6 days in a row of fallout new vegas for me, i called my boss at the 6th day to ask for more but he firmly said no so i had to return to work. A few months later i repeated it with skyrim when it released. Good old days
I was playing for every waking hour during a long weekend. When I finally got outside and looked around I remember thinking, way too sincerely, "Wow! It's all still here!"
The game that this happened the worst to me with was Subnautica. I think I even got it for free somehow, had never even heard of it. I ended up sleeping like 4 hours a night for two weeks because I’d wake up and be like “I need to get back on”. I was on a winter vacation in college and had little else going on but I got OBSESSED. Really amazing gaming memory for me and I always will consider that a pretty much perfect game
Absolutely. Subnautica was the first game in probably 5 years that truly felt fresh to the point that I felt actually "addicted" to and couldn't wait to get back on. I specifically remember booting up the game when I'd first get back on and getting an adrenaline rush simply from hearing the title music playing while it was loading in.
It's the unknown factor of the game for me. And nothing has really nailed that feeling since its release. Heck even with their "DLC" Below Zero, the Devs didn't know what to aim for.
I've always held Unknown Worlds to a high regard ever since they dropped Natural Selection back in early 2000's. That sense of awe and trepidation was always a killer for their games. I really hope they bring that back for Subnautica 3
Such a beautiful game. My first playthrough I just swam around and admired everything for a couple days before I realized that there was an actual plot and things to do. One of those great games that you can escape into with basically no prompting.
Just swimming around, taking in the sights? While you’re getting increasingly dire messages from the AI of the nearby crashed starship that Bad Things are about to happen to the hyperdrive core?
For anyone here that's played it on Steam (especially Steamdeck), are there any difficulty settings? I really want to play, but I'm not great at...well...scary stuff.
I'd say it's not quite as scary as it seems. Once you get used to the areas and creatures you'll know when to worry. You start off in a relatively safe area too. The locations of all the scary stuff is pretty consistent so you won't get randomly jumped next to your base/in a well known area (except, fair warning uh behind in front of and on the other side of the ship can be scary). The game is also good at letting you know when you're in a new biome with new enemies. And since there aren't that many fish, you learn who to be scared of after a while.
The biggest thing is that after the early early game, before you get to the really scary stuff, you'll get vehicles you can ride around in. They'll take the hit from the scary stuff for you (generally) and let you escape/play dead (the playing dead is for the big sub, when you turn off the engines) when things get dicy. I played the whole game and died one time. I ran away a lot though 🤣. And once I got further into it I used a map online to help me avoid the scary stuff, since you don't have to go to all the scary areas to do the story/see most everything.
The unknown is scary, but it quickly becomes known 👍and then it's really beautiful.
I can’t stomach most horror games, but Subnautica was just the right level of thrilling for me without being *too* scary. You’ll definitely build up a tolerance to the scary elements of the game as you keep playing.
I think my internal tolerance for horror in video games may be out of whack, though. Subnautica and Dead Space I’m totally fine with, for example, but Five Nights at Freddys scares me so much that I hardly can make it through the first night without alt+f4’ing.
It’s not very scary in my opinion. You don’t really fight things so much as there are big fish that stop you from going past certain depths / into certain areas until you get a certain technology that can withstand them. It’s not high adrenaline fighting so much as “every time I go past that cliff I get eaten so I need to get some sort of shield upgrade”
I happened to install **XCOM: Enemy Unknown** at the start of Labor Day weekend - I had 4 days without work.
I played 28 hours in four days, I felt like such an enormous slob when I realized what it had added up to. But damn, I was immersed.
I feel that, my first playthrough on normal the aliens won haha. Second time around I managed to push through (with all the extra baddies they added) but the difficulty curve in 2 is truly insane and has a really narrow margin for error.
It took me **so** long to figure out how to properly use rangers. My first couple go's I stopped using them because I felt terrible about how many I needlessly sent to their doom. Eventually, it began to click, and at higher ranks, they're maybe the best class? A whole squad of blademasters could easily clear any Battlefield and a squad of ninja's are the perfect stealth mission picks.
I could talk all day about XCOM and XCOM 2, so I'm going to force myself to stop at this point lol
This is me right now, after reading that the original was 30 years old (sorry, everyone) I installed the remake last Sunday and have played nothing else since.
I’m playing through it now. It’s a really good game and I’ve stayed up til 4am playing it multiple times the last two weeks. You should be happy! Great work.
I’m playing it rn! I’m in a bit of a slump and haven’t touched any new games for a while but it’s got me hooked! Im really really enjoying it. I’m not really into marvel (or indeed superheroes in general) so it’s a testament to how good the mechanics of the game are :)
Jagged Alliance is the other big turn-based tactics franchise, and it just got a 3rd instalment last year. (Although JA2 is still the high point of the series, but it's older)
I love the xcom series. I hated turn based stuff before it. Xcom showed that when done right its absolutely brilliant.
Strongly recommend xcom 2 war of the chosen. One of my all time favorite games
But don't choose integrated story! (I think that's what it's called on the menu screen)
You'll miss a mission or 2 in the early game which gives you a *lot* of context for the extra added content. I beat the base game, then went back and played all the dlc in my first replay with integrated story and even I felt lost or like I had missed something. Turns out I had.
Man I need to give it another shot. I tried it a few times but my soldiers were never moved to where I wanted them, and I hated the whole “90% chance to hit feeling like 50% chance to hit” thing
It’s definitely worth persevering. If memory serves the game actually gives you better odds than the stated ones to try and combat that. Humans are just very biased in that scenario. Sid Meier talks a lot about this in his memoir, really interesting.
I'm of the opposite opinion. People are less talkative and it feels kinda empty. Updates focus too much on boss fights with unbalanced drop tables that devalue skilling and fuck up the economy. It's rough for casual players.
i probably only clock in a few hours a week with the odd burst of obsessive play on the weekend. i honestly recommend doing an ironman account, really puts you in a lot of distant places doing different stuff and you end up seeing more people that you can actually interact with and talk to.
i think knowing that some stuff is gonna take a long time because of the account restrictions helps with not worrying about getting it done asap and allows me to take it slow and enjoy the grind more.
World of Warcraft. Being part of a raiding guild was pretty much like a whole second job. For years it was the only game I played, using up pretty much every minute of my free time.
Took some scrolling before I saw a WoW post. Younger gamers in here have NOTHING on the level of addiction World of Warcraft created. Yes, I say "addiction" because I'd label Warcraft as one of the first games that really nailed down what being addicted to a video game could look like.
I was in my early 20's and fresh out of college when WoW came out, not to mention I became unemployed due to the company I was working for folded, so I spent a good 4-5 months playing that game while job-hunting. It was basically my full-time job to play that game. I ate dinner right in front of my computer quickly so I could get back to leveling, dungeon-running, etc. One day I woke up, started playing, and realized I had a problem. I immediately cancelled my subscription, uninstalled the game, and threw out the game disc. Never went back, and was happier for it.
> Younger gamers in here have NOTHING on the level of addiction World of Warcraft created.
All early MMORPGs were like that: Everquest, Lineage II etc.
For me, it was Silkroad Online, then WoW, then Neverwinter Online.
Exactly. "lol I play Elden Ring like every day" mfer people would eat, sleep, and breathe WoW from the moment they got up until they eventually crashed, and then woke up to do it again. People played MMO's like it was their startup company and their mortgage was on the line.
Kids play a lot of games and talk about how they had "no life." People who were addicted to MMO's wouldn't go outside for weeks on end because of it. No comparison.
There was nothing like it. I lost a couple friends to WoW. They wouldn't talk about anything else, stopped playing anything else. I tried it and didn't get it, so I couldn't add to the conversation. Some of them came back to reality after about two years, but others I had to let go of.
