'll be spending another afternoon/evening cleaning floors and changing/washing linens and towels.

But again, no excuse!

A few weeks of 5 hours sleep a night when you're an old man who's under a lot of stress is nothing, NOTHING! I can't believe I even considered it.

So I've been having trouble getting into any lengthy gaming sessions and I miss that magic, how do I get it back?

sounds like some selective culling of your herd could give you more focus?

lately. FEAR, FABLE, IGI2, Psychonauts, are decently immersive for me...not like the 10 hour GTA session but right up there close to them.

guess it depends on what you're into. but it doesn't sound like you have any 'me' time. fortunately as a batchelor, it's always 'me' time. which rocks! contrary to the ' popular' opinion of those who require victims for their fulfillment...family, etc.

many other games i've played (MOST) over the last year are not very immersive.

decent older experiences from last year: shogo, blood2, sin

do you play alot of games? (i've been catching up over the past 3 years).

[Maintank]

Same here, just cant get into them like I used to. DoD:Source was and is good but you can only play for so long.

Too many other real life things are going on right now.

[CMAN]

Try a different type of game. If you are getting bored of FPS, then try an RPG or MMORPG or a RTS. I find I'll get bored of certain types of games, and need to step back and try something different. If that fails, try getting a GB and play some GB games. You probably need something different.

[eastgate2]

I share the exact same feelings with the current games. I guess it is because level designers spend more time on 3d applications rather than the level editors. Also nobody isn't writing any story for games anymore. I miss the days of when I first played deus-ex1.

I can't understand the hype over f.e.a.r either. Scary?

[SpadeDevil]

I know this is the PC section, but you all should play Shadow of the Colossus on the PS2. Too bad PC dev's aren't so imaginative.

Spade

[Rolf N]

I'm becoming much less forgiving. I also often can't help doing the analytical thing on the games I play, why this and that happens at this point in the storyline etc. It's just the experience of having played lots of games that lets you see the patterns and the design technicalities. Like when you see an unknown face on the bridge of the (Star Trek: TNG) Enterprise, you just know he/she's going to die in the next five minutes. I'm having trouble suppressing that behaviour, and it really ruins my gaming fun lately.

E.g. I recently put Sphinx And The Cursed Mummy down for good after just a few hours because I have decided that the game wants to annoy me, does not reward me properly and has horrible progression in difficulty, and diligent game designers would not have done such things. When entering a city hub, the part-time adventurer in me immediately jumped into the surrounding waters to see how far I could swim before hitting the invisible walls. And what do you know, that water is electrified in the game and kills you on touch. Can't say that's any worse than just old fashioned invisible walls, but it felt a lot more in-your-face, and hence artificial. Bam. Bad.
(this was not the moment I stopped playing)

Or how I wondered that the game does not have the "double jump" that's seemingly standard now for this type of game. I was terribly cheesed off when I "learned" that ability a few hours into the game -- predictably a short time after being confronted with a choice where one path was blocked by an obstacle where double jumping was obviously required.

Problem is that the game was actually funny and imaginative. The mummy parts are plain hilarious and the setting has not been beaten to death recently so that's a plus, too. Even so I can't properly enjoy playing it.

I've moved on to Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which is a more or less widely recognized masterpiece. And to my worry I'm finding things that annoy the hell out of me even in this game, where basically everyone you ask will tell you it's as close to perfect as it gets. E.g. I'm wondering why they had to put that f**ing owl in there with the unskippable forced dialogs. I'm wondering why the game camera needs to start panning around when you're not moving for a few seconds. Etc. Small quibbles. What freaks me out is that I even recognize them as quibbles.

OTOH I'm more and more enjoying games without any story at all. I can play Zookeeper over and over again. Heck, the last couple of games on the PC I thoroughly enjoyed and replayed many times were Ufo: Aftermath and Master Of Orion 3, both utter shipwrecks in story telling and charm. These games are basically just more (Ufo, Moo) or less (ZK) complex rule sets to understand and beat, and it sure works for me lots better than the "fantastic journey through a wondrous world with interesting story line and tried and true mechanics" type of games lately.

