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What brings you back for more?


Shadowstep
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Your game is saved, and your console was just turned off. Before you know it, your console is on again and you're playing the same game for a few more hours.

 

Let's talk about that desire to keep playing a game after you've stopped playing "for now." What draws you back time and time again?

 

For me, I can't get enough of games where the challenge comes from my mastery of the game. Games like Super Mario 64, Assassin's Creed, and Crackdown are the best examples for me. Virtually every challenge in those games can be completed from the start of the game.

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The sexual tension between characters, that does it for me. All kidding aside (yeah, like i'm kidding), I say gameplay brings me back. A game has to either have a great story like many Role-playing games do or have the type of gameplay that you can't resist coming back to, like any Fallout series. Fallout is a good game to talk about, has barely any story and you spend the majority of your time killing and looting crap, yet as soon as you turn it off you can't help but wonder what else you haven't discovered? What else you can loot, what else someone is carrying on them.

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For me it's the escape, the fantasy, the immersion into another time and place. You see, my life sucks; my real life that is. So I really love pretending I'm someone else. I don't care about cranking up the challenge level, pursuing achievements, getting unlockables, or obtaining %100 completion (although I do go for these things sometimes.)

 

I'm the kind of guy who will walk his character through a town instead of running and jumping like a madman. I don't fast travel. I buy/rent rooms every night. I go out of my way to watch sunsets. I actually talk to my TV while I'm playing sometimes (dorky and pathetic, I know.)

 

Even when I play Battlefield, I pretend I'm a soldier. I use real military tactics and speak in real military lingo to my friends -- much to their amusement and annoyance I think. (I also think it serves a practical purpose. Military jargon is less ambiguous and faster to communicate.... that is unless you have to take the time to explain to your friends what AO or CAS means... :P )

 

That's why I'm going to jump into RDR again in a minute. There's no career or traffic to worry about in New Austin. There's just my horse and my sidearm. I can't wait until video games plug straight into your brain like in the Matrix and I can ditch my life completely for something that isn't real.

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Littlepirate is an actual Pirate? I love to do the same thing, I'll go nuts if I can't get every single possible item that exist in the game. If I know there's even a chance an item is missing, I'll either spend weeks searching or restart the whole game just to find that item I couldn't get the first time.

Literally, I am descended from one. :D Posted that story in the 'avatar name' section.

I also hate it when the game only gives you a choice between two items. I want BOTH goddamn it.

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I'm an explora-holic. I gotta make sure I search through every last nook and cranny to find ALL treasures. I turn it off but then fear I'll forget to look in a certain place so I sit there and spend hours making sure every last bit of map is explored.

 

If you don't already own it, I reaaaaally hope you bought the King's Bounty pack when it was on sale.

 

The exploration in that game is super excellent.

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Yeah I'm a big fan of exploring every nook n cranny of a game.

Hence my current like for the current Fallouts n Oblivion as they're very big worlds with lots of hidden off the beaten track places.

Oblivion drives me insane--I've spent HOURS exploring. And when I finally get to questing they tell me to go find something far far away hidden deep guarded by some spirit.

 

'Oh--you mean you already have it? Well... you ARE a wonder.'

'Sweet. :bun-totes: '

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Exploration of interesting physical spaces, characters and stories. Multiple interesting and significantly different solutions to a problem, whether that be different configurations of an army in Final Fantasy Tactics or different story choices that alter the narrative or gameworld. Fun gameplay systems.

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I replay Mickey Mania from time to time, as well as Tetris, Oblivion and I planned to play Psychonauts on new years eve but eh..

 

Mickey Mania mostly because of the Steamboat Willy level and jumping on the goat to make it barf music. For some reason I love doing that. The cheery tune makes me feel like a kid, so I like it. And there's the level where you run around on a dinner table, launching from champagne corks and jumping on green jello... guess it brings out the kid in me.

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These days it's often a compelling story that will do it to me. It's not content/doing things in the game, it's not the actual gameplay itself, but it's that feeling that I want to find out what's next that keeps me going. Most recently I think this explains why I finally finished The Witcher. I did 3-epilogue at a much faster rate than I play games these days (in terms of days/weeks spent to actually finish as I'm slow as hell now as I don't put in enough hours a week) and I loved every second of it. I would definitely keep coming back to it until 5 in the morning. The Witcher is a good example of the gameplay not driving it but the story as most of us know The Witcher's gameplay isn't the greatest thing ever. Not to mention how the content actually fills in and colors the world which not many games are good at though they attempt that with their sidequests.

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