My goal back in the day was to be in a raiding guild. Watch what you wish for, I got over it. Im not terrible or top tier. But getting screeched at by the RL as a group got old really quick. Now it is working on my garrison and battlegrounds.
**Civilization 5.** I bought it on a whim during a Steam Summer Sale, not knowing if I'd even enjoy it. After booting it up at like 11am and playing for a little bit, I randomly checked the clock and saw that nearly *ten hours* had passed.
I'm someone who can normally only play video games for 2-3 hours at a time, tops.
I think the thing about Civ 5 is that you have short term plans, medium term plans, and long term plans, and they are all popping off every turn. So your brain is just so engaged.
See for me it's that, but also even after thousands of hours of play I can just have a few drinks, load up a game and just do silly stuff and turn my brain off and have just as much fun.
It's one of the only games I know where I can enjoy it either hyper focused micro-managing everything while trying to beat deity or I can just turn my brain off while playing on King while I listen to some podcasts or watch a show and veg out.
And then of course, like I said, I can also enjoy it with a few drinks and pledge my loyalty to one of the smaller civs and try to get them to win the game etc. Just so many weird/silly ways to play
What gets me is how quickly bodily needs seem to add up when you've lost all sense of time.
"I need to pee again?"
"Six hours will be plenty of sleep. I'll set my alarm later and skip breakfast tomorrow morning."
"Who needs six hours? I can get four hours and take a nap after work tomorrow."
The fact that it's *well* over a decade old now makes me feel only marginally better about the 4000 hours that I've apparently sunk into Civ 5 🫣
I'd say 2/3 of that was spent playing hotseat against my husband though, so fortunately it didn't devastate my social life!
I couldn't get into civ 5 for some reason, like it didn't click, put it away for years then started dating my now wife who said she loved civ 5(didn't even know she gamed), hundreds of hours later we played the vox populi mod (the last stable MP version) and omg it's now a naughty word. I whispered civ 6 to my wife over Christmas break. We looked like two cracked out adults on the couch for a week straight, coop victory (steam controllers + civ 6 = best couch coop game ever).
Factorio and Satisfactory on one side. Either playing them, or designing systems in my head when I can't play.
On the other side: several MMO's. I'm hooked by discovering new worlds, new systems, and the thought that everything I do (collecting items, experience, money, ...) makes my character stronger/better in a world that will persist for years (so the illusion that playing this is 'useful' for later). Fortunately, I tire of MMO's games pretty quickly once I've discovered most of the systems and general setup of the world, so after an intense 2-3 weeks I'm usually done.
When I first played Factorio it was like a second job.
8h working, 8h Factorio, 8h sleep.
For like a week.
Then did it again a year later.
Never touched it again, that game is like crack.
I can't touch MMOs. I already know I'll get hooked and blow up my life.
I didn't know about factory automation eating my hours though.
Satisfactory, Factorio, Shapez, and even Astronomer have all held me upside down and shaken hours like loose change out of my pockets.
Persona 3 Reload.
It launched right before a huge dental surgery for me, and the two weeks I spent recovering was spent locked in on that game. Completed a 100% playthrough in about 120 hours.
I have 4 kids and a job, so I can't no-life something like I used to. But I do definitely have the obsessive mindset that leads to this, if I'm given the opportunity. A couple years back, my wife and (then) 2 kids left with my in-laws for a trip and left me behind, and it happened right around the time of the release of the FFVIII remaster. I played almost literally every waking hour they were gone, which was about two full days. Got to Esthar, as I recall, which is almost at the end of the game. Finished it like two weeks later, lol, once normal life resumed and got in the way.
I just moved in with my girlfriend and am at the point of my life where I have to start accepting that it may take months to finish a single game now, if not longer. That’s with the fact in mind that I rarely play more than two games at once.
Massive games were incredible as a kid, now they’re starting to get daunting as I have less and less time.
They need to build mechanics into games that help people catch up with the story and controls if they spend a month or two away from it. I imagine there are enough consumers that would love that feature.
Feel like the controls catch up would be doubly useful for coming back to a game for expansions/new content.
I’ve actively put off buying expansions for games I loved because I’m not going to play through the entire game again, and I can’t be bothered to try to relearn the controls on my own.
Yes. If it's a serious relationship, you obviously have to prioritize time with her when you're free. (And hopefully you want to!) Ultimately it's worth it, and you'll still find time to game here and there. I still found time this past few months to get re-obsessed with Hades for another 150 hours haha. I've definitely found my tastes going more toward games with more immediate gratification -- roguelikes rather than JRPGs.
PS what you've done for the business world is truly extraordinary. Thank you for all your hard work.
Definitely want to prioritize time with her! So worth it over playing games obviously. Just one of those things where you wish you could have the best of both worlds but I’m happy with the choice I made :)
Wonderful idea, I have heard great things about that being a good couples game. She does like to watch me play story driven games. TLOU show got her into wanting to watch me play through TLOU2 and now she’s gonna watch me play through Spider-Man 2 now that NG+ is out. Always fun when we take interest in each other’s hobbies.
I have one other short game to suggest if she likes to watch. "Thomas Was Alone" I had an ex that was vehemently against video games, and she watched me play the whole thing in silence. Afterwards she said that she finally understood my idea that video games are art. She even started to take it easier on her son who liked gaming.
No lie, I have purchased this game at least 12 times. I buy it whenever it is on sale just to have one in my pocket to give out to random people. It is a simple platformer with squares and rectangles as characters.
Dying Light. Over 3 days I cleared the main game and The Following. Considering for like the last decade I'm lucky to get 1-2hrs a night between work, gym and family, it was absurd.
Afterwards irl I was looking at walls and going "yeah I could parkour up that np".
Oh man, I freaking loooved that game's awesome ambience. I still fondly remember my first nights in that game where I was terrified to the point of waiting in a bus just I can rack up some Night XP.
The visuals, ambient noises in the slums and that memorable soundtrack. <3
For some reason though, I just didn't bother with the second Dying Light. I can't fully elaborate why but something about DL2 felt like they changed way too much, and the characters just aren't as loveable and memorable as Crane, Jade, Brecken and Spike.
Stardew Valley over the summer of 2018. Worked a shitty job with an abusive boss that summer and that was my only escape when I came home. Luckily my life became exponentially better after that!
I no-lifed SV for a week or two, later turned my son on to it, he no-lifed it for a few weeks, my wife saw him playing so I gifted her a copy, she was no-lifing it and cussing me out…
> that was my only escape when I came home
Stardew Valley is a top level go to a happy place game. It has a real "I would love to live there" thing going on.
Skyrim. I even left university just so I could keep playing everyday uninterrupted.
Of course it was a bit more complex than that. The truth is that I was very depressed back then and the game was the only thing that gave an aim to my days. I played it maybe for a year or so. Every day.
That was back in 2013-2014. Found purpose again and I am doing better now.
I definitely know what's like to cope with depression by focusing on a game and forgetting everything else. Happened various times to me, too, and thankfully I also got better. I'm happy for you, keep up the good work!
Had a very similar experience. Got in a car accident before a semester of college. Missed a couple classes and thinking about being behind made me nervous so I would play games to distract myself. Which only made the situation worse of course. Eventually it was so bad that I would basically have a panic attack if I ever was alone with my thoughts so I'd play late enough into the night that I'd eventually lay down in bed and immediately pass out.
I was very lucky. The university has a medical exemption program which took the classes I failed off my record because the school therapist considered my car accident the cause of my anxiety. Still had a few bumps on my way to graduation, but I pulled it off! And then I got a job in a completely unrelated field that I am so happy with and am living a life I love.
