Decline Burnout gaming thread

What is the last game that you were genuinely amazed by? You know the game that you think about while you're at work, university, school, just waiting to get home? Do you still get that feeling with gaming?

For me it was probably New Vegas back when it released. I like(d) Battle Brothers a lot as well, but was never totally obsessed with it in the way I was with NV.

 

Shadowrun: Dragonfall

After years of decline I felt like an abused kid, as every "RPG" release was just more & more of the same shit which I hate, & every potential incline release usually a false dawn & kick in the love spuds.

Then I played Returns & was greatly impressed, so jumped straight into Dragonfall, and was amazed how they actually managed to get so much right, and bring the era of incline back to life in modern gaming.

 

I had that one recommended to me many times but I never tried it. Really have to though.

Also, Underrail fits my initial post. But I played that game too much and now I can't bring myself to play Expedition.

 

I was hyped for Half Life 2 and was amazed by it when I played it for the first time. I obsessed over the PC Gamer (uk) issue that covered it several months prior to release, spending a lot of time staring at the screenshots of the hydra, the antlions, nova prospekt etc.
Medal of Honour Allied Assault was another game that kept me glued to the screen when I first got my hands on it. The omaha beach level was sublime.
Pathologic and the Void took me by surprise - playing them was like a bucket of cold water to the face, though that's a very different feeling.
Other than that, though, I can't really say. Games were like magic to me mostly before my teenage years. Every time I fired up a new game on the ps1 or PC, my heart would skip a beat. Games were in short supply at my house, so I mostly made do with rentals or demos from gaming magazines. I haven't experienced that feeling of amazement in well over a decade, though.

 

On topic: Sekiro

Before it: Kenshi, Ghost of Tale, Insomnia: The Ark, Hyper Light Drifter, Dustbowl, Underrail, F:NV and Dark Souls. (yeah, this list covers my fav games from the last 10 years)

The same. I got a good min-max build but now everything is easy (even on Dominating) and I cannot bring myself to continue although I would really like to stomp Tchort's face.

 

I forgot about Kenshi. It was really a breath of fresh air for me as well, I gotta put it on my SSD and try playing some again, maybe it fixes the slideshow loadings.

Dustbowl looks interesting, how does it compare to Neo Scavenger if you have played that?

 

They don't compare. Dustbowl is more like an adventure game but it's really satisfying if you can stomach all the retro stuff.

 

I still enjoy a lot of games, unlike you old burnouts, but the last one I was SUPER excited to play and thought about at work and surfed a dedicated forum for was... Hitman 2. I was super addicted to that for months. Steam says I played 200+ hours.

 

elite 2 - frontier. with countless tricks it managed the impossible.
then i found out there was a cd32 version. back then different systems had severely different ports of the same software, just think of the abyss between the snes street fighter 2 and any other version. "if this marvel fits on a single floppy, i can't even think how they managed to fill a whole cd!", and they didn't. it was the very same game with 649mb to spare.
for this reason no pc game ever amazed me, they had no limits yet no one dared go past its own little backyard. even worse, just few years more and the consolification came, imposing gigantic limits to whatever a game could do, we're still paying that.

 

So, Bannerlord is coming soon, any old hearts finding new joy in that?

 

Probably New Vegas

 

Probably Neo Scavenger and Inside.

 

probably fallout 4 or fortnite

 

Diablo 1.

 

Hollow Knight last december.
Now I am split between DOS2 (because of the new overhaul mod I installed) and Tekken 7 which reignited the fondness for figthing games I had as a kid (plus figthing friends is super fun).

It's not difficult to avoid burnout.
1) Variety is the spice of life, so be sure not only to try different activities but also try out other game genres/types. Give something else a spin.
2) Do not force yourself to complete the game. If you lost an interest in your current game then put it aside and finish some other time. The same way if you're really into a game then don't play non-stop until the end. And when you do get to the end but still want more then don't immedeately start a new playthrough. That's how I do for RPG's, I finish the campgain, put the game down until I cool of then comeback and play with a completely different palystyle.
3) Play good games.

 

Slay the Spire briefly but intensely occupied 90% of my thoughts for a couple of weeks last year.

I'm also excited for lots of games this year - Bannerlord, Wasteland 3, progress on Colony Ship game, Desperados 3, etc.

 

Lucky you, I loved Divine Divinity back when it was released, but could never get into Original sin 1 or 2, the new graphics coupled with the cringe writing just keep me absolutely disinterested in the game. To be honest, I never was much of a fan of the two characters thing either, it was a turn-off for me even back in Beyond Divinity.

 

Most recently? I've completed Ori and the WoTW and it was quite impressive (sadly also pretty unpolished on technical level as of now).
It really helps to vary your games. Sometimes a tighter experience is what you really need rather than massive RPG.

 

EU IV and CK2 probably. Thinking about alternative history scenarios to play out and what not.

That being said, after a certain point, painting a map gets... dry.

 

That'd be great with many of us in quarantine.

 

Nocturne & Strange Journey in 2013.

Very few post-2000 games joined to my all-time faves but they are worth to stand among Quake, Doom, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Command & Conquer... 10/10 no doubt.

Incredible, unique experience.

 

I felt quite stirred by Pathfinder: Kingmaker a year ago. It really resurrected the feeling of Baldur's Gate 1 for a while, although it does wind down over time as the game descends into too much 'epic' stuff and the combat gets too random.

I actually felt less warmly about gaming in the 1990s than I do now. I wasn't as exposed to the more sophisticated games nor was my English good enough to play them. All the major games like Doom, Heretic, Quake, Descent, Mortal Kombat, Prince of Persia, Tetris, Contra, Wolfenstein, etc. did not move me much. I did read magazines fairly voraciously though; I saw the more complex games described there and enjoyed reading the tables and such, but didn't actually play the games. They would also often malfunction on the pirated CDs. I think the first relatively complex game I managed to play without issues was Warlords 2, which I liked a lot. Also I had a period of being quite interested in Age of Empires 1, but I could not play it normally because it lagged too much, so maybe I was lured more by the promise of pleasure.

However, the true change happened between 1999 and 2002 when a whole bunch of games appealed to me at a profound level, starting with Baldur's Gate 1 and including HoMM3 and Ultima Online, as well as perhaps Planescape: Torment and Might & Magic 6. Indeed, exploring Baldur's Gate 1 is one of my fondest early teenage memories. One thing that added to the experience was, bizarrely, gaming journalism. For example, they were publishing materials on the planes and factions from the rulebooks which completely hyped me for P:T.

I never enjoyed the map-painting aspect, primarily because it is not realistic as it ignores all the important processes to which it should lead. It's gamey and boring. This is why Victoria 2 which concentrates more on POPs and industry feels so much more alive, although people still play it incorrectly ("oh look now the whole world is painted Krakow, I'm so skilled!")

 

I'm having a blast playing Wizardry II: The Knight of Diamonds right now.

 

There are plenty of games I will recognize as quality products, but I still feel nothing playing them.