Time sink games

What are games that captured you instantly and played for hours on end? I ask this because I have a lot free time in my hands as of the moment and in the market for some really addicting experience akin to XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Fallout 3, Super Meat Boy etc.

TF2, World of Warcraft, Diablo 2, Dark Souls...

Probably spent at least 200 hours in each game.. in WoW probably a lot more.

This may come as a suprise seeing as what Patrick said and all, but I sank hours upon hours continously into Last of Us. My longest stretch was around 6/7 in singleplayer. I got passed a bit I was stuck on and just kept trucking on hard mode. Other than that the multiplayer has taken up a LOAD of my time.

Other games.....Completed FC3 in 2 days. Bioshock Infinite in 2 days.....I've been unemployed lately so I guess it isn't really a fair representation. I have no reason to wake up in the mornings, so just play games long into night after spending the day applying for jobs.

Civ 5, Marathon Turns = the best time sink.
"Each era is as long as a single game"
Sign me up all the time!

Skyrim was the last game I got lost in. I played it for 80 hours the first week it came out. I have gotten into other games since, but I usually finish them pretty quickly. I finished XCOM in 3 days I think, even after losing mid-way through my first attempt. If I enjoy a game I tend to get lost in it until I finish it, then I'm completely done and don't wanna go back. I imagine the next big one for me will be GTA V. I'll add that Dark Souls definitely has the pacing and atmosphere that is easy to lose time to, but it's not for everyone. The Witcher 2 is a good one for this as well.

You could play more those again, there's always Fire Emblem, Fallout New Vegas, and Dustforce to try out.

@c0l0nelp0c0rn1: Finished F:NV already but I'll try to get my hands on Fire Emblem and Dustforce. Thanks.

I played Fallout 3 so much I don't want to even think about what my playtime for that game is. Persona 3 took a ton of time to go through. Lately I've been playing a lot of Blood Bowl. Once you've learned the basics it's super addicting.

I've put a few hundred hours into every Bethesda game post-Oblivion. I just got New Vegas during the steam sale, so I modded the hell out of it and I've already put about 20 hours into it. And this is having already played it through on 360. I just can't get enough of that style of game.

In 2012 I had a week of vacation time that I couldn't carry over to the next year so I took off the entire week when FarCry 3 came out. I ended up 100% the game during my time off. One of the best vacations ever.

The Just Cause 2 demo.

Some big ones for me this generation were: Terraria, Just Cause 2, FarCry 2 and 3, Viva Pinata 1 and 2, Jetpack Joyride, Plants vs. Zombies, Tiny Tower, Fallout 3 and the winner by a thousand country miles... World of Warcraft.

MMOs and any open-world game.

Any Fallout and Elder Scrolls games, as well as any sim or tycoon game(I have put more time into RollerCoaster Tycoon that any game ever).

Isaac is a time lord, as are sots: the pit, super house of dead ninjas, FTL, skyrim, don't starve, crusader kings 2, any total war game.

Dungeons of Dredmore, Civ 5, Dota2.

The last 2 just because of the lengths of the games and DoD because DoD is fuckin great

The Total War titles will consume your time if you play the campaign. XCOM: Enemy Unknown can be a real time sinker too.

@schreiberty: Dredmor does take forever and thus falls into the category in and of itself; I can progress through an ASCII roguelike much faster.

Heroes of Might and Magic, any Paradox game, any Koei game. The Last of Us takes around 80 hours to 100% assuming you don't exploit things to make it go faster. Never been able to get into the Total War games since the AI is just too stupid and the way armies interact isn't especially accurate (though there are mods like Stainless Steel to make that stuff better and Napoleon: TW seems to be alright).

I'm playing through Final Fantasy VII on PC. Again.

Blood Bowl hooked me something crazy, got a Chaos team leveled up enough to a point where I was injuring over half of the other team before the match finished... I won't get started on the kill count

@dekkadekkadekka: You're a dumbass for buying it on steam, if you already owned it on PC then good on you; though replaying an emulated version of FFIV or FFVI will always be more fun and engaging as well as having the ability to speed things up at will.

Okami. That's 50+ hours of visual bliss with no thinking required.

@fredchuckdave:

1. Why a dumbass? Although I should point out that I sold a bunch of trading cards which paid for FFVII when it went on sale during the Steam summer sale.

2. I don't like 4 or 6. My actual favourite is 5 but 7 will forever be lodged in my heart.

I used to spend days just playing Ratchet and Clank games, particularly 2 and 3. Skyrim captured me for ages, and still does occasionally. I had to drag myself away from Torchlight 2 at 3 AM to go to bed a few times. And Shin Megami Tensei IV is doing the same now, though not quite to the "all day, everyday" extent that these other games did.