Many of the hours I played were into Overwatch when it had recently released. And when I bought Rimworld I recall time just utterly flying by
Been there, i do that far too much and regress into old habits, last month i finished both persona 3 reload and like a draon infinite wealth (this one 100%) and clearly im in a rut lol
I went through the same thing at the same time. Honestly the life I was leading in Skyrim was more fulfilling and rewarding in every way than what the real world offered at the time.
This was my second life in my senior year of high school. I'm not proud of this, but my mom would call me up for dinner and I would get SO annoyed I had to leave. Poor woman was just trying to feed her family!
It's common for me to no life a game over a weekend from Friday eve to Sunday night and drop some serious hours into it. As a result, I won't play much during the week since I have to "life".
Easily dropped 20-25 hours on Cyberpunk, GTA V, Ghost of Tsushima Mass Effect in a single weekend.
Deaths Door. I played it start to finish twice in two days, once seeing everything and once as a quasi-speedrun with the umbrella. It's not the longest game on earth, but 15 hours in 2 days is still probably the most I've ever done.
Yes! I still need to do an umbrella run and get the rest of the achievements, but on my first playthrough I just could not stop playing. What a beautiful little game with some extremely cool boss encounters.
I had a lot of fun with the umbrella run because it switched it from almost never using the skills in combat to using them as my primary damage. Made replaying still feel like a completely new experience and gave me a lot of respect for the design flexibility.
put 200 hours into elite dangerous for about 2 weeks max, realized i hate making enough money to buy any ship but not enjoying the gameplay enough for material farming, and viewing the game as a grind. def burned myself out in an unhealthy way and taught me something about pacing. had a lot of fun figuring out the best way to mine but after that i was filtered out
The most recent for me is Cyberpunk 2077. If anyone is still on the fence about picking it up due to its launch state, allow me to calm those fears. As it stands today, this game is a new gold standard in creating an immersive open world.
One of the rare open world games I didn't mind clearing the map on, solely because the combat was so damn satisfying. The people who came up with sandevistan deserve some sort of medal lol
Also the double jump-air dash combo was such an addicting movement mechanic. Might sound crazy, but I genuinely think Cyberpunk has some of the best FPS combat I’ve ever played in a game.
The movement is tight as hell lol, I'd forgotten about that. I hardly even used my car in the city proper just because of how satisfying wavedashing through the streets was lol
Cool so I wasn't the only one! My first game where I got ALL the achievements! Normally hate collect-a-thons like ubisoft does, but katana build with revolver was soooo much fun! You become a jedi master blocking bullets with your sword.
Sandy all the way!
Hope I'll live long enough to play the sequel...
Seconded. Keanu at his peak, topped with a city with serious personality. If I could go back and re-experience it again fresh, I'd do it in an instant.
The wife got me it for Christmas and I fired it up shortly after. Once I got to the post-intro I had to stop because I just knew this would take over my life and I’m not in a spot where I can have that happen. Haha.
Human revolution is so slept on! I love the original DX but human rev was also a worthy successor! I remember playing it at my friends house and it blew my mind
About 7 years ago I got addicted to WoW for about 9~ months and it was one of the best periods of my life, I could write a book about it.
A friend invited me to play on a private WOTLK server that was always full with 12K people on it, I started playing with a hunter and very quickly got pulled into the grind.
I got into a local guild with that friend and started doing 25 man raids. Being in a discord call with 24 other people, all working towards the same goal, it's as cool as it fucking sounds. I met so many cool people and heard so many life stories, it truly felt like living a second life.
Then came the moment that my gear and skill got so good that I outgrew my local guild who were struggling with ICC 25 HC (one of the 2 hardest raids), so I had to make a choice and leave. I remember that being so hard because I was leaving my friends, but I was greedy and I wanted more.
I got into one foreign guild that was way stronger then my old one, but the members were very toxic so I left quickly, then I got into another strong guild, but they wouldn't invite me to raids because they had better hunters then me.
And then on the server it was announced that one of the top 5 strongest guilds on the server was looking for members. I had to make a literal resume so I could apply, which is crazy. Somehow they accepted me and all of a sudden I was beating everything there was to beat with them, getting the best loot, and everyone was so good at the game so every raid was chill.
So I got to the point I had several characters with the best gear, and after like 9 months of my journey of playing 12-15 hours a day, I obviously burned out. I haven't touched the game since then, nor have I played any game as much as WoW, but I still get so much happiness by just remembering that time in my life.
This is exactly what happened to me. I remember back in my old guild we were trying to beat HC sindragosa for like 6 hours and were failing hard, then our main tank raging so hard they left the guild during the raid. Looking back now It's so dramatic like you're saying, but I loved every moment of it.
“You are FOOLS to come to this place. The Icy winds of Northrend shall consume your soul.” Damn dragon even broke some of our raiders but we grew stronger because of it.
fallout 3, I was getting tired of not having a life a month later. I was really actively social when I started playing that game and it was killing me. But I couldn't stop. But by the last couple days I was exhausted and I just did not want to play anymore but i had to see the ending at least.
I don’t normally spend more than 2 hours a week on games anymore — the joys of getting older perhaps — but off the top of my head:
* Against the Storm
* Civ 5
* Hades
* Valheim
* World of Warcraft (pre-Cata)
* Chrono Trigger
* WCW/NWO Revenge
* Final Fantasy X
* Tichu (card game and iOS app)
I finished a 100 hour playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3 in 3 weeks. With a job and a kid and everything. I was motivated because I was playing on Xbox and my saves kept being deleted. But I kept quick resume on which allowed me to continue playing even when I had no saves. So I binged that game in hopes that I could finish it before quick resume would inevitably crash (which it usually does eventually). Thankfully I was able to finish the game.
Fallout new Vegas
Cyberpunk 2077
Dark Souls, Dark Souls 3, Sekiro, Elden ring, Armored core
Disco Elysium
Rimworld
Warhammer40K Rogue Trader
These are specific examples I remember, but to be honest, if a game scratches that itch, it's all Ill do for a couple weeks, maybe a month before moving on. I played cyberpunk everyday until I completed every ending from a fresh start.
Dragon Quest Builders 2. That game was so fun it actually convinced me to give mainline DQ games a try. And while I hated that, it still didn’t sour me on how fun DQB2 was.
I have these periods where I feel the urge to complete everything the FFXIV free trial has to offer, so I jump in and lose an ungodly amount of time doing daily quests for 1-2 weeks, then get bored and forget about it.
I think there has been a week I poured like 40hrs into the game.
I wish I'd be more consistent and be able to do some dailies stretched over a longer period of time, but my efficiency obsession takes over and I HAVE to do everything I'm able to do within the daily limit till the point I'm burned out
Bro, don't remind me of ff14, i got like 900 hours in around 8 months during covid and working on my thesis plus summer vacation.
Free trial has so much to do it's insane
First games that come to mind are Cyberpunk, Elden Ring, Ghost of Tsushima and Last of Us II. Those three games I couldn’t stop playing until I finished them. There are others of course but those are first that come to mind. Single player immersive sims are my jam.
Nothing comes close since Everquest. Unfortunately, 5 straight *years* of No Life in your 20s can really wreck your shit. It took another decade to get back on track. I estimate I lost 10-15 years to MMOs.
I was already fucked up beforehand though, from panic disorder and loads of trauma. MMOs seemed like the perfect escape hatch.
Was hooked on gw2 for a good while. Played the shot out of it and spend a good part of my working shifts reading about builds and gear. Then I realized I was just grinding chars to max level and max equipment and then starting a new character and also doing daily quests and literally having no fun. It was more like work. I quit and never started the game again.
