Do you try to finish games even after you've had your fill of them or do just step away even before the ending?

Recently I've been playing The Diofield Chronicle as my treadmill game and while it's very weird and I'm probably going to write a longer post about that, what's relevant here is that I'm on the last chapter but emotionally I'm just done with the game. I don't care about the characters or story, the combat has gotten monotonous and ridiculously easy, I have all the upgrades I want and I'm looking forward to moving on to something else.

But there's still a chunk of game left. Probably at least a few hours.

I'm the type who generally tries to finish games after a certain amount of time investment unless there's something that stops me like a real life event that halts my gaming or a difficulty spike that's going to take a long time to overcome. Usually I want to see the story to its conclusion (Marvel's Midnight Suns is an example of that) or I just want to be able to write about the game from a position of having finished it but sometimes I don't know why I bother after a game has stopped being fun and engaging (To be clear this obviously doesn't happen for all or even most games; I was loving Norco, for example, through every crazy revelation until the credits rolled). It's rarely super satisfying and final bosses are often ridiculously hard (Sparklite is another game I'm done with except for the final boss, who just sucks in every way a boss can suck and has made me kind of hate that game). I rarely feel some deep satisfaction and I doubt I will with Diofield. It was fun for a good long time and the last 5 or so hours are just going to be boring but apparently I'm going to slog through them anyway (though since I'm playing on the treadmill at least I'm getting exercise.)

What about you? Do you step away from games 75% through when you just feel like you've had your fill? Are you ever satisfied when you do that? If I stopped playing Diofield now I'd probably like the game overall, since or most of its run it was enjoyable for one reason or another. But once I'm a certain percentage through a game I tend to be committed for the long run and I'm not sure why.

I usually try to finish games. Even if I'm not enjoying it, I'll usually still value having knowledge of seeing the game through. But there are always going to be a few examples of things where I don't value having that knowledge more than my enjoyment. For example, I don't feel the need to spend more than half an hour playing Rogue Warrior, trying to identify which shade of gray in that game is an enemy, just to be rewarded with the same shitty Mickey Rourke line. At that point, I'm fairly certain that's all that game has to offer.

I'm pretty awful at finishing games, but I've stopped beating myself up over it. Most recently, I was playing High on Life and got to the 3 Brother's boss fight before realizing I just wasn't enjoying playing the game. I uninstalled it right then and didn't look back. There are just too many games out there to play that I don't feel like it's worth spending the little time I have playing ones I don't find fun. Sticking through something I'm not enjoying makes my hobby feel more like a chore.

This past year I started to dive deeper into this mentality to see why I stop playing games and I realized that I was spending so much time doing side content that I just kinda lost the thread on what the game actually is, especially in open world games. So I'm trying to be more focused on mainlining the story and saving the side stuff for later, if I want to keep playing a game after "completion."

I finish pretty much everything I play, but then I also don’t play enough games or have specific enough needs that I run into this problem often. Like, I dropped DOOM Eternal because I ran into a situation where I literally ran out of ammo in a DOOM game early on, followed by all the talk of marauders I decided the game wasn’t for me before I’d gotten deep enough to make that decision myself. On the other hand, I hit a titanium-infused brick wall about 20 hours into Sekiro so dense I still re-download the game every 6 months or so and start a new save file just to remind myself that I’m not the problem, the game is!

At least in recent memory Scarlet Nexus is the only game I can think of where I was probably just a single play session away from the ending when all the tiny things that had been annoying me over the course of the game finally coalesced into a massive “come the fuck on” snowball and all the good will earned by the game’s first five or so chapters completely eroded. Which is to say on the off chance I do drop a game that late in the process it’s almost always story related, as I can tolerate monotonous but rewarding gameplay endlessly - just ask ME Andromeda or AC Origins how enthused I can be about being bored for 5-6 hours late into the night.

I finish most of the games I play but I have my limits.

I pretty much drop a game the minute I'm not having fun. Why do something you're not enjoying? There are so many other things to do.

I've got OCD and am a completionist, so if I drop/walk away from something (game, book, TV show), it's because it is egregiously awful. I think the only time in recent memory I've walked away from a game when near the end is the first Dishonoured. I didn't love it to begin with but found the story/world interesting. But then I encountered a late-game bug that corrupted every single save and made it impossible to progress without starting over, so I bailed on literally the last mission. It soured me enough that I own but haven't wanted at all to continue with the other two games (bought all at once as a bundle).

Outside of such an extreme example, I have to -hate- what I'm doing to walk away unfinished. I might not try to get everything in a game if I've seen credits and felt the experience to be mediocre, but that too is pretty rare. That said, I also investigate games a lot more thoroughly than I used to and experiment less (due to time, money), so I'm rarely so aggressively disappointed.

There are a lot of games that I don't feel like are worth spending the time to finish. I may spend more attention on something more if it was expensive but outside of trying to justify my purchase, there are too many other games that I can play and actually have fun playing.

I'm contracted by law to finish every game I start, even when I'm not having a great time. In all honesty though, I try to finish everything that can be finished (sports games, simulation games, etc. Don't count) however the less I enjoy the game the more I just streamline it (less side quests, less collectibles). The key for me is just having multiple games playing at a time, that way I don't feel like I need to spend 30 straight gaming hours to finish something and I can space it out, but still make dents in it.