And oh so fitting, I used to be an RPG nutcase in my youth, but could not bother myself to finish Ultima IX, Arx Fatalis, Arcanum, Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment and many others.

I'm slowly turning into an EA vampire here if this trend continues. Game rules are everything while story, setting, design and feel are irrelevant.

But then I did enjoy Final Fantasy X a whole damn lot. Same goes for Resident Evil 4. Neither have much replay value for me but they were fun while they lasted. Perhaps there is still some hope for me.

dig,
You need to play unique and different games if you can't enjoy the classic genres anymore. You've seen it all. It doesn't help if the weapon sounds are different and the chick on the mothership was renamed to Alyx and moved to an underground facility. You can see through such deception and recognize the recurring patterns because you've played it too many times ...
Zoltar says that you should try out Pikmin. It may look embarrasingly childish, but what matters more is that it's a pretty unique game (and I don't say such things lightly).
Metroid Prime (not 2!) is big fun if you don't mind a little twitch action. The intertwined paths through the areas that are opened by acquiring certain abilities (movement, weapons, visors, grapple ...) are an interesting twist on the old "look at the level, kill all enemies and move on" concept. Sounds much more awkward than it is. It's getting copied somewhat, but it's still relatively fresh, especially when you've never been into consoles.
Or try Viewtiful Joe. Outright crazy "bullet time" hand-to-hand action havoc. Quite twitchy.

You'll notice that I did not recommend PC games. That's because there are none atm I could recommend, unfortunately.

I'm definitely going to buy Oblivion ASAP but I'm afraid this will be one of those "meh" experiences after the novelty has worn off, and I'll play a round or two of Zookeeper.

[digitalwanderer]

Actually I did have one recent game that got me hooked for a bit, FEAR sucked me in and impressed the bejeebus out of me. I'm gonna try replaying it as I'm still a bit confused about what happened in a few spots. (But in a good way, I like games that make me think/wonder a bit)

I bought Ragdoll Kung Fu just to try something different, but it hasn't grabbed me yet. I think a lot of it has to do with I have no real time to game and I'm too wiped out lately.

[Chalnoth]

Well, the games that I have really liked the most have always been relatively few and far between. Mostly these days I stick with games from studios whose products I've liked in the past. But those games are taking longer and longer to produce due to the advancement of technology, so it means that I have to wait longer and longer to play one of these games.

But, for me, well, I'll be playing City of Villains for a few months, at least That should tide me over until Oblivion, I hope.

[Guden Oden]

Too much of that which we love will bore us. A dog can eat the same dogfood its whole life and will NEVER complain. Humans on the other hand crave variety, as we all know.

Thus digi, if one game bores you, don't pick up another. Instead, turn OFF your computer and go read a book.

I suggest Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton, and after that, Judas Unchained, by the same author.

After a couple days, come back to gaming in limited amounts and intermix with reading your book.

[TheMightyPuck]

I've got the same problem. It is like chronic gaming depression. I was all exicted to get Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando for 20 bucks. Things is still in the package. Fable barely started. BF2 paid barely played. WOW, which owned me for a while I really have barely touched in months. It could be seasonal for me. I've never been much of a summer gamer. I'm not touching another game until I play what I have though. I don't think it is the games. It is an attitute. Ennui if you will. Wouldn't matter what game. The fun will come back.

[Rodéric]

I barely find one game enjoyable a year, this year being exception since I got Guild Wars (205+ hours still counting), Resident Evil 4, and I'm gonna get F.E.A.R. (the demo was great).
All in all, as I said in a variety of threads already, it's just that I feel most games are just the same gameplay with updated graphics, really not worth playing.
That's exactly why I'm interested in Revolution, and only this next gen console, at last it'll offer something NEW, and not yet again the same game but cuter due to tech evolution.

I find myself replaying Chrono Trigger (SNES), Outcast (PC), Half-Life 2 (PC), not switched on my Cube in a long time, although I do have unfinished good games on it...


I'm beginning to wonder if all those next gen consoles games trailers are not hurting current gen games too...

[Rys]

If you ask me, it's because the games (that I see you mostly playing or talking about) are shit. Quake IV is shit, Serious Sam 2 is shit, F.E.A.R. is a little better but still, when you really think about it, shit. FPS games at the very least are just boring, derivative shit.