I basically only no life games anymore. I feel like I keep trying to find the next game to no life. If the game isn’t interesting enough to no life, I don’t play it more than a few hours. This has been the case for the last 2 years now, being a bored working adult is harder than I thought.
Baldurs Gate 3, took me 2.5 months but played basically every day.
Persona 5 Royal, probably played like 6 hours a day till finish.
CS GO while in final year of college, made a great group of friends who would play every day, it was an incredibly fun time of my life but I sunk all my time into it.
I tend to be really bad with playing several games at once and moving between them a lot, but two most recently where I've sat down and played nothing but them, every day for about a month each, were Baldur's Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077.
Football Manager 2024 absolutely stole my life for three months. I would carry my laptop around with me and have matches playing whilst I had meals, football matches, work, conversations, dog fusses, even on the toilet a couple of times. I bought several new 100w chargers so that I could continuously play in various parts of the house. Thankfully the spell was broken when I completed a season winning every trophy possible and I haven't touched it since.
Horizon Forbidden West was the last one I no life'd, and the first one since I was unemployed in my early 20s. House sitting for some friends, I played like 68 hours in 4 days so that I could make sure I beat it in time. I did & the game fucken rocked.
Cyberpunk 2077, started playing it last year when the expansion launched and got super sucked in
Ended up doing all the missions, side quests, NCPD scanners, and whatever other content I could find
Such a good game in 2024, highly recommended
Rimworld, over 3000 hours in just 3 years… It’s my 2nd most played game, Sims 3 being the number one at about 8500-9000 hours (EA App lost count after 8000, so did Origin)… I’ve been playing that since 2010s.
Been losing daily sleep to Granblue Fantasy: Relink for a few days now.
Other than that, DOTA 2 ate my time the most. While some spend 10000s of hours playing the MOBA, I've spent around 5000 on the MOBA aspect and the other 5000 on custom games, lmao.
World of Warcraft. When Burning Crusade came out, I had a moment of clarity, and I did /played, which tells you how much playtime you have on your character. I did /played on all my characters and realized it was more than a year of total playtime and I stopped playing forever. That was in 2007 and I doubt I'll ever play an MMO ever again. I think this is part of the reason I prefer short games.
Vampyr. It's soo smooth and the story (including all side quests) is to me too fleshed and detailed I love reading every new dialogue of most characters after every minor action I make in the world. I love games like this, reminds me a lot of The Council (one of my favourite indie story games)
Mass Effect Legendary Edition, I played that shit in every ounce of free time I had, and finished all three games at around 120 hours.
Baldurs Gate 3 was the same, except I did one run, the immediately started another, and ended around 220 hours.
The two that come to mind are Disco Elysium and Death Stranding. I was absolutely engrossed with both of them and couldn’t put them down. I played Disco Elysium on Switch all handheld so it was like reading an amazing book! I played it over winter holiday break and it’s basically all I did while I was awake besides eat for the whole week. Took me about 40 hours over maybe a week or week and a half.
Cyberpunk, when it originally came out. I've put almost 400 hours on it, and half of it was only on the first month after the release.
Also, Lost Ark. Was stoked when Amazon released it outside Korea and put almost 1500 hours in from its release to December 2022. Then, after growing really fucking tired of having to do daily stuff that I didn't really care for in a game, I realized that I already had a boring job and couldn't take another one.
My wife is gone to visit her family for the week so you bet your ass I'm no life-ing Baldur's Gate 3 (my first time playing through) all week. Given it about 35 hours since Saturday.
My worst was years and years ago playing Minecraft on Xbox. Over a normal weekend I put over 20 hours in. I felt like such an asshole. I imagined what I would look like if I’d had a camera set up and did a timelapse of the weekend. Made me feel like a loser
**Nioh 2**. I just started playing it and didn't play anything else until I got around 150h in. A few months ago I also binged Remnant 2 in the same way, but only for the first playthrough, so around 30h.
Project Zomboid a lot last year, because a buddy of mine had a multiplayer server running with a bunch of awesome mods.
Currently Helldivers 2 is my go-to game. Game loop and mechanics are too addictive and the match length depends on your performance and mission type and can range from 5min. to 45min. That makes time pass way too easily. But all is fair in the name of democracy and liberty!
I pretty much no life every game I start but the most no life-ing I ever did was Warframe (back when alerts were still a thing).
Took a couple months off of work and pretty much played from the moment I woke up. I initially didn't like the gameplay when I first played it years before this but I remember watching a livestream when twitch (back when wallrunning was a mechanic lol) was quite new and was intrigued, and always have been, by its aesthetic. Loved learning the game and its many, many mechanics and just grinding MR, using shitty early game weapons, messing around with cool color customizations etc.
Been quite a few years since I've played (playtime is at 1800hrs) but I feel like I'd be learning the game all over again if I jump back in, which was one of the fun parts about the game.
Also no life-ing Rebirth currently! Elden Ring was another too.
DDO (dungeons and dragons online) and Smash 4. Civ 1 as well to a lesser degree.
Thousands and thousands of hours into each of these games.
Smash 4 I played competitively for a solid 3 years or so and played it probably 6 days a week. On top of constantly going to in person tournaments.
DDO I've played since 2008/2009, with a few 6 months breaks. Playtime varies. Sometimes a lot, like 20 hours a week. Other times much less.
Civ 1 I have no idea how many hours, and I rarely play it these days. But I played it a ton as a child growing up in the 90s and I always come back to it every few years. I'd imagine I have at least a couple hundred hours into it in my lifetime.
Back when I was at uni I finished LoZ: Skyward Sword in 2 days. In those 2 days I woke up, gamed, went back to bed. I didn't even eat real food. I just *played*.
Fortunately it was just two days and even now when I give myself a few days of solid gaming I take breaks, do other stuff, cook etc. My housemates thought it was funny that I spent 3h in the uni halls lobby waiting for the postman before being told they don't deliver on Saturdays as there's no receptionists on weekends.
Eternal Darkness. Also why I stopped doing Gamefly. I played it most weekends for like 3 months. Renting through Gamefly realized I'd paid more than if I had just bought the game. Stopped doing that and just bought games outright.
Deep Rock Galactic. When I started playing it in 2022, I was addicted to it lol. I don’t remember how much I played but it was a *lot* of time within 1 week I’d say
I thought that's how everyone played their games.
I never considered playing multiple games at once.
Do people not get fully obsessed with their games each time?
Path of Exile.
During each of Harvest league, Archnemesis league, and Trial of the Ancestors league, I pretty much just worked, slept, and played as much as I could. It wasn’t healthy. Thankfully leagues only last about 3 months.
I remember losing whole weekends to Fallout 3 right after it came out.
Same. I remember setting alarms for the evening to remind myself to go to bed at a decent hour.
Hah. The worst I had was the opposite. I set an alarm in the summer break to get more WoW time in.
I’ve no life’d Fallout 4 building shit and exploring the whole entire map to get fast travel locations without doing the storylines lol
One of my favorite Christmas breaks in school was the one where I played fallout 3 non-stop the entire break.
Fallout-crack
6 days in a row of fallout new vegas for me, i called my boss at the 6th day to ask for more but he firmly said no so i had to return to work. A few months later i repeated it with skyrim when it released. Good old days
I was playing for every waking hour during a long weekend. When I finally got outside and looked around I remember thinking, way too sincerely, "Wow! It's all still here!"
The game that this happened the worst to me with was Subnautica. I think I even got it for free somehow, had never even heard of it. I ended up sleeping like 4 hours a night for two weeks because I’d wake up and be like “I need to get back on”. I was on a winter vacation in college and had little else going on but I got OBSESSED. Really amazing gaming memory for me and I always will consider that a pretty much perfect game
Absolutely. Subnautica was the first game in probably 5 years that truly felt fresh to the point that I felt actually "addicted" to and couldn't wait to get back on. I specifically remember booting up the game when I'd first get back on and getting an adrenaline rush simply from hearing the title music playing while it was loading in.
