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How long does it take you to "get into" a new game?

Terzo

Terzo

Platinum Member
Just wondering. I bought Planescape Torment a while ago but I still haven't really gotten into it. I've probably put a couple of hours into it, but for whatever reason playing it feels more like a chore than playing. I find this especially strange since I loved the Baldur's Gate series.

How much more time should I give the game?
How long do you give a game before giving up on it?
 
Very subjective... depends on the quality of the game, depends on your own tolerance for initial lack of immersion, depends on your own tastes for game settings and story context, and many other variants. I could tell you to keep playing it for another week but it might never be sufficient even after a month. Just don't force yourself to "like" a game if you don't like it. The same goes for how long it takes to give up on a game, still very subjective. It's really up to you, but if you find nothing interesting in Planescape Torment then why forcing yourself to continue?
 
depends on the game, also the game genre

Like, FPS' are easier "to get into" in my opinion, than say an RTS or something
 
Zenoth said:
It's really up to you, but if you find nothing interesting in Planescape Torment then why forcing yourself to continue?
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Mainly because of the praise it has received, and I figured that it's similar enough to BG that I should like it. Plus, there was another game (Witcher, I think) that supposedly didn't pick up until the second chapter. Figuring maybe there's a similar point with this one.
 
I get way into some games before they are even released. Then I get fucked at the drive-through by shitty game design in the final product. I'm talking about you modern warfare 2.
 
As was said, it's totally subjective. Some games that get great reviews I really can't get into, and some games that get terrible reviews I lovvvve. My favorite example of all time is Herzog Zwei for Genesis. EGM, the premier console game mag of the time, had reviews that were like 3/4/4/3 or something (out of 10, 4 reviewers), and I thought it was a classic. Luckily lots of others found it to be awesome as well, and it's widely looked upon as one of the earliest action RTS games out there.

Conversely, I really wanted to like The Witcher and Dragon Age, but I haven't yet given the Witcher much of a chance and DAO I gave up on after putting about 4 hours into it.

EDIT : Here's HZ, rating #31 of 50 top classics. They mention it being the Genesis (hah) of RTS, as well as the faulty EGM review.

http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3134179
 
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Terzo said:
Just wondering. I bought Planescape Torment a while ago but I still haven't really gotten into it. I've probably put a couple of hours into it, but for whatever reason playing it feels more like a chore than playing. I find this especially strange since I loved the Baldur's Gate series.

How much more time should I give the game?
How long do you give a game before giving up on it?
Click to expand...

Planescape is a very slow game, and the combat can be fairly difficult at times when you're in over your head.
 
As everyone here as already mentioned - it depends on the game. I actually would take it a step further and say it's also the genre. Hands down, the quickest game types I get into are arcade style games - just pure fun and enjoyment while turning your brain off.

Some games I get into quickly since the drive to "better myself" is a motivating factor right off the bat. RPG games tend to drive me the most because of this - simply the illusion of tangible progress is very addiciting.

Other games I get into right away cause the story draws you in and you want to see what happens next. This is very RARE in games today I might add.

I find FPS games the quickest to get into and get bored of. RTS games grow on you over time - usually it's actually frustrating at first and it turns you off when you suck and get beat down all the time, but ramps up fun quickly when you start dominating and finding cool little tricks and tactics.

Fighting games are the same way for me with FPS (Or Vs games, whatever you want to call them like Street Fighter IV or Tekken 6) - quickly interesting as they are quickly tiresome and collect dust after a while.

In any case with regards to Planescape Torment - if you're not into the story at all then much of the game will not be fun for you. The characters and their backstory really make the game great - if you're just skipping walls of text then it's really not going to get any better.
 
