How do you play a game for 100 hours and have nothing good to say about it?

[JCgames]

I see this all the time. People complaing about how horrible a game is that they have 25-50-100 or even 1k hours played. I can understand a game that gets a patch that completely changes the game which does happen, though often you can just play the earlier patch they enjoyed. But i'm talking about the ones that don't and are basically very much the same. Talk of the devs don't care, the devs don't listen, yada yada yada. I see folks that come back and post on said games and literately do nothing but complain about them yet keep playing. Or the other side, games they claim to no longer play but post tons of posts daily for months or even years about how horrible a game is. Then you read reviews by the same folks, they review 10-20 games if that, none have anything positive about any of them despite the 100's of hours they have played.

I'm not saying people have to like the game, but it makes me wonder why? I know i have a huge backlog of games or even games i just love playing that i can't find time for. Heck i have a whole epic account filled with free games like pathfinder:kingmaker just waiting for me to find the time to try.

So my question is, why even play a game for more than a few hours if it's something you don't like? Maybe it starts out decent and goes down hill, i can see that.. But with time being so limited and 1k's of games how is it people end up playing ones they don't enjoy, or at least claim they dont?

 

[Colif]

Maybe they keep playing hoping it will get better. They hope there is one good thing that makes the time it spent to get it worth while.

I have read books like that, slog through entire thing to get to end and ask, was that it? Some series are like that.

Maybe they like some part of it but as they keep playing other parts start to grind on them to point they load game and can't be bothered actually playing it.

You can have too much of a good thing to point nothing is interesting to you.

 

[Johnway]

Truth be told i try and finish games even if i hate them for several reasons:

1. i paid money for it so i will try and finish it and get my money's worth.

2. if i want to criticize the game, i at least need to know what I'm talking about. I don't want to be that guy who bitches and complains about various features that appear later etc.

3. Trying damn hard to give the game a chance. perhaps it gets better by the end or at least i get the full picture to discuss/debate a game.

4. I try to complete as much of the game as possible so that i have absolutely no reason to play it again.

5. i did like a game but over time the game/devs does something that kills off my passion for the game. Path of exile i'm looking at you right now.

But yeah, life is too short to spend time enduring pain/crap for "fun". But as a money conscious person i have to do it. I'm learning to just drop the game and move on but yeah not easy. That said if i do see a negative review of something along the lines of "i've played 2000 hours and i'm absolutely sick of the boring gameplay. game ded" i would raise eyebrows.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

I completely agree with the OP. I don't have time to trudge through games I don't like. When I game, it's for enjoyment. If I'm not enjoying a game, I'm not going to keep punishing myself. If I spent money on the game, I just cut my losses and move on. It's not worth it to me.

 

[Zloth]

Well, to the topic title, that's normally people that got annoyed by something (maybe in the game, maybe something the developer did), and then go in the reviews and completely trash it just to fight back. There's no attempt to be fair or informative, they are just lashing out. I'll thumbs-down those reviews if I see them.

As to why play games that I don't enjoy:

1. I think I'll enjoy it later. I loved Final Fantasy 7. When FF8 came out, I played it as soon as I could - and hated it. I didn't finish it, but I played it far longer than I should have because FF7 was so fun, I figured the game must turn around and get better at some point.
2. I was enjoying it in the past. Pathfinder: Kingmaker jumps to mind here. I loved the start, I liked most of the middle, I liked the end... but it wasn't the end!? It just kept going! By the very end of the game, I was livid! But I had gotten that far (and on high difficulty), there was no way I was going to stop!
3. I paid for this so I'm damn well going to use it! This is a terrible reason to keep playing. I still do it, though. There's probably some "don't want to admit I was wrong to buy the game" floating in there, too.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

To add to what I said earlier, the only time there is a chance I might continue playing a game I'm not enjoying is if it's in a franchise I really love. If Breath of the Wild 2 or The Elder Scrolls VI come out and they suck, I'd probably give them more of a chance than another random game because I love the franchises.

 

[flashn00b]

In my case, there are games that I DO enjoy but i'd still give negative reviews over how the dev team is approaching them. Killing Floor 2 is my most played game but I'd give it a thumbs down due to one of the most important classes in higher difficulties being balanced around DLC ownership rather than having the base game offerings be a good enough alternative.