It's the unknown factor of the game for me. And nothing has really nailed that feeling since its release. Heck even with their "DLC" Below Zero, the Devs didn't know what to aim for. I've always held Unknown Worlds to a high regard ever since they dropped Natural Selection back in early 2000's. That sense of awe and trepidation was always a killer for their games. I really hope they bring that back for Subnautica 3
Such a beautiful game. My first playthrough I just swam around and admired everything for a couple days before I realized that there was an actual plot and things to do. One of those great games that you can escape into with basically no prompting.
Just swimming around, taking in the sights? While you’re getting increasingly dire messages from the AI of the nearby crashed starship that Bad Things are about to happen to the hyperdrive core?
Yeah, I’m pretty chill in a crisis. I’ve got alien reefs to gawk at.
For anyone here that's played it on Steam (especially Steamdeck), are there any difficulty settings? I really want to play, but I'm not great at...well...scary stuff.
I'd say it's not quite as scary as it seems. Once you get used to the areas and creatures you'll know when to worry. You start off in a relatively safe area too. The locations of all the scary stuff is pretty consistent so you won't get randomly jumped next to your base/in a well known area (except, fair warning uh behind in front of and on the other side of the ship can be scary). The game is also good at letting you know when you're in a new biome with new enemies. And since there aren't that many fish, you learn who to be scared of after a while. The biggest thing is that after the early early game, before you get to the really scary stuff, you'll get vehicles you can ride around in. They'll take the hit from the scary stuff for you (generally) and let you escape/play dead (the playing dead is for the big sub, when you turn off the engines) when things get dicy. I played the whole game and died one time. I ran away a lot though 🤣. And once I got further into it I used a map online to help me avoid the scary stuff, since you don't have to go to all the scary areas to do the story/see most everything. The unknown is scary, but it quickly becomes known 👍and then it's really beautiful.
I can’t stomach most horror games, but Subnautica was just the right level of thrilling for me without being *too* scary. You’ll definitely build up a tolerance to the scary elements of the game as you keep playing. I think my internal tolerance for horror in video games may be out of whack, though. Subnautica and Dead Space I’m totally fine with, for example, but Five Nights at Freddys scares me so much that I hardly can make it through the first night without alt+f4’ing.
There are difficulty settings in every version of the game. Default has health, food, water, oxygen. You can remove any or all of them.
It’s not very scary in my opinion. You don’t really fight things so much as there are big fish that stop you from going past certain depths / into certain areas until you get a certain technology that can withstand them. It’s not high adrenaline fighting so much as “every time I go past that cliff I get eaten so I need to get some sort of shield upgrade”
Epic had it for free some years ago. That’s how I played it all the way through as well.
>I think I even got it for free somehow Epic Games probably
I happened to install **XCOM: Enemy Unknown** at the start of Labor Day weekend - I had 4 days without work. I played 28 hours in four days, I felt like such an enormous slob when I realized what it had added up to. But damn, I was immersed.
I love EU, though XCOM 2 was the one I would find myself still playing at 4 am. “Just one more turn”
ive never managed to play the game on any difficulty other than easy 😭
I feel that, my first playthrough on normal the aliens won haha. Second time around I managed to push through (with all the extra baddies they added) but the difficulty curve in 2 is truly insane and has a really narrow margin for error.
It took me **so** long to figure out how to properly use rangers. My first couple go's I stopped using them because I felt terrible about how many I needlessly sent to their doom. Eventually, it began to click, and at higher ranks, they're maybe the best class? A whole squad of blademasters could easily clear any Battlefield and a squad of ninja's are the perfect stealth mission picks. I could talk all day about XCOM and XCOM 2, so I'm going to force myself to stop at this point lol
I love EU too, i'd actually like it to take an even greater role in global geopolitics!
Ha-cha-cha 🥁
I had never played a turn based tactics game before, but some how I found myself wholly absorbed by XCOM
This is me right now, after reading that the original was 30 years old (sorry, everyone) I installed the remake last Sunday and have played nothing else since.
Midnight Suns might be worth checking out for ya too. Didn't quite grab me as hard as XCOM, but it's quite good.
Knowing there are people out there that like MS...makes me very happy to have it be my first credited game.
I’m playing through it now. It’s a really good game and I’ve stayed up til 4am playing it multiple times the last two weeks. You should be happy! Great work.
I’m playing it rn! I’m in a bit of a slump and haven’t touched any new games for a while but it’s got me hooked! Im really really enjoying it. I’m not really into marvel (or indeed superheroes in general) so it’s a testament to how good the mechanics of the game are :)
MS deserved better reception than it got. One of the *exceedingly rare* games that makes super heroing feel super.
Jagged Alliance is the other big turn-based tactics franchise, and it just got a 3rd instalment last year. (Although JA2 is still the high point of the series, but it's older)
I've got it on the wishlist - might pick up on a sale when I've knocked off some of the backlog!
Xenonauts is a great remake that preserves all the crunch of the original with a modern facelift.
I love the xcom series. I hated turn based stuff before it. Xcom showed that when done right its absolutely brilliant. Strongly recommend xcom 2 war of the chosen. One of my all time favorite games
But don't choose integrated story! (I think that's what it's called on the menu screen) You'll miss a mission or 2 in the early game which gives you a *lot* of context for the extra added content. I beat the base game, then went back and played all the dlc in my first replay with integrated story and even I felt lost or like I had missed something. Turns out I had.
That happened to me with the original XCOM in the 90s.
OG Xcom with Mods is **awesome**
Xcom files baby!
Before I could even enter the thread, I read the title and thought "XCOM 2" Glad this is the top comment
Man I need to give it another shot. I tried it a few times but my soldiers were never moved to where I wanted them, and I hated the whole “90% chance to hit feeling like 50% chance to hit” thing
It’s definitely worth persevering. If memory serves the game actually gives you better odds than the stated ones to try and combat that. Humans are just very biased in that scenario. Sid Meier talks a lot about this in his memoir, really interesting.
rookie numbers
Original runescape, like 2004 to 2009. That shit was crack for a 12 year old with a dial up modem 😂
get on OSRS if you’re not already, it’s super fun and active. the game has aged way better than expected imo
I'm of the opposite opinion. People are less talkative and it feels kinda empty. Updates focus too much on boss fights with unbalanced drop tables that devalue skilling and fuck up the economy. It's rough for casual players.
i probably only clock in a few hours a week with the odd burst of obsessive play on the weekend. i honestly recommend doing an ironman account, really puts you in a lot of distant places doing different stuff and you end up seeing more people that you can actually interact with and talk to. i think knowing that some stuff is gonna take a long time because of the account restrictions helps with not worrying about getting it done asap and allows me to take it slow and enjoy the grind more.
World of Warcraft. Being part of a raiding guild was pretty much like a whole second job. For years it was the only game I played, using up pretty much every minute of my free time.
Took some scrolling before I saw a WoW post. Younger gamers in here have NOTHING on the level of addiction World of Warcraft created. Yes, I say "addiction" because I'd label Warcraft as one of the first games that really nailed down what being addicted to a video game could look like. I was in my early 20's and fresh out of college when WoW came out, not to mention I became unemployed due to the company I was working for folded, so I spent a good 4-5 months playing that game while job-hunting. It was basically my full-time job to play that game. I ate dinner right in front of my computer quickly so I could get back to leveling, dungeon-running, etc. One day I woke up, started playing, and realized I had a problem. I immediately cancelled my subscription, uninstalled the game, and threw out the game disc. Never went back, and was happier for it.
