Case of gaming frustration

[PrincessFrosty]

I'm much less patient as I get older, my habits have moved towards playing single player games on medium and easy and enjoying them for the story and the experience, rather than the challenge.

Beating my head against a rock is not what I call a good time, sometimes bosses and hard parts of the game are just boring, replaying over and over because developers have largely removed quick save and make some parts of the game unreasonably difficult or require special knowledge you can't know before hand (typical boss mechanic)

I'm prepared to sit down and spend lots of time thinking about puzzle games because that's the whole point of a puzzle game. I miss the old 2D puzzle adventure games

 

[werepossum]

Hmmm, I wasn't gonna mention that I am 44.

But, I just built a new computer... A computer that doesn't suck down huge amounts of power and is somewhat game playing worthy. So... Anyway......

I was a far cry fan from the beginning ... But don't get me wrong, I started out with choplifter / load runner on apple 2's and before that I wasted millions of quarters on battle field/pacman etc...etc... I hated far cry 2, but I enjoyed for the most part far cry 3. Beat it twice ... and might redo the entire game on just stealth mode. Since I rushed through it with only the 2 weapon options. Never did any of the animal hunts or wanted poster stuff just unlocked all the radio towers and took over all the bases.

I think what impresses me the most is how "REAL" everything looks. I hope before I die, maybe in another 30-40 years we'll actually be plugged into games ...

I was kinda wondering if it was normal for a 44 year old to get hyped up on FPS such as FC3. Sigh... I remember how fun it was playing fc (1) in 04 almost 10 years ago! GASP. I had the a cutting edge video card to turn on all the eye candy ... It was a blast had the 800.00 dell 24" panel still got it in storage ... Ah well... FC3 just wasn't as fun ... maybe because I am older but hmmm... It's almost like chasing a high... and you hope every new game can give you that better HIGH feeling... L4D was a close second ... My problem now is... What game should I play next????? I should be happy that I am actually enjoying FC3.

I'm 52 and except for the occasional racing game, SP FPS are all I play. I loved FC1 & FC2 and merely liked FC3, although I played every quest and thought the main story and the voice acting were much better in FC3. But my favorites at the moment are Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, heavily modded and played as shooters.

I'm much less patient as I get older, my habits have moved towards playing single player games on medium and easy and enjoying them for the story and the experience, rather than the challenge.

Beating my head against a rock is not what I call a good time, sometimes bosses and hard parts of the game are just boring, replaying over and over because developers have largely removed quick save and make some parts of the game unreasonably difficult or require special knowledge you can't know before hand (typical boss mechanic)

I'm prepared to sit down and spend lots of time thinking about puzzle games because that's the whole point of a puzzle game. I miss the old 2D puzzle adventure games

I greatly dislike most boss fights because they quickly grow repetitive. I do like the Call of Duty style though, where the number and quality of enemies escalate into a boss-level challenge. And I agree that it's difficult to find a game with a boss-type challenge that does not get quickly boring if it must be replayed over and over. The best games have difficulty adjustable on the fly so that when it passes from challenging to boring, one can simply dial down the difficulty and move on. Unfortunately I think far too many developers see difficulty as a substitute for content. Four hours of game play stretched by difficulty into twelve hours is just twelve hours of sucky game play.

Open world games where I can explore are great too.

 

[HydroSqueegee]

the best games are the ones you can get together with a group of buddies and mess around and have fun. offline, open world games are where its at. something sandboxy where you can piddle around and do what you please. Im too old to get deep into games, so RPGs and grindy MMOs dont hold my interest anymore. So i stick to Transport Tycoon, Railroad Tycoon, Colonization (the old DOS one), Civilization, Minecraft and for being social, Mechwarrior Online.

and after a couple decades of gaming, the games get VERY repetitive. same thing, different coat of paint. boring.

 

[lilrayray69]

But my favorites at the moment are Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, heavily modded and played as shooters.

What mods do you use? Been a while since I played NV and might give it a try again if the mods are good

 

[Bonesdad]

I am 45, and I feel the same way.

A lot of the games these days seem to be rather ho-hum. But then again, if I was 25 I would probably love those same games.

it's like that with women too...when I was 25, all a woman had to be was trim and cute. Now, I play them a little bit, and if they're dumb, I move on.

 

[SlitheryDee]

Yeah, I'm the same way. I'm not entirely convinced it's simple age getting to me though. It's more that I've played so many games in my life that I'm kinda jaded now. If a game is fun I can muster as much concentration as I ever could, but if it's just mediocre I have no patience for it. When I didn't have as much experience under my belt I could find something new and interesting about a lot more games than I can now. Like anything else, your taste in gaming becomes more and more refined as you continue to engage in it. The downside of this is that you simply can't enjoy all the games that you used to be able to. That's life though. I bet you could look back at a lot of the music and movies you thought were good years ago and be horrified now at how bad your taste was. Why would you think gaming would be any different?

