I played Celeste, thought it was kinda easy and the hotel level kinda lame which is where I dropped it. A few years later I broke my leg, being a pc gamer before the steamdeck my switch was the only portable console I had and celeste the only unfinished game i had for it. I played the entire game in a week of 12 hour sessions while high as a mother fucking kite. It was amazingly good fun.
Dark souls
Same. Spent 3 hours on Gundyr in ds3 just to watch my non gamer wife beat him second try. Hated the game then came back to it with a friend who had finished it and voila, my new never ending addiction.
Same here, played a bit of DS2, but never really got into it. Started on DS3, but got tired of that pretty quick as well. But when Elden Ring came out, I got really hooked on the games. I finished Elden Ring, then I played through DS 1, 2 and 3. And then a few more playthroughs of Elden Ring with different builds. I’ve started a bit on Sekiro, but jumped over to Lies of P when it came out. The plan is to play the new Lords of the Fallen, when I’m finished with Lies of P. It’s really satisfying to beat a boss after a few hours of learning the patterns.
Minecraft. I tried it as a teenager and didn’t really “get it”. Much later in life I found some friends and none of us really played the game that much so we decided to try it together and got hooked.
As someone who has played Minecraft fairly consistently for the past 12 years or so, I want to ask, what is different about either yourself or the game that made you enjoy it now when you didn’t before?
what do you do in the game exactly? 12 years is a long time
Not all that time was spent in the same world, but over three different creative worlds and three survival ones, online with friends. I like designing and building, both aesthetic creations and also functional ones. The game to me is all about imagination and so from that perspective it’s just a sandbox that never runs out of content.
Whenever I play minecraft now. Either it’s fully modded Minecraft with automation and stuff.
Or it’s vanilla with a ton of client side mods and automating stuff through vanilla farms.
I can’t help being a factorio dude.
Hollow Knight for me fits this scenario to a t. I got it as part of a humble bundle, but couldn’t get into it for at least a year as the initial part felt really depressing, and didn’t at all grab me.
But once I managed to tough it through to greenpath, and started to get some power ups, it finally sunk it’s claws into me. I proceeded to nearly 100% the game.
When I first arrived at Path of Pain on my first run without looking up any guide, "This is bullshit . . ".
Skyrim, thought it was boring at first but started again after a friend got it 1 month after me, im currently on what feels like my hundreth playthrough and it still is my all time favorit
Oblivion for me. I had no idea what to do once I left the sewer, I was overwhelmed. But I brought it to a friend’s house and he helped give me some direction. I’ll always be thankful for that because elder scrolls is now my absolute favorite IP for video games
Overwatch.
Oroginally I dismissed it as just being a TF2 clone, and being a very loyal TF2 player at the time I didn’t want to play it as I consodered it a blatant ripoff. However, I started going to a LAN party group at work in 2017 and Overwatch was the only FPS they played so I got it. It still does feel similar to TF2 but the variety of characters got me hooked and it became my most played game for many years until OW2 came out and ruined everything. Getting back into it now though and they’ve toned down some of the bad decisions of OW2 since launch. Now I’m dating a girl who plays Overwatch as well and we’ve been playing constantly so I’m back into it completely now.
Subnautica. I didn’t really get it at first. Swam around the life pod a bit; didn’t see the point.
Was travelling some time (months?) Later and stuck at an airport with my laptop and a Power outlet but super patchy wifi. So I fired it up again and really, really got into it. Kept playing on the plane and all through that trip. By the time I got back, I had a Cyclops and a Prawn suit and was about to find the lost river.
I also came to say Subnautica. I got it for free prom PlayStation, messed around a little bit, didn’t have any clue where to go, and stopped playing.
Years later I started a new game and it clicked with me. I bought the sequel before I rolled credits so I’d be able to go right into it.
Control.
The beginning of the game is really slow, hard to understand what’s happening, and you literally have only minimal throwing ability. The manual navigation with overlay fullscreen map also doesn’t do justice to the game. Combining with the fact that I wasn’t used to playing these types of games, this was an easy pass for me after like 1 hour of the game.
But boy it’s awesome as you actually get more abilities and understand more of the story. Currently it’s one of the games I usually come back to.
I didn’t realize it was in the Alan Wake universe. I still need to play Control.
Yeah there’s only a couple subtle hints in the regular game and I think more in the dlc. I’m guessing they’ll lean into it more with control 2 now that AW2 is out as well.