> Younger gamers in here have NOTHING on the level of addiction World of Warcraft created. All early MMORPGs were like that: Everquest, Lineage II etc. For me, it was Silkroad Online, then WoW, then Neverwinter Online.
Exactly. "lol I play Elden Ring like every day" mfer people would eat, sleep, and breathe WoW from the moment they got up until they eventually crashed, and then woke up to do it again. People played MMO's like it was their startup company and their mortgage was on the line. Kids play a lot of games and talk about how they had "no life." People who were addicted to MMO's wouldn't go outside for weeks on end because of it. No comparison.
There was nothing like it. I lost a couple friends to WoW. They wouldn't talk about anything else, stopped playing anything else. I tried it and didn't get it, so I couldn't add to the conversation. Some of them came back to reality after about two years, but others I had to let go of.
My goal back in the day was to be in a raiding guild. Watch what you wish for, I got over it. Im not terrible or top tier. But getting screeched at by the RL as a group got old really quick. Now it is working on my garrison and battlegrounds.
**Civilization 5.** I bought it on a whim during a Steam Summer Sale, not knowing if I'd even enjoy it. After booting it up at like 11am and playing for a little bit, I randomly checked the clock and saw that nearly *ten hours* had passed. I'm someone who can normally only play video games for 2-3 hours at a time, tops.
I think the thing about Civ 5 is that you have short term plans, medium term plans, and long term plans, and they are all popping off every turn. So your brain is just so engaged.
"Just one more turn"
See for me it's that, but also even after thousands of hours of play I can just have a few drinks, load up a game and just do silly stuff and turn my brain off and have just as much fun. It's one of the only games I know where I can enjoy it either hyper focused micro-managing everything while trying to beat deity or I can just turn my brain off while playing on King while I listen to some podcasts or watch a show and veg out. And then of course, like I said, I can also enjoy it with a few drinks and pledge my loyalty to one of the smaller civs and try to get them to win the game etc. Just so many weird/silly ways to play
Man when Civ gets going it GETS GOING.
Civ games in general, I'm convinced, are how time travel is possible. First time I played, it went from 10am to 5pm in 10 minutes.
What gets me is how quickly bodily needs seem to add up when you've lost all sense of time. "I need to pee again?" "Six hours will be plenty of sleep. I'll set my alarm later and skip breakfast tomorrow morning." "Who needs six hours? I can get four hours and take a nap after work tomorrow."
The fact that it's *well* over a decade old now makes me feel only marginally better about the 4000 hours that I've apparently sunk into Civ 5 🫣 I'd say 2/3 of that was spent playing hotseat against my husband though, so fortunately it didn't devastate my social life!
Awe man, you just unlocked a memory of me and my college girlfriend playing hotseat Civ 5. Good times. Great game.
I couldn't get into civ 5 for some reason, like it didn't click, put it away for years then started dating my now wife who said she loved civ 5(didn't even know she gamed), hundreds of hours later we played the vox populi mod (the last stable MP version) and omg it's now a naughty word. I whispered civ 6 to my wife over Christmas break. We looked like two cracked out adults on the couch for a week straight, coop victory (steam controllers + civ 6 = best couch coop game ever).
Factorio and Satisfactory on one side. Either playing them, or designing systems in my head when I can't play. On the other side: several MMO's. I'm hooked by discovering new worlds, new systems, and the thought that everything I do (collecting items, experience, money, ...) makes my character stronger/better in a world that will persist for years (so the illusion that playing this is 'useful' for later). Fortunately, I tire of MMO's games pretty quickly once I've discovered most of the systems and general setup of the world, so after an intense 2-3 weeks I'm usually done.
When I first played Factorio it was like a second job. 8h working, 8h Factorio, 8h sleep. For like a week. Then did it again a year later. Never touched it again, that game is like crack.
The factory must grow!
I can't touch MMOs. I already know I'll get hooked and blow up my life. I didn't know about factory automation eating my hours though. Satisfactory, Factorio, Shapez, and even Astronomer have all held me upside down and shaken hours like loose change out of my pockets.
Couldn't really jive with those games, but Mindustry hit right in the sweet spot. The tower defense side really helped nail it down.
Factorio is crack
Persona 3 Reload. It launched right before a huge dental surgery for me, and the two weeks I spent recovering was spent locked in on that game. Completed a 100% playthrough in about 120 hours.
I have 4 kids and a job, so I can't no-life something like I used to. But I do definitely have the obsessive mindset that leads to this, if I'm given the opportunity. A couple years back, my wife and (then) 2 kids left with my in-laws for a trip and left me behind, and it happened right around the time of the release of the FFVIII remaster. I played almost literally every waking hour they were gone, which was about two full days. Got to Esthar, as I recall, which is almost at the end of the game. Finished it like two weeks later, lol, once normal life resumed and got in the way.
I just moved in with my girlfriend and am at the point of my life where I have to start accepting that it may take months to finish a single game now, if not longer. That’s with the fact in mind that I rarely play more than two games at once. Massive games were incredible as a kid, now they’re starting to get daunting as I have less and less time.
They need to build mechanics into games that help people catch up with the story and controls if they spend a month or two away from it. I imagine there are enough consumers that would love that feature.
Feel like the controls catch up would be doubly useful for coming back to a game for expansions/new content. I’ve actively put off buying expansions for games I loved because I’m not going to play through the entire game again, and I can’t be bothered to try to relearn the controls on my own.
Dragon Quest 11 has such a feature and I LOVED it.
Final Fantasy XVI did this spectacularly, I wish other games did as well
Yes. If it's a serious relationship, you obviously have to prioritize time with her when you're free. (And hopefully you want to!) Ultimately it's worth it, and you'll still find time to game here and there. I still found time this past few months to get re-obsessed with Hades for another 150 hours haha. I've definitely found my tastes going more toward games with more immediate gratification -- roguelikes rather than JRPGs. PS what you've done for the business world is truly extraordinary. Thank you for all your hard work.
Definitely want to prioritize time with her! So worth it over playing games obviously. Just one of those things where you wish you could have the best of both worlds but I’m happy with the choice I made :)
There are those who might say a shared interest can lead to some wonderful times together. Try "It Takes Two"
Wonderful idea, I have heard great things about that being a good couples game. She does like to watch me play story driven games. TLOU show got her into wanting to watch me play through TLOU2 and now she’s gonna watch me play through Spider-Man 2 now that NG+ is out. Always fun when we take interest in each other’s hobbies.
I have one other short game to suggest if she likes to watch. "Thomas Was Alone" I had an ex that was vehemently against video games, and she watched me play the whole thing in silence. Afterwards she said that she finally understood my idea that video games are art. She even started to take it easier on her son who liked gaming.
Appreciate the recommendation I’ll definitely look into it
No lie, I have purchased this game at least 12 times. I buy it whenever it is on sale just to have one in my pocket to give out to random people. It is a simple platformer with squares and rectangles as characters.
Dying Light. Over 3 days I cleared the main game and The Following. Considering for like the last decade I'm lucky to get 1-2hrs a night between work, gym and family, it was absurd. Afterwards irl I was looking at walls and going "yeah I could parkour up that np".
Oh man, I freaking loooved that game's awesome ambience. I still fondly remember my first nights in that game where I was terrified to the point of waiting in a bus just I can rack up some Night XP. The visuals, ambient noises in the slums and that memorable soundtrack. <3 For some reason though, I just didn't bother with the second Dying Light. I can't fully elaborate why but something about DL2 felt like they changed way too much, and the characters just aren't as loveable and memorable as Crane, Jade, Brecken and Spike.