I generally make a short review (pros and cons list and some numbers at least) of what I play, based on the whole game unless it's in the 1-5/10 range, so yes. This tends to make playing through flawed games easier for me, whereas I'd drop everything but what I see as the greats otherwise.

I don't understand immediately dropping a game if I'm not having fun. I would probably drop every game at some point then.

I have tendency to pick games back up after I've said I'm done with them, too. I guess that's a credit to the game in question if I'm pulled back in so quickly.

it really depends on the game n also just how deep i am into it. if its early on i'm likely to just put it on my 'dropped' list in my games spreadsheet , but if i'm deep into it i usually begrudgingly power through it .

most recently kynseed back in dec was a Slog , i was more than ready for it to be over well before i finished it n frankly in the end to minimize the grind since thats All it was at that point i just edited the save n gave myself the amount of rep i would need each level to see the story beats save n did it again till it was maxed n i could go for the boss which ended up being even more shallow than most of the dungeon grinding i had to do before it . even with the editing the save it took me 3 hours past that with the back n forth n it was only after 86 hours in the first place that i did it ( according to previously mentioned games doc) if i hadn't done it i'm sure there would have been at least another 30 hours of mindless back n forth. i'm all for mindless podcast game mind you but that was a bit too much to enjoy in the end. for a game i waited a handful of years to play till it came out of early access it was somehow by far the Worst game i played in 2022

but that above is a special case i feel since i usually don't end up with anything quite so bad, usually i know pretty early on if its gonna be something i drop n normally when it overstays it welcome its usually something open world where i say screw it n mainline quests n even if it takes me another lartge chunk of hours its not so bad as to be sorta miserable.

@noboners: To be fair, that high on life game gives out the weapons a bit slow. you get an ability to slow time, and other powers like a needler from halo. That said, the gun play never stops feeling basic, and that's ok but when you have tight shooters like titan fall, halo, call of duty, heck even the updated fortnite, you get annoyed when your actions dont translate to how you think you should feel in game. It feels like a rather basic package of shooting if you get my feel. Like if you could choose a 100 dollar package for tight control, or premium 1000 for better, they chose the free package. Im a bit further than you, and they 3 bros fight was kinda that point too when i said...ok am i finishing this. The game is short and colorful with a few good jokes. Im overlooking the rolland thing and judging on the merits of those who worked on it for years programming by the way. I think you should give it a shot one day but mainline the game. I find games you bump off are usually cause side stuff slows your interest, and other games come out. I go back to a game and say, im gonna finish it and even if i have to skip cutscenes and watch them later on youtube, and rush through, i finish it. it's also the monotony, all games are repetitive but hiding it is new scenery, a story, gameplay changes, and just good fun. If a game just isnt doing it then yeah i quit. Still watch what i missed on youtube. Usually not much.

I have come to realize that there is not enough time in life to be doing something for fun that isn't fun. Youtube exists to see the end of games, so even if it turns out I have 2 hours left, I'll bail if I'm just not enjoying myself/feel burnt out.

I use the old Her Story scale and quit playing a game when I'm satisfied. Challenges are enjoyable sometimes, but when they're not, I bounce. Life's too short to spend voluntarily unhappy.

In the past, I used to finish games far past my enjoyment for them faded every time. These days, I'll still do that if I want to see the ending and want to be able to discuss it fully, but honestly? With the advent of GamePass, I feel zero shame trying out a game, maybe even getting a far way into it, and stopping as soon as I stop having fun. It's fantastic, and I wish I did that earlier. I have more time for stuff I end up caring about more!

So I've got a problem I've been trying to get better at over the past few years. That problem is "finishing things". Anything, for that matter. Movies. TV shows. Video games. Books. If I don't make an effort to stick with something, my brain will wander off to something else and I won't actually be satisfied with anything I get into, and that just leads to a pile of unfinished media and unexplored interests (and, honestly, wasted money) that I look back on with shame. That's stressful! That's what people talk about when they mention "the backlog"!

If I quit something as soon as I start thinking "hm, let's try something else" or "this is starting to get a little boring", I won't finish it and it will just be another thing in the pile of shame. Usually what this means is that I just need to do something else with my time.

Over time, I have tried more and more to stick with things until I've finished them, so I can put them away and not feel bad about it. I'm not really happy having a great big pile of games I've played for an hour, books I've read the first hundred pages of, and TV shows I've only seen the first three episodes of. I do feel like I've gotten a lot better about this, so that's working!

What I really mean to say, I suppose, is that I'm much more satisfied with one finished video game than with ten games I gave up on five hours in, even if that one finished video game caused me some frustration or wasn't so great for the last act.

I used to try harder to finish games, but these days I have just come to accept that if a game can't hold my attention until it's finished it's on the game. Because I do finish games. And it's not a matter of length. I finished Cyberpunk despite doing everything in that game and clocked in at over 100 hours yet I have put down games considerably smaller because my interest just fizzles out. Then there are series of games that are unique. Assassin's Creed as an example. They are one of those weird series I play that I tend to grow fatigue with at around the 60-80% mark. I put them down, sometimes for years. And then I come back and finish them.

Thinking a bit on it, I think the only games in recent memory that has held my attention for their entire runtime without me giving up on them or pausing them to play other games are Cyberpunk, Gorogoa, The Last Of Us 2 and the previous God of War. Most other games I currently play I can't really with any confidence say I'll ever finish.