Topic: How do you play games?

Hey, everyone!

I was wondering today about why do I take so long to finish games, particularly if they're open world titles and I realized that I use a lot of my gaming time exploring the worlds, doing optional stuff, collecting items... Thanks to that, it takes a while to make any progress in the story or campaign. I'd like to change that, let go of doing everything and attempt to approach games differently.

Which brings me to this topic, how do you play games? =)

I like to do the side-quests, but I wouldn't say that I'm a completionist, it's really difficult for me to unlock a Platinum trophy. Not a huge fan of collect small items over a huge map and other activities like that.

Anyway, I used to play only the main campaign of the games, but now I always try to explore more and have a more complete experience. Not a completionist, not a main campaign only guy, I'm somewhere in the middle.

Depends on the game.

With most games, I'm perfectly content to get to the end credits and move on to something else.

Some games, though, I either love enough to fully complete, or are designed to be 100% completed as part of a normal playthrough.

As an example, I actually "finished" Danganronpa V3 at 45 hours or so of playtime, but I'm going on 65 hours now due to trophy hunting and post-game content (and I've yet to even scratch the surface of everything this title has to offer!)

I don't do multiple playthroughs unless a game is short, though. Undertale was short enough and fun enough that I completed three successive playthroughs one after another to see all of the content, but 60 hour JRPGs with multiple endings? I'm likely to only ever see one of those. I'm also not generally tempted by NG+ content, as, by the time I've completed a game, I'm generally ready to move on to the next.

Umm with a controller.

I usually play one game at a time per platform. If there a multiple releases I try and juggle two at a time, but that's rare (Monster Hunter World, Dragon Ball FighterZ).
If I really like a game, I'll look up the trophy list. If it seems like fun, I'll go for the platinum.
I'll try and do most side quests, but sometimes I just do them out compulsion (Ni no Kuni 2). Same goes for collectibles. If they are just there I'll go get them. If it's like ACs' feathers/flags and you have to chase them I usually just give up.

Speaking of Ni No Kuni 2...
It has a 'fogged out' world map. Whenever games employ this mechanic I actively try and clear out the map no matter how tedious it might be. It's annoying, but I can't help myself!

I've have the attention span of a particularly hyperactive gnat - so I tend to delve in to something for a few days then my attention gets diverted elsewhere.

In my youth, where a new £50 Mega Drive game was usually a gift - I'd spend considerably more time in a game.

I try to revisit things, but that can take a good long while.

With the advent of trophies - I did start to stick with things a little more.

I also stick with things I like a lot. So most decent shmups get a good rotation.

I play games like I read books. I play games until I have pretty much 100%ed them. That doesn't always result in a platinum trophy, but I try to do all side quests and collectibles in each game I play. By the time I have finished the game, I've often put a lot of time in a game, and pretty much never feel the need to replay them again.

I play with my partner most of the time, and to keep it fun for the spectator, I might 'roleplay' a bit more than some others here. For instance, GTAV I dress up depending on the mission, stick to the traffic rules (as much as I can) and often walk instead of running. Stuff like that. I also take the time to look around me a lot. Do other people do stuff like that too?

I often look up game lengths on HowLongToBeat, though Im always way above their numbers.

Unfortunately, I'm quite impatient. So my gaming sessions are never really long. Sessions are rarely longer than two hours.

I do play different games beside each other. Some I play together with my better half, others I'll play alone. Kind of depends on that.

As a result, I always I have trouble keeping up with new games. I'm still playing 2015 releases, so why should I buy anything new?

Anyway, I love games.

@Kidfried That's pretty cool. I've never really had a partner who was in to gaming - but did have one who liked to watch the more cinematic stuff occasionally. I can relate to your GTA V experience I think. We treated Red Dead a lot like watching a Western.

I generally play games from start to finish - it's rare I don't finish a title before moving on to another - and then once I've finished it if I enjoyed it I might stick around to go for more trophies or whatever. If the platinum looks like loads of effort I probably won't unless I really liked it.

But I pretty much never start a new game before finishing the last one unless it's a total emergency, like when Persona 5 released and I had to quit what I was playing, ASAP.