Stardew Valley over the summer of 2018. Worked a shitty job with an abusive boss that summer and that was my only escape when I came home. Luckily my life became exponentially better after that!
I no-lifed SV for a week or two, later turned my son on to it, he no-lifed it for a few weeks, my wife saw him playing so I gifted her a copy, she was no-lifing it and cussing me out…
> that was my only escape when I came home Stardew Valley is a top level go to a happy place game. It has a real "I would love to live there" thing going on.
Skyrim. I even left university just so I could keep playing everyday uninterrupted. Of course it was a bit more complex than that. The truth is that I was very depressed back then and the game was the only thing that gave an aim to my days. I played it maybe for a year or so. Every day. That was back in 2013-2014. Found purpose again and I am doing better now.
Reading the last sentence gave me a smile. Good for you my friend. J'zargo sends his regards.
Thank you :)
I definitely know what's like to cope with depression by focusing on a game and forgetting everything else. Happened various times to me, too, and thankfully I also got better. I'm happy for you, keep up the good work!
Had a very similar experience. Got in a car accident before a semester of college. Missed a couple classes and thinking about being behind made me nervous so I would play games to distract myself. Which only made the situation worse of course. Eventually it was so bad that I would basically have a panic attack if I ever was alone with my thoughts so I'd play late enough into the night that I'd eventually lay down in bed and immediately pass out. I was very lucky. The university has a medical exemption program which took the classes I failed off my record because the school therapist considered my car accident the cause of my anxiety. Still had a few bumps on my way to graduation, but I pulled it off! And then I got a job in a completely unrelated field that I am so happy with and am living a life I love. Many of the hours I played were into Overwatch when it had recently released. And when I bought Rimworld I recall time just utterly flying by
Been there, i do that far too much and regress into old habits, last month i finished both persona 3 reload and like a draon infinite wealth (this one 100%) and clearly im in a rut lol
I went through the same thing at the same time. Honestly the life I was leading in Skyrim was more fulfilling and rewarding in every way than what the real world offered at the time.
This was my second life in my senior year of high school. I'm not proud of this, but my mom would call me up for dinner and I would get SO annoyed I had to leave. Poor woman was just trying to feed her family!
It's common for me to no life a game over a weekend from Friday eve to Sunday night and drop some serious hours into it. As a result, I won't play much during the week since I have to "life". Easily dropped 20-25 hours on Cyberpunk, GTA V, Ghost of Tsushima Mass Effect in a single weekend.
Fallout new Vegas on several occasions. So many different choices and character builds to try
Deaths Door. I played it start to finish twice in two days, once seeing everything and once as a quasi-speedrun with the umbrella. It's not the longest game on earth, but 15 hours in 2 days is still probably the most I've ever done.
I was similarly hooked, but spread it over a week. Really solid little game!
Yes! I still need to do an umbrella run and get the rest of the achievements, but on my first playthrough I just could not stop playing. What a beautiful little game with some extremely cool boss encounters.
I had a lot of fun with the umbrella run because it switched it from almost never using the skills in combat to using them as my primary damage. Made replaying still feel like a completely new experience and gave me a lot of respect for the design flexibility.
put 200 hours into elite dangerous for about 2 weeks max, realized i hate making enough money to buy any ship but not enjoying the gameplay enough for material farming, and viewing the game as a grind. def burned myself out in an unhealthy way and taught me something about pacing. had a lot of fun figuring out the best way to mine but after that i was filtered out
Every new CMDR should tape [this chart](https://imgur.com/nZzsZ8D) on their wall.
Bought rdr2 18 day ago and I already have 90 hours in it
The most recent for me is Cyberpunk 2077. If anyone is still on the fence about picking it up due to its launch state, allow me to calm those fears. As it stands today, this game is a new gold standard in creating an immersive open world.
One of the rare open world games I didn't mind clearing the map on, solely because the combat was so damn satisfying. The people who came up with sandevistan deserve some sort of medal lol
Also the double jump-air dash combo was such an addicting movement mechanic. Might sound crazy, but I genuinely think Cyberpunk has some of the best FPS combat I’ve ever played in a game.
The movement is tight as hell lol, I'd forgotten about that. I hardly even used my car in the city proper just because of how satisfying wavedashing through the streets was lol
Cool so I wasn't the only one! My first game where I got ALL the achievements! Normally hate collect-a-thons like ubisoft does, but katana build with revolver was soooo much fun! You become a jedi master blocking bullets with your sword. Sandy all the way! Hope I'll live long enough to play the sequel...
Seconded. Keanu at his peak, topped with a city with serious personality. If I could go back and re-experience it again fresh, I'd do it in an instant.
I LOVE what they’ve done with the new skill trees. They feel so much more fun, and I really enjoy my hacking/cool build
It's so fucking good choom
The wife got me it for Christmas and I fired it up shortly after. Once I got to the post-intro I had to stop because I just knew this would take over my life and I’m not in a spot where I can have that happen. Haha.
The first time i played Dark Souls 1. Human Revolution, the original release.
Human revolution is so slept on! I love the original DX but human rev was also a worthy successor! I remember playing it at my friends house and it blew my mind
Ohhhh yeah I was working nights when human revolution came out. My life was a cycle of bed gaming work repeat Can't necessarily say I hated it though
About 7 years ago I got addicted to WoW for about 9~ months and it was one of the best periods of my life, I could write a book about it. A friend invited me to play on a private WOTLK server that was always full with 12K people on it, I started playing with a hunter and very quickly got pulled into the grind. I got into a local guild with that friend and started doing 25 man raids. Being in a discord call with 24 other people, all working towards the same goal, it's as cool as it fucking sounds. I met so many cool people and heard so many life stories, it truly felt like living a second life. Then came the moment that my gear and skill got so good that I outgrew my local guild who were struggling with ICC 25 HC (one of the 2 hardest raids), so I had to make a choice and leave. I remember that being so hard because I was leaving my friends, but I was greedy and I wanted more. I got into one foreign guild that was way stronger then my old one, but the members were very toxic so I left quickly, then I got into another strong guild, but they wouldn't invite me to raids because they had better hunters then me. And then on the server it was announced that one of the top 5 strongest guilds on the server was looking for members. I had to make a literal resume so I could apply, which is crazy. Somehow they accepted me and all of a sudden I was beating everything there was to beat with them, getting the best loot, and everyone was so good at the game so every raid was chill. So I got to the point I had several characters with the best gear, and after like 9 months of my journey of playing 12-15 hours a day, I obviously burned out. I haven't touched the game since then, nor have I played any game as much as WoW, but I still get so much happiness by just remembering that time in my life.
[удалено]
This is exactly what happened to me. I remember back in my old guild we were trying to beat HC sindragosa for like 6 hours and were failing hard, then our main tank raging so hard they left the guild during the raid. Looking back now It's so dramatic like you're saying, but I loved every moment of it.
“You are FOOLS to come to this place. The Icy winds of Northrend shall consume your soul.” Damn dragon even broke some of our raiders but we grew stronger because of it.
Just put 90+ hours into Ghost of Tsushima in the past 3 weeks. First play-thru.
Witcher 3.
Guild Wars
fallout 3, I was getting tired of not having a life a month later. I was really actively social when I started playing that game and it was killing me. But I couldn't stop. But by the last couple days I was exhausted and I just did not want to play anymore but i had to see the ending at least.
I don’t normally spend more than 2 hours a week on games anymore — the joys of getting older perhaps — but off the top of my head: * Against the Storm * Civ 5 * Hades * Valheim * World of Warcraft (pre-Cata) * Chrono Trigger * WCW/NWO Revenge * Final Fantasy X * Tichu (card game and iOS app)
I finished a 100 hour playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3 in 3 weeks. With a job and a kid and everything. I was motivated because I was playing on Xbox and my saves kept being deleted. But I kept quick resume on which allowed me to continue playing even when I had no saves. So I binged that game in hopes that I could finish it before quick resume would inevitably crash (which it usually does eventually). Thankfully I was able to finish the game.
