If there's one thing I've learned over the years is that sometimes just taking a break is a good thing....

@believer258: I didn't realzse you had to push that boulder and the chick just kept dieing on me over and over.

@TEHMAXXORZ said:

@believer258: I fired a single RPG at him and he died... not even at him, at the ground just in front of him. He's a really weak final boss.

No ammo includes no RPG's. The knife in RE5 was really nerfed into near-uselessness so it wouldn't have done much damage to anything.

@believer258: I fired a single RPG at him and he died... not even at him, at the ground just in front of him. He's a really weak final boss.

In RE5, I ran out of ammo and wound up beating Wesker with a knife. I spent an hour and a half running around him, getting close enough to knife him a few times, and running away for the next round of his patterns.

I feel this is the "what I learned in my 20s" blog =)

Ya, I learned all that in my 20s also. It's kinda crazy, though. I still dont do the thing where you should go to bed. I should, but mainly I just don't want to go to work in the morning so I always keep playing. Then it gets really late and I'm tired during work. It's a vicious cycle that is easily fixed. I just hate sleeping and getting up and going to work. That part of life sucks- always will.

As for gangs of New York- you're not the first to not like it. A lot of people don't. I really like that movie, and enjoyed what it did (especialy being that it was the first movie I saw Daniel Day Lewis, who is phenomenal IMO- there will be blood is also fantastic) but I know many many people who think its awful. Mostly, if I recall, because of the bad irish in it. To each his own, though.

Anyway, I enjoyed reading your blog and thought i'd give my thoughts haha

You make some valid points. I've also been adjusting my attitude towards gaming lately. Now, when it comes to RPG's I'm an absolute completionist. So when Skyrim came out, my life was totally fucked. It took me 150 hours to realise that I was investing way too much time, and not getting anything substantial out of it. Then, in a moment of complete clarity, I uninstalled the game. With Skyrim no longer poisoning my social life, I became a happier person.

Another recent example is Reckoning. That game was just poorly designed, and I still can't see why it scored so high, as completing even a fraction of the side stuff results in you being overlevelled for most of the game. Naturally, as a completionist I did all the side stuff. I got about halfway through the game (still on the left side of the map) before the game became a soul-crushing grind of boring combat, useless loot and an utterly dull story (I don't care what anyone says, I thought the main and faction quests were only slightly less shitty than the other side quests). Once again, I uninstalled that shit, and immediately felt liberated.

So yeah, I'm learning to let things go, and the level of enjoyment I get out of games is higher than it was during my obsessive days.

@SexyToad: I guess you're in the TLDR camp.

I'm not sure what this topic was about. But yes! Conquer! Conquer the game. I think that you should stay up and beat the game! And of course your last part was good information. But there nothing that I do while gaming I wish I didn't. Except not putting save...

I've spent a lot of time gaming in my 20 or so years on this planet. It has taken me a while and I still have a long way to go but I'm coming to terms with some simple issues that effect how I play games. Here are some new and old ones that I have been thinking about recently.

Must Beat Game in this Session

There is always a point in a game where I know I'm near the end. I don't know how long is left but I know it's close. Often this is late at night or there something else I need to do in an hour or so. Then it kicks in and I must beat it within this allotted time. I begin to stress as I look at the clock, as my time starts to run out. The end result is the same, I either beat the game without enjoying the ending that I spent hours working towards or I run out of time and walk away frustrated. Even if I do beat it, it is often really late and I know it wasn't worth the tiredness I will feel the next day. The biggest issue with this is that games sometimes give you false endings and in fact there is 3 - 4 hours more to go. Either that or they end the game with a boss battle that is 30x harder than anything else in the game just to fuck with you.

Answer: If it looks late and/or you don't have much time to finish this game in, save when you can and quit. I guarentee that super hard boss battle will be a cinch when you have no time limit. Unless the boss actually has an in game time limit. Then you're fucked.

Don't Do Things You Don't Want To Pt 2

I feel the need to reinforce this issue. In every medium we experience this. I was reading a book (The Shining) and got about 1/3 through it and realized how agonizing it was. I was not enjoying it one bit. I immediately started reading the Horus Heresy series and have been hooked ever since. The same goes with movies, not all movies are written for you, especially comedies! Last weekend over the Easter break I tried watching Gangs of New York (bit late to the party I know) and I just didn't like it at all. I did not find the main character or in fact any character interesting (which is another topic I will probably post about in the future). I also tried watching Rango, the western inspired animation, and none of the comedy hit me. I got all the jokes but just didn't find it funny at all (I call this the 'Bones/How I Met Your Mother' effect). So both movies I stopped watching. Something I never used to do. I would normally just sit through the whole thing and then say 'Meh' at the end. No more! I then stuck on 2 movies I know I love to bits, Scarface and Tintin and loved every goddamn second. I already talked about this in a previous blog about games and my backlog, but I thought I'd give a few examples relating to other forms of media(because I can).

Answer: If your not enjoying it, shelve it.

Don't Spread Yourself Too Thin

OK, in the last one of these blogs, I talked about backlogs and why I shouldn't just play a game because I think I should. I also said you should just play what you feel like at the time. There is an inherit issue with this that I have discovered. If it is a game you've played before and seen through, there is no issue, play it every now and again and not touch it for months, who cares. But for unfinished games this leaves horribly fragmented play sessions all over the place. This makes it hard to go back to any of them.

Answer: It's simple! Make a TODO list that has about 3 games on it that you intend to complete in the next month or so and don't crack open any other new games until they are finished. However, the exception to the rule is that if you are not enjoying a game on that list, don't brute force it. Shelve it and add another onto that list. This process becomes an amalgamation of all my former answers and processes.

That's about all that was on my mind for the time being. Let me know if there is anything you do while your gaming that you wish you didn't but you do anyway. Over and out!