 

[Brian Boru]

they have 25-50-100 or even 1k hours played

That may not be accurate, and could be really far off.

I launch a game, and dip into it 2-3 times a day maybe. Rest of time, it sits off-screen after I Alt-Tab out to something else. Hours on some of my fav games are hugely overstated on Steam.

I might continue playing a game I'm not enjoying is if it's in a franchise I really love

Yeah, that works for me too occasionally. Crysis 2 & 3 and Far Cry 2 come to mind—I tried those 3 times each, years apart, before finally dumping.

 

[Pifanjr]

I don't really get the "get my money's worth" argument. I buy games to be entertained. The more time I spend on something I paid for but don't enjoy, the less it would be "worth the money".

 

[Frindis]

Makes me think of my love-hate relationship with Rust.

Rust is the type of game that I can love by the fact that I can do whatever I want to do. I can make a trap base, a disco, an invisible base, a cave base, a farm, become a fisherman, or just roam around with no base trying to survive on the scraps I find. It is immensely fun but also at times so frustrating when you meet players that find camping your door for hours fun or loves being the most toxic dipshit possible.

At times I get really mad, yell in the mic, and leave Rust until the next wipe. Killed by a hacker when you had a really good start is a good example of this. But, it's Rust, it comes with both good and bad sides which is why I still play.

My Rust review is pretty bareboned, something about me being killed on the beach as a naked and rating it a 10/10, but that is Rust in its glory. It is about getting fked over, but also that sweet revenge and those delish moments when everything just clicks.

 

[Zloth]

I don't really get the "get my money's worth" argument. I buy games to be entertained. The more time I spend on something I paid for but don't enjoy, the less it would be "worth the money".

You're trying to make it make sense. It doesn't. Luckily, it doesn't apply to 'all you can eat' buffets.

 

[ZedClampet]

I see this a lot when people have a game that they love and have played a lot of and then the developer makes a change in the game that ruins it for them. There are a lot of reasons that player may not just go back to an earlier build. For one thing, Steam has made this next to impossible to do now. But also a lot of games are either online and you can't play old versions or the game is under heavy development, which makes the player less interested in trying to roll back the version.

Or the review can just be caused by frustration. I'm on some sports forums where people will declare after a loss that they are never again watching the team they have rooted for for their entire lives.

Anyway, some of these game reviews are probably justified regardless of the number of hours the player had put in. Osiris: New Dawn comes to mind. Was a great game for 6 months then the developer made it unplayable and and quit working on the game entirely. I wouldn't leave a good review for that kind of behavior even if I had an old build I could revert to.

 

[Frindis]

@ZedClampet Made me think of Cuisine Royale. Started as an April fools WW1 game with some unique game mechanics like Bunny slippers (made you jump insanely high) Golden pan (insta kills enemies) IV Bag of Regeneration (Heals you a small amount every second) and several other useful mechanics that you don't see that often in similar battle royale games. Your armor was literarily different types of pans that you had to put on your body and you sounded like a cowbell by the time you had them all.

Suddenly they decided to change the name to CRSED: F.O.A.D because yeah, THAT was a great fking idea.... and they worked heavily on the cash shop, battle pass and it ended in at least for me as a big joke. It got mixed reviews on Steam right now, no idea why people even bother to play it, but I guess perhaps it is because of new and old players having different experiences.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Curiosity, hoping for something better, expecting more from your full price investment, or even denial are all reasons to keep playing, even if what you've experienced hasn't been to your liking. Hell, lately, even COVID is a reason a lot of people isolate themselves with boring activities. We're all becoming a bit "stuck in our shells" because of it.

 

[Zloth]

Stuck?? Pthththththhh!

 

[Frag Maniac]

Stuck?? Pthththththhh!

I'm sorry, I guess some are used to and completely comfortable with being in their shells. 🐢

 

[DXCHASE]

Maybe they keep playing hoping it will get better. They hope there is one good thing that makes the time it spent to get it worth while.

This pretty much, any game that i have over 100 hours that i have nothing good to say about for the most part (Outriders, Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem) are games that i wanted to see succeed or change my mind about how i feel about it when writing a review. There are core systems in these games that i like, but between never fixing huge bugs or not releasing any content over the course of its first 6-12 months of release etc. all add to my opinions on games over 100 hours in.