I don’t drop games often. These days, I either finish them or they go back in the backlog, with the intent that I’ll get around to them even if it’s a few years later. Just this week I picked Beyond Good and Evil back up and am pretty likely to finish it, despite my last save being from 2015. And it’s pretty good! I can see why I dropped it, because that PS2 gameplay doesn’t quite fit the ambition of its ideas, but hey. Those ideas are good and it’s playable enough.
On the other hand, sometimes I’ll give a game a shot for a few hours or even repeated sessions and drop it. It might even be a pretty good game in most respects. The most likely reason for this probably has to do with gameplay and progression. Sometimes a game is a little broken, but a lot of the time it’s simply not a good fit for how I like to play.
FastFwd, the game pictured in the image above, is one of these. It’s a game with large ambitions. From its fully 3D environments, emphasis on freerunning movement, to its voice acting, this is an indie freebie from a team dreaming big. Unfortunately for me, it’s also a game that demands far too much precision, or even speedrun routing, to be completed.
It’s kind of like a Mario Kaizo hack. I enjoy watching people do them, and I really enjoy it when people talk or write about them. But playing them myself? I don’t know, I don’t think I have the energy to invest in learning particular strats for games that demand them. I like a little more flexibility in approach. Difficulty is one thing if a game is flexible, but if it demands a particular playstyle? Maybe that’s not so much for me.
Talk Amongst Yourselves!
- Building on what Future/Stray asked yesterday, what’s a game you’ve wanted to enjoy, but dropped?
- What’s the longest you’ve left a game on “pause,” only to return to it and finish it later?
- How’s it going?
Get involved!
Comments
I want to answer 007 Legends because it was bad and I dropped it for a while but then eventually ended up finishing it because I hated having half-finished games. I've changed that mindset more recently though since time is more important that finishing games so if I'm not enjoying it after maybe an hour then I'm probably done with it. I think this may apply to GreedFall. I really wanted to like this game but it just didn't hook me. I may give it another shot at some point since it's on Game Pass but I don't think it'll change my mind.
**What’s the longest you’ve left a game on “pause,” only to return to it and finish it later?**
I recently got back in to Assassin's Creed II during my PS3 game finishing quest and the trophies that I had from my first foray into are from 2013. 8 year gap is pretty big I think.
**How’s it going?**
Can't complain. They just opened up vaccines in my state to everyone over 30 so that's promising news! I tried out My Time at Portia on Game Pass because it's constantly going on sale on Switch and thought it be cool to have a portable version of one of the farming sims but I'm not sure this is the one. Probably going to pick up Stardew Valley whenever it goes on sale next. That's been an enjoyable nostalgia trip.
Greedfall is fine as a free game but your time might worth more than what you spend playing it.