Interesting, I had a similar experience at the start and couldn’t work out why everyone was praising it so much. Maybe I’ll give it another go
Please do. Control was such a hidden gem. I picked it up in a humble bundle and it absolutely blew me away.
Hollow Knight.
The first few hours on felt dull. Lots of reviews were praising it and I just didn’t get why. Dirtmouth and the Forgotten Crossroads weren’t really exhilarating, so I stopped after ~5h.
A couple months later I created a new game slot. My POV shifted by following Cornifer’s passion for exploring for exploring’s sake, instead of grinding the Geo economy. The soundtrack really enhances the experience and environment of each section. I’m now ~120h in and still unsure if I’m halfway there!
That was pretty much my experience with it. It rocked me so hard that I finally went back to the OG aka Super Metroid, and give that an honest shake. And man, I had an amazing time.
Stardew Valley. I don’t know why I didn’t get it the first time. Maybe it was the art style? Now it becomes my daily routine…
That game was the total opposite for me. Played it at launch and sunk in like 40h in a week. Absolutely loved it. Put it aside for a while and I have never been able to spend more than 30m on it since…
Cyberpunk. Hated all the stuff with Johnny in the beginning. Came back later and actually played through the entire game.
Played through it multiple times now and still not a fan of the Silverhand story. Would’ve much rather kept Jackie throughout.
That would of been great. I just hated being torn out of V’s story and having to do the Johnny stuff. I’m usually pretty busy and have started disliking games with long unskipable cut scenes because I just want to zone out and play something for a minute. That’s all the silver hand parts felt like to me was a cutscene.
100% this. Jackie and Misty were the only characters I really liked in the game and you loose them very early on
Path of Exile for me. I went in blind towards the end of Synthesis league (Q2 2019) and played completely SSF with a homebrew zoo witch. Managed to eventually fight and kill shaper but it was so draining I didn’t even want to look at the game again… Til the end of the year when I hopped into the end of Blight league and I’ve sunk almost 2k hours since
Aye, that first experience when a friend convinced me that part of the game was trading for better items blew my mind. My only previous experience with that sort of game was diablo, where you could definitely get through the whole game with just found items.
I miss the old way they had though, where it was worth having a single target attack and an aoe attack on swapped weapons, and dominus, try 3, was a hard fight.
Nothing’s stopping you from weapon swapping! I did exactly that on a homebrew bow build beginning of this league. Was kind of a bitch to craft essentially 2 of the same bow, but it worked well enough to take down uber bosses
I never got to experience Dominus being the big bad, but I’ve heard they were good time indeed
Outer Wilds. I went to the hollow planet early and got very frustrated with the platforming and falling rocks.
I returned to it almost a year later and gave it a chance based on everyone’s praise. Very glad I did.
This is one that I have to come back to.
You should. Make sure you pick it up when you have time to really wrap your head around it. When I finally played through it, it was over a Christmas holiday. I don’t think it’s the sort of game that would lend itself well to being played in 1-2 hour chunks after work every night for a week when you’re feeling burned out. You gotta be able to sink your teeth into it
It’s like a big tangle of wool. As soon as you find the end and start pulling, it all starts to make sense.
Diablo III. First time I played it was at the urging of my friend, who told me unironically, “don’t worry about the plot, the plot doesn’t matter.” Unsurprisingly my experience wasn’t particularly engaging and I lost interest, not seeing much reason to play it over any number of other games that didn’t have an always-online requirement.
Flash forward several years later. My then-girlfriend (now spouse) asked me if I’d ever played a Diablo game, and I related my experience. After she was done sputtering and emitting various noises of extreme outrage she insisted that I set things up so we could play through Diablo 1, 2, and then 3 together. I went in to D1 expecting to be similarly disappointed and instead found an incredibly dark, atmospheric, and compelling story. Oh and we did get The Butcher so I also shat myself. After that I was way hyped for 2, and by the time we hit 3 I was far more interested in playing. Loved the hell out of it, found myself not only enjoying the game but completing through the last stages of a season journey to score extra stash space and all that. Not out of obligation either, I was legitimately enjoying the grind.
Bloodborne
Didn’t even got to the first boss my first “try” (actually a lot of tries) and shelved it as “I’m not gud enough”
After a colleague nagged me about it again I gave it another try (with a guide this time) and it clicked! 10/10 game of the decade
Agreed I hated that first mob around the fire and could not get past it. Gave up and came back after Elden ring and loved it. Also dark souls, I said fuck it during zens fortress but eventually came back started again from scratch and really enjoyed it.