@KALofKRYPTON I'm with you in the Mega Drive days. Games were more of a luxury and most had no save/password functionality at all, so forced players to start from the beginning every time. Led to heightened familiarity and motivation to look for short cuts and secrets. Todays gaming has lost those elements with more of a thirst for new content. Open worlds and the need to keep people playing has led to a lot of fluff with too many collectables and meaningless side quests. @Fight_Teza_Fight I'm the same with Ni No Kuni 2. I had a thought yesterday while clearing out a city of side quests whether I would bother if it didn't contribute to the kingdom building aspect. Don't think I would have.

Edit: My own rules for completion are end credits and 70% of trophies. Nice balance between seeing all a game has to offer and not burning out for completions sake.

I tend to play wearing as little as possible, for comfort reasons.

Seriously though, I like to complete the story for all games I play, though I do have a slight collectionist ocd sometimes and I will often do all side quests and collectibles if I am enjoying it. Sometimes though, I struggle and just do what I deem important. If I am getting bored of a large game, I would rather concentrate on the story before I lose interest completely. When it comes to trophiies, it depends if I like the game enough to go all out. I rarely do any trophy where it requires multiple playthroughs or speedruns, though I might do a new game plus if it gives the game something.

@Shellcore I'll usually only go for a plat if I'm actually interested in what I'm playing and it's relatively easy. If a game comes with a lot of online trophies (of the Assassin's Creed variety), chances are that I'll never bother.
That said, sometimes there is a perfect storm of a plat. Not very often, but Resogun was the ideal game for a plat for me. It was just tough enough not to be frustrating and at the time - plenty of people were playing so the co-op trophy was easy to get.

It really depends on the game. Most open world Action Adventure or RPGs, I like to explore everything, do all the side quests etc. That being said, some 'side quests' - like Gwent, horse racing or fist fighting (Witcher 3), I have no interest in doing at all. To me these type of quests don't appeal. In Assassin Creed Origins, it was the chariot racing and arena combat quests that stopped me getting 'every' achievement but I still explored every single area, every single ? on the map and 100% completed both DLC's too.

Games like Uncharted, I do collect everything - usually on my first and generally only playthrough. I may go back and do the odd level if I miss a collectible or achievement/trophy tied to a specific level. I certainly go off the 'path' to explore everything I can.

I consider games like Tomb Raider and its follow up, 100% finished - even if I haven't got ALL the trophies/achievements because I did 'everything' in the world and have 100% story completion.

Point is though, I only do what I want to do. I like a lot of the side quests, the collectibles etc so I go for these. I don't 'rush' through a story/game and like to have done virtually everything before embarking on the final 'story' mission.

depends on the game and my mood really if i just want to mess around i'll do side quests or just explore or i'll just ignore everything else and crack on with the story (i mainly play RPG's you see)

like i said it all depends on my mood

I think I'm the opposite of a completionist. I very rarely care about collecting items littered around a map, and have no interest in trophies. In fact, all too often I'll complete half a game, get bored, and move on- though this mainly applies to open world games.

Don't get me wrong, though. I love games. It has been a hobby for 30 years, but my enjoyment nowadays seems to be derived more from the thrill of playing something new than the satisfaction of completing it.

I also get tired of a game's mechanics quicker than I used to, so I'll happily flit between games in one session to keep things interesting; like at the moment I have Far Cry 5, FIFA 18 (which I picked up cheap after playing too much PES 18), and a number of VR titles on rotation, all of which I'll play in a 2-3 hour session.

I have a terrible habit of finding a mechanic and using the same throughout a game, even if its detrimental to the experience. I wish games had a background log and mechanics you didnt use were showcased more often mid game rather than just when you recieve it.

I have played some utter tripe in my lifetime and I will give any game a bash and dont care for challenge as long as the game is engaging. As for trophies wow has my viewpoint changed in the last 12 months. Yes I want them but I wont play with a guide, replay a game on the hardest difficulty for 1 measly trophy or do something laborious when the time would he better suited doing something else. I used guides often on the 360 and ruined games so I will always play blind even if I miss a shed load of context specific trophies.

Im actually having more fun this year playing games without trophies and guides, Pes lite, Arms, snes mini and my PC GOG collection. Without the stress of trophies Im enjoying those games at my own pace and am not bothered about starting games in fear of the dreaded 1% completition.