There's nothing new to the genre. They're the same games we've been playing for 10 years, just with prettier graphics (arguably, in the case of Q4).

I can imagine it's much the same elsewhere in other genres, too. Same old crap, just dressed up to fool you.

The gems are few and far between these days. Very few and far between.

[Randell]

yeah stop playing the same old FPS shit. How about this;

http://spore.ea.com/

or this;

http://www.darwinia.co.uk/

[bigz]

I disagree Rys.

I'm really enjoying B&W2, I've got a fair way through FEAR and that's right up my street. I did find SS2 a bit underwhelming though.

Quake 4 is still in its box, I'm not touching that til I've played through FEAR. I've heard several mixed reviews about it, so I'm going in to that with an open mind.

I'm expecting COD2 to be great too. The demo was tremendous fun IMHO, and while we're on the subject of war games, DoD: Source is a whole lot of fun - I'll regularly sit down and have half an hour wit' mi spade.

I actually think there are more good games out now than there were this time last year. I'm certainly a lot more excited about the games that have just been released than I was about Doom 3/Half-Life 2 collectively.

There's no doubting that Half-Life 2 was fantastic and will take some beating, but FEAR on Extreme Difficulty is some great entertainment that leaves the hairs on the back of your neck standing up. I stopped playing games on normal difficulty a long time ago, because they got repetitive and boring, but the way that FEAR's AI actually work together in an attempt to catch you with your pants down is absolutely breathtaking.

The only gripe I've got with FEAR is the inability to change the firing modes on the automatic weapons, having said that, I use the pistols, shotgun and nail gun - I don't really need alternate fire.

[K.I.L.E.R]

These days 99.9% of games suck.
I can't play that many games for more than 3 minutes let alone 5.

If you can play most of the crap out there for more than 3 minutes than you have a lot of patients.
I've gone back to replaying HL2, old arcade games and Heroes Of Might and Magic 4.

When I can be bothered I will install Painkiller and finish that off again.

[Rys]

Originally Posted by bigz

I disagree Rys.

I'm really enjoying B&W2, I've got a fair way through FEAR and that's right up my street. I did find SS2 a bit underwhelming though.

Quake 4 is still in its box, I'm not touching that til I've played through FEAR. I've heard several mixed reviews about it, so I'm going in to that with an open mind.

I'm expecting COD2 to be great too. The demo was tremendous fun IMHO, and while we're on the subject of war games, DoD: Source is a whole lot of fun - I'll regularly sit down and have half an hour wit' mi spade.

I actually think there are more good games out now than there were this time last year. I'm certainly a lot more excited about the games that have just been released than I was about Doom 3/Half-Life 2 collectively.

There's no doubting that Half-Life 2 was fantastic and will take some beating, but FEAR on Extreme Difficulty is some great entertainment that leaves the hairs on the back of your neck standing up. I stopped playing games on normal difficulty a long time ago, because they got repetitive and boring, but the way that FEAR's AI actually work together in an attempt to catch you with your pants down is absolutely breathtaking.

The only gripe I've got with FEAR is the inability to change the firing modes on the automatic weapons, having said that, I use the pistols, shotgun and nail gun - I don't really need alternate fire.

B&W2 is great, yes, but then it's not an FPS. DoD: Source is about the only FPS I've enjoyed since Half-Life 2 was released and even then it's not massively innovative, being as it is based on a years old game. There's been nothing new in the genre in ages and that's the crux of my argument.

[PatrickL]

Digi, did you ever play any mmorpg? With your ability to socialize so easily you could have great fun and maybe some addiction

[Tim Murray]

Originally Posted by PatrickL

Digi, did you ever play any mmorpg? With your ability to socialize so easily you could have great fun and maybe some addiction

If you get WoW, you can come on Laughing Skull, and I will give you lots of gold and love. Considering I'm only 46 and should have close to 200 gold if I hadn't given 180 of it away to friends for horses, yeah, I think I can have a horse and some good loot for you when you hit 40.

It's a damned fun game. If you can find installation media, I'll give you a 10 day pass to try it.