There are just some games which will not have the same impact if played intermittently. My personal favorite time sinks are most CRPGs from BioWare and Bethesda Softworks. I can't imagine playing these games for short bursts and I wouldn't want to. So guys what games do you have to just plan ahead of time before playing?
Games you have to set aside time for full effect
I think the last game I really did this for was Dark Souls, which kind of was a disappointment. Now all games get the same treatment.
A quick 20 or 30 minutes right before I go to class or work or just pass out due to exhaustion.
I've had Yakuza 4, Yakuza: Dead Souls and Valkyrie Chronicles on my shelf for awhile cause they seem like games I'm gonna have to heavily invest myself in. I also ordered Disgaea 4 off Play-Asia cause it was on sale, but it'll probably ages until I get around to playing it for the same reason.
The fact that I use my PS3 a lot less than my 360 also factors into this too though.
I set aside a good 2 and a half hours for Journey. Other than that not really. Sometimes I play games in the morning or evening specifically, I used to find my best scores at GW:RE2 came at around 11pm.
I finish all Telltale's Sam & Max and The Walking Dead episodes in one sitting each. I try finishing RPG & adventure games in long sittings in general so that I don't forget the story (I have terrible memory).
I disagree on Bioware games. I think playing for 45-90 minutes a night can make it feel like a good TV series and avoid some of the burnout I get from playing the games for long stretches of playing Mass Effect. Go to planet, doing some mining on the way. Shoot way through corridor-like mission, get story nugget, repeat.
Open world games (including Bethesda games), on the other hand, I tend to like to lose myself in. I don't want to be like "Oh I can't run off and do that because I only have an hour to play and I want to finish this mission." If I want to hijack a bunch of helicopters and go after the hive achievement in Prototype then goddamnit that's what I'm gonna do! Or play a bunch of that Saints Row minigame where you rack up doctor bills by getting hit by cars. I like to visit open world games and really feel like I'm playing as the character, and you can't do that in short bites.
I set aside large chunks of time for Skyrim. Other than that I made sure I had 2 hour periods to play Walking Dead Episodes.
The way I play games makes everything a massive time sink. I clear away an afternoon and just blitz the game for four or five hours then might step away for a few days, rinse and repeat. When I buy games on holidays/weekends it's a nightmare, since I'll regularly put twenty hours in a three day span - I did that with The Witcher 2 (again) and Dead Island recently. Waiting for my Sleepy Dawgz dl to finish and I'll probably chew through that far too quickly.
When I'm doing important things though, I actually like the old school CRPG's for that more than any other game - do a quick encounter or two in IWD or ToEE and save and move on until I have a few minutes to spare. I imagine XCOM will be the same way for me.
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