 

[Lalakai]

lol it's funny to hear people say they've been gaming for 15 or 20 years, getting bored as they have grown, the games loosing their interest. One of the first systems I gamed on was a KayPro, which severely "dates" me. Perhaps its not the game, but what we are hoping for when we play the game. Are we gaming to relax, to be with friends, to trip down memory lane and play an old game we played in DOS? I've played many many games, finished them, then started again but from a different aspect, having nearly as much fun as the first time through. It's more frustrating to my kids because I have little interest in playing many of the games they opt for. WoW was great but they neffed to accomidate the newer players that didn't want to go the long route to build your players, so now my 85's dust in the old folks home. Definitely looking forward to Star Citizen, but in the mean time I'll play Edge of Chaos, X2 the Threat, using the games as an escape, much like I would day dreaming.

Look at what you are expecting from the game; do you want to be challenged, do you want to relive thrills of first playing it, is it a forum to meet old friends??

 

[werepossum]

What mods do you use? Been a while since I played NV and might give it a try again if the mods are good

I went through Gopher's mod videos. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SAeXsA6Nt8 I haven't extensively modded New Vegas so far, just Fallout 3, but he has a similar series for that.

EDIT: To answer in a bit more depth, I'm using:
AHUD - Adjustable HUD, gives more control and helps various mods coexist.
Automatic Lawbringer/Contract killer - makes perk automatic as a function of karma.
Better durability - makes high level adventuring possible without packing three sets of armor and an armload of each weapon.
Better trader repairs - improves the Repair skill of traders.
Billboard camps - adds accessible camps to five very tall billboards; some are scavengers and some are raiders.
Darnified UI - improves the user interface and adds controllability to its layout.
DC Interiors Project - adds detailed interiors to many otherwise inaccessible buildings.
Director's chair - adds many special effects, none of which I like, but necessary for
Dynavision - makes depth of field changeable.
EVE - Enhanced Visuals for Energy weapons.
F3 Project Reality - Adds weather effects.
Fallout 3 reanimated - replaces many of Bethesda's character animations with improved, more realistic animations.
Fallout 3 Redesigned (formerly Project Beauty) - makes Fallout 3 prettier in many, many ways.
Fallout Interoperability Program - FOIP is necessary to make disparate mods play nicely together.
Fallout Stutter Remover - Removes the stutters and microstutters that commonly plague Bethesda games.
FWE - Fallout 3 Wanderers Edition - Makes a more immersive, less forgiving wasteland, with faster and more deadly combat. Largely eliminates my complaint that most high level critters require multiple magazines of all weapons to be delivered to the head at point blank range.
Immersive HUD - allows some or all parts of the HUD to fade away when not in need, giving a more immersive experience.
Malika the Gypsy - an NPC who can function as an unofficial follower, or as another trader, or simply as local color.
Martigen's Mutant Mod - adds variability to standard monsters plus a wealth of new monsters - not so realistic, but much more enjoyable.
New mall - Franklin mall - a new place to explore, which I have not yet done.
New office - Muldoon Electronics - Yet another building to explore.
NMC's performance texture pack - Improves almost all textures for those of us whose computers are solid gaming platforms but not quite up to making NASA drool.
Rivet City Merchants - Adds a few new merchants to Rivet City.
Rockville Commons - Adds a new town with 60+ NPC, 400+ voiced dialogues, and 12 new quests (none of which I have yet seen.)
The Imaginator - Adds visual controls and special effects.
Unified HUD project - another mod for controlling your HUD.
Weapon Mod Kits - Adds - well, you know.
Wearable Black Wolf Backpack - Adds wearable backpacks in several sizes/carrying weights and finishes, to increase your carrying weight.

Taken together, these mods allow me to do things like change the flow of time to 1:1, make the characters and the scenery much prettier, add extra content, and make the game much harder, especially gunfire. They also make leveling much slower to make the game more challenging, but that didn't actually affect me because when I began the loading my character was already maxed out and the main quest finished.

 

[xXdragonbatXX]

Steam had all the GTA games for 12 bucks the good days of gaming are back!

 

[JoetheLion]

I used to play a lot. Often finishing 8 to 10 games a month when they weren't just 5 hours long, but took a big chunk of your time while giving you loads of fun. Nowadays I play a lot less, but I have these phases. There is a phase in which I won't touch a game for a month or two and then there is a phase in which I finish several games in a row. If you are not interested in playing, don't force it. If modern games don't satisfy you, play some older games. I've played like 500 hundred games over the years, but I have still many older gems waiting on my list. There are fewer and fewer new games that amuse me, but there are still some old that can easily amaze me.