@themcnoisy at least you can hide the lower % games now if you like ;-D

@themcnoisy Those are like my trophy rules. I refuse to use any form of guide on my first play, so I play to the end making a bunch of manual saves, and then once the credits roll I check the trophy guide to see if the platinum is attainable from my current position. So like, if I'm playing Horizon, none of the trophies are missable, so I was like, sure, I'll go and do all the side stuff to get the gong. But if I'm playing Kingdom Hearts HD I'm like, sure, I definitely won't play this game another three times on every conceivable difficulty.

I’m probably more of an obsesser than most, but I’m trying to wean myself of that. I usually preview the trophy list and/or a guide and try to find out if there are major secrets to the game before I start because I want to see as much as possible of the game in one playthrough because I will rarely go back for seconds. As a result, this does seem to make my playthroughs longer and more complex as I try to do all the side quests and meet the arbitrary criteria of some games in order to, say, get a certain character to join my party or see an Easter Egg event or get an optional ending. This usually bleeds over into trophies too.
As a result this leaves me in a game for a long time and it is causing trouble with getting through enough games to keep up, as real life become increasingly demanding with a career and relationships. As a result, I have been abandoning games before seeing the ending because I either burn out on the game or get distracted by something else. So I have a growing collection of partially completed games. So I’m making more of an effort to just focus on the story and at least finish that, but I find myself still obsessively searching for collectibles and side content. With all the new game release dates coming out now, my fears are now realized that I need to get moving through some of this backlog if I have any hope to enjoy Spiderman, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the 2 Yakuzas this year, Red Dead Redemption, Detroit, Spryro, God of War, Valkyria 4, etc, etc — all in time to participate in game of the year discussions in 8 months.

When it's a big release that I'm eagerly looking forward to, I clear my calendar for the two or three days beyond the release date and tear through the story as much as possible. I ignore all side quests and optional objectives. I just wanna see the end credits.

Why? Because I'm deathly allergic to spoilers. Once I've seen the "core" story through, I can relax. I'll then start playing the game again, during evenings and weekends, to see everything I missed, safe in the knowledge that if somebody or something chucks a spoiler in my face, it won't affect me. On the off-chance that the side quests are well-developed and add to the wider narrative, or even if they tell a little self-contained story, it's easier to avoid spoilers about those because usually the main story is everybody's immediate focus in the week or two following the launch. By the time others get around to finding the side quests or talking about them in articles, I've found them in my second playthrough.

This approach is why I usually enjoy replaying games more than that first experience. Rushing through something in a couple days is not how I'd prefer to play, but it's how I've trained myself to play, after several bad experiences having big twists in major releases ruined for me by loudmouthed colleagues or YouTube "recommended" thumbnails (seriously, those are the worst). That being said, there are some benefits. In games like Uncharted, where everything's pretty linear but there are hidden relics to find, I don't want to be taking massive breaks in the well-paced story to hunt for trinkets... Nate wouldn't do that, so why should I? Second time through, however, I'm not watching the story, I'm playing the game. Stopping and hunting for things is a gameplay mechanic. Sometimes I'll also lean on strategy guides to find hidden collectibles (the ones I've tried to find a couple times and am just really stuck on) and pausing the game every minute to check a page really breaks up the flow.

Games with photo modes have tempted me away from this process of late, because all I wanna do is stop and take pretty pictures all the time. I instituted a new rule with Uncharted 4, where I took no screencaps whatsoever on my first playthrough; that was easy, it's a linear adventure, I was gonna be back to every environment second time around and it'd be the same time of day, same weather, etc. but when I got to Horizon, that was a real challenge, because it's an open world with a steady cycle of time. I therefore built in "breaks" between every two or three story missions, to explore my immediate surroundings, do a little bit of side stuff and take some screencaps.

@Kidfried Playing most of the games on my partner's Switch for him (he finds twin-stick controls a challenge, so stuff like Super Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild were pretty much all me, although he did quite a bit of foraging and cooking in the latter), yes, I know exactly what you mean about keeping things as entertaining as possible for the spectator. There were many moments where, as an experienced gamer, I knew exactly how to solve a puzzle or progress in a level, but I'd stop and swing the camera around, or even ask him what to do next. In those instances, it wasn't my console or my game, so I played totally differently and basically let him call the shots. As a result, we haven't finished the story in Breath of the Wild yet, but we've done a whole bunch of everything else (and I must say, his cooking was really useful when I was then tasked with big boss fights... although the look on his face when I ate a ton of stuff that took him ages to cook was tough to see).