I dunno, I got really into PST the moment I woke up in a Morgue, covered in scars and with tattooed text on my back that I couldn't read. From there it just got better and better! 🙂
 
if i actually sit down and play it without stopping to alt-tab and chat or talk about how the game is... for a few hours straight then I will be in it
 
If I have to play for more than a couple hours before a game gets "good", no thanks. Developers need to understand building up to the "fun" part shouldn't be bad or extremely boring.
 
Depends for me too. I try to play most games that get great reviews, but sometimes it just doesn't work for me.

One recent example for me was KOTOR. I loved the star wars movies (for the most part), but KOTOR was exceedingly boring for me. Perhaps I don't like the pre-movie storyline of the star wars universe, but the game did absolutely nothing for me. To me, that game was full of stiff combat where you never felt like you did any real damage, and a bunch of boring dialog.

Needless to say, I gave up after about 10 hours in. Perhaps I'll give another shot eventually. It took me three tries to get into Mass Effect...now I can't get enough of it, so there's still a chance I can like that game.
 
I find my problem is with finishing games, that at some point I was really into. The Penumbra series is a good example. Those games freaked me the hell out and I really appreciated the devs' efforts and freshness, but it took some effort on my part to want to finish the first one. The first moment I was stuck in the second one it was more appealing to just alt-tab and play TF2 or another new game picked up in the Steam Sale.

The Void is a brilliant game, absolutely wonderful... but I don't have the urge to start it up again - feels like it'd be too much work remembering how to play.

In fact, there was a thread here about finishing games and why it's such a problem for some of us. In my case, it's usually that I have a reluctance to go through the -effort- of getting back into it.
 
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It usually scales pretty well with total game length for me really. I usually get into most shooters quickly, and they're usually shorter games as well. It took me a very long time to get into Fallout 3, but I can easily get anywhere from 50-100 hours out of it once I started enjoying it. And some games I just end up not liking as much and they get tossed aside. I don't know if I'll ever finish Dead Space even though I'm more than halfway done with it. It's just not something I ever want to play, and it keeps getting buried under new games I keep buying.
 
I can tell within 5 mins of a game if I should uninstall it or not. I'm sorry, but if you can't impress or interest me, with what should be your best foot forward out of the gate, you probably are never going to win me over.
 
It really depends on the learning curve, and how interesting I find the game. For the most part I find FPS really easy to get into, since the mechanics of most FPS games are essentially the same. Within the 1st hour or two I will know if I like an FPS game. RTS and RPG games on the other hand can have a larger learning curve, and while they may be great games after a while I don't have the attention span to continue learning them. For example I was playing the tutorial levels for red alert 3, and I got so bored I never picked it back up again.

As far as finishing games; The only time I really don't finish a game is if I get "stuck." If I need to go out to an FAQ to figure out what to do I will generally give up. If it was just 1 thing I needed to look up that would be ok, but when you gotta constantly alt-tab from the game to an FAQ it just sucks the fun out of it.

Also if I am going to play a game all the way through I generally need to do it in 1 week without playing any other games. Once I get distracted from a game for too long I find it very difficult to get back into. This happens all the time when I start out on a SP campaign, then get distracted playing multiplayer games with my friends. By the time I get back to the campaign I don't even remember what I was doing/don't care anymore.
 
I can think of two games that I pretty much hated when I started, but forced myself to continue and ended up finding both of them very enjoyable.

The Witcher was one, as the first chapter was very boring until the end of it (the rest of the chapters were pretty fun and engaging however.)

STALKER was the other one. Having to take a half dozen attempts just to finish the first mission and having very boring enemies and weapons in the beginning really turned me off. The semi-realistic AI of the NPC's really is what made me enjoy playing the game over and over again (I think I played it to completion 4-5 times.)
 
I like to "get into" a game by playing it for 3-6 hours the first time I play it. This helps me to get really familiar with all the controls and get into the story line quite a bit.

I does, of course, depend on the game though.
 
It usually doesn't take long. If I'm not into it by about 30 minutes in in most cases I won't continue (unless it's got great reviews from people I trust).
 
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