New Vegas and Skyrim are the obvious but for some reason I spent about 85 hours on Star Ocean 4 a few years back. The story is bad and the voice acting even worse but the gameplay was super addicting. I hear the PS3 version is better, I might pick that up someday if I get a PS3.

@dekkadekkadekka: Eh 12 bucks is a ripoff for a 1997 game unless it's really damn rare; FFVII sold so many copies and is so ubiquitous though; I could see 2-5 bucks being okay. Then again Square Enix is still one of my favorite companies especially due to Tomb Raider and Deus Ex recently so I don't really care if you support them, it's still so dumb though; the game offers absolutely nothing more than it did 16 years ago aside from nostalgia.

@fredchuckdave: It was 40% off during the sale and I already own at least 3 physical copies of it. But you are otherwise correct on all other points.

For me it always were the 4x games. Civilization games, Alpha Centauri, Master of Orion 2, Master of Magic, Call to Power 2 and bunch of others (If you really wanna have a long game, try Galactic Civilizations II). Also agree on the rogue-likes Dungeons of Dredmor and Sword of the Stars are awesome time wasters.

@fredchuckdave: Considering the popularity of FF7 and some of the prices for iOS ports from Square Enix games, I'm surprised it was only 12 dollars.

I tend to go overboard with games when I get into them. For example, I bought Skyrim shortly after the GOTY discussion about it but it didn't click with me at all and I had written it off. Then about 6 weeks ago I decided to give it another shot and next thing I know I've put in 200 hours.

The Sims. Being 15 during the summer with that game I'd end up playing for almost a good 10 hours straight.

Between Civilization III, IV, and V, that's probably about 400 hours of my life. Double that if you include all of the Total War games, though I think excessive Civ has destroyed whatever TW abilities I had. Very different styles of strategy games.

Minecraft seems to be endless. Seeing as the whole gameplay is what you want to do, rather than following a set story line.

Civilization V and Don't Starve are taking up tons of my time right now.

civ 5, anno 2070, dota 2, skyrim, the last remnant, the settlers 7 path to kingdom, tropico 4, just cause 2,dark souls/demon souls, diablo 3, star craft 2 hots, terraria/minecraft (although i personally diddent like them i would still mention them)

I tried a marathon game of civ 5 before bed a while back. That was a dumb idea because I didn't get to sleep that night.

I was gonna do the same thing when the game suddenly got Trading Cards on Steam(Free money! WOO!)
And while just creating a game to play I went "Meh, I'll put it on marathon mode, I'm just gonna quit in an hour or two anyway".. 7 hours later and I saw no signs of me stopping with it.

most JRPGs

@zeforgotten said:

EXACLY the same thing happened to me aswell. Plus i bought botx of the expansion packs for it. And it all started with those dammned trading cards.

(BRB, gotta take ONE more turn)

Tetris.

Skyrim. Good god i dont even want to know how many hours ive dumped into it.

Mana Khemia, a PS2 JRPG wherein you synthesize ALL OF YOUR STUFF. That game shouldn't be amazing, but all the pieces come together just right, in my opinion.

Definitely Skyrim. I played 12 hours straight on release day alone.

@morka: I'm still waiting for the right moment to buy the 2nd expansion pack. When the day does come, that'll be a solid evening of a few beers and some serious Civilizing

Persona 3 FES

Fable 2 and 3

Resident Evil 6

Dead Island

I'm sinking so much time into Animal Crossing: New Leaf right now and somewhat feel guilty.

Time sink games I love, though, would be Bethesda's open world Elder Scrolls and Fallout 3 including Obsidian's New Vegas as well as any strategy game.

I don't really do that, given how I schedule my gaming time. And my time in general.

• XCOM: Enemy Unknown
• Left 4 Dead/Left 4 Dead 2
• Mount and Blade/Mount and Blade Warband
• Demon's Souls/Dark Souls
• Diablo 3
• Oblivion (it's just such a prettier world than Skyrim to explore)
• Web of Shadows (hours and hours spent just swingin around)
• Civ V (I've only played one match I believe, almost non-stop, clocking in around 15 hours)

Any SMT game really. Besides that I did play Skyrim for 15 hours straight on release day. That was a really good day.

SMT/Persona. Bethesda games.

Really any open world game with a decent amount of content becomes a time sink for me.

Crusader Kings 2. The vanilla game plus the Game of Thrones mod made me sink many hours into that game, still jump in from time to time.