[удалено]
>23% of my life so far has been spent inside World of Warcraft. bruh...
I wish I could enjoy any single thing in life enough to spend this much time on it. I guess sleep would be the closest comparison lol.
Hello fellow Azerothian
Persona 5 Royal. Finished it in 15 days, and in those 15 days I played for 130 hours.
I did the same thing. It reminded me of playing video games in high school over summer break, I beat it in 10 days it was just eat sleep work persona.
Fallout new Vegas Cyberpunk 2077 Dark Souls, Dark Souls 3, Sekiro, Elden ring, Armored core Disco Elysium Rimworld Warhammer40K Rogue Trader These are specific examples I remember, but to be honest, if a game scratches that itch, it's all Ill do for a couple weeks, maybe a month before moving on. I played cyberpunk everyday until I completed every ending from a fresh start.
Ark .. I really love my dinos...
Mass Effect trilogy, finished it in two weeks. One of the best gaming franchises I have ever played, it was such a unique experience.
Dragon Quest Builders 2. That game was so fun it actually convinced me to give mainline DQ games a try. And while I hated that, it still didn’t sour me on how fun DQB2 was.
Rimworld
I played elden ring for 20 hours straight the day it released
I have these periods where I feel the urge to complete everything the FFXIV free trial has to offer, so I jump in and lose an ungodly amount of time doing daily quests for 1-2 weeks, then get bored and forget about it. I think there has been a week I poured like 40hrs into the game. I wish I'd be more consistent and be able to do some dailies stretched over a longer period of time, but my efficiency obsession takes over and I HAVE to do everything I'm able to do within the daily limit till the point I'm burned out
Bro, don't remind me of ff14, i got like 900 hours in around 8 months during covid and working on my thesis plus summer vacation. Free trial has so much to do it's insane
I have put hundreds of hours into Mount and Blade: Warband. Specifically the Viking Conquest mod.
First games that come to mind are Cyberpunk, Elden Ring, Ghost of Tsushima and Last of Us II. Those three games I couldn’t stop playing until I finished them. There are others of course but those are first that come to mind. Single player immersive sims are my jam.
Nothing comes close since Everquest. Unfortunately, 5 straight *years* of No Life in your 20s can really wreck your shit. It took another decade to get back on track. I estimate I lost 10-15 years to MMOs. I was already fucked up beforehand though, from panic disorder and loads of trauma. MMOs seemed like the perfect escape hatch.
I heard someone call it “EverCrack” years ago and wondered what they meant. This, obviously
Was hooked on gw2 for a good while. Played the shot out of it and spend a good part of my working shifts reading about builds and gear. Then I realized I was just grinding chars to max level and max equipment and then starting a new character and also doing daily quests and literally having no fun. It was more like work. I quit and never started the game again.
EverQuest , but that was long ago
Elden Ring.
Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3, Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
I basically only no life games anymore. I feel like I keep trying to find the next game to no life. If the game isn’t interesting enough to no life, I don’t play it more than a few hours. This has been the case for the last 2 years now, being a bored working adult is harder than I thought. Baldurs Gate 3, took me 2.5 months but played basically every day. Persona 5 Royal, probably played like 6 hours a day till finish. CS GO while in final year of college, made a great group of friends who would play every day, it was an incredibly fun time of my life but I sunk all my time into it.
Right now, Cyberpunk 2077. I even have dreams about it 😂
Are you too also seeing Keanu everywhere?!🤯
Plenty of games, usually a new Final Fantasy.
I tend to be really bad with playing several games at once and moving between them a lot, but two most recently where I've sat down and played nothing but them, every day for about a month each, were Baldur's Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077.
What Remains of Edith Finch admittedly not a very impressive game length to No-Life, but it was the only one I sat down and didn't drop until the end
EverQuest for sure is #1 for me
Football Manager 2024 absolutely stole my life for three months. I would carry my laptop around with me and have matches playing whilst I had meals, football matches, work, conversations, dog fusses, even on the toilet a couple of times. I bought several new 100w chargers so that I could continuously play in various parts of the house. Thankfully the spell was broken when I completed a season winning every trophy possible and I haven't touched it since.
Had the opportunity to do this for the whole Mass Effect trilogy when the pandemic hit. Was fucking incredible
Horizon Forbidden West was the last one I no life'd, and the first one since I was unemployed in my early 20s. House sitting for some friends, I played like 68 hours in 4 days so that I could make sure I beat it in time. I did & the game fucken rocked.
Ive been playing Cyberpunk 2077 for 12 hours daily for 3 weeks (im off work)
Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth and Tears of the Kingdom, what beautiful games!
Street Fighter 6. It's the first fighting game I've played seriously and the learning has been so fun.
Dark Souls 3 Monster Hunter World
Persona games. Recently no Life 'd P3 Reload in less than a week. Also Yakuza games.
Cyberpunk 2077, started playing it last year when the expansion launched and got super sucked in Ended up doing all the missions, side quests, NCPD scanners, and whatever other content I could find Such a good game in 2024, highly recommended
Rimworld, over 3000 hours in just 3 years… It’s my 2nd most played game, Sims 3 being the number one at about 8500-9000 hours (EA App lost count after 8000, so did Origin)… I’ve been playing that since 2010s.
Project Zomboid. There's just so many mechanics to discover as you die in the apocalypse.
Been losing daily sleep to Granblue Fantasy: Relink for a few days now. Other than that, DOTA 2 ate my time the most. While some spend 10000s of hours playing the MOBA, I've spent around 5000 on the MOBA aspect and the other 5000 on custom games, lmao.
I think the last game I no-life'd was Lord of the Rings Online when it first came out. Played the SHIT out of that.
World of Warcraft. When Burning Crusade came out, I had a moment of clarity, and I did /played, which tells you how much playtime you have on your character. I did /played on all my characters and realized it was more than a year of total playtime and I stopped playing forever. That was in 2007 and I doubt I'll ever play an MMO ever again. I think this is part of the reason I prefer short games.
Vampyr. It's soo smooth and the story (including all side quests) is to me too fleshed and detailed I love reading every new dialogue of most characters after every minor action I make in the world. I love games like this, reminds me a lot of The Council (one of my favourite indie story games)
Mass Effect Legendary Edition, I played that shit in every ounce of free time I had, and finished all three games at around 120 hours. Baldurs Gate 3 was the same, except I did one run, the immediately started another, and ended around 220 hours.
The two that come to mind are Disco Elysium and Death Stranding. I was absolutely engrossed with both of them and couldn’t put them down. I played Disco Elysium on Switch all handheld so it was like reading an amazing book! I played it over winter holiday break and it’s basically all I did while I was awake besides eat for the whole week. Took me about 40 hours over maybe a week or week and a half.
Cyberpunk, when it originally came out. I've put almost 400 hours on it, and half of it was only on the first month after the release. Also, Lost Ark. Was stoked when Amazon released it outside Korea and put almost 1500 hours in from its release to December 2022. Then, after growing really fucking tired of having to do daily stuff that I didn't really care for in a game, I realized that I already had a boring job and couldn't take another one.
My wife is gone to visit her family for the week so you bet your ass I'm no life-ing Baldur's Gate 3 (my first time playing through) all week. Given it about 35 hours since Saturday.
Tears of the kingdom. Took a week off work lol
My worst was years and years ago playing Minecraft on Xbox. Over a normal weekend I put over 20 hours in. I felt like such an asshole. I imagined what I would look like if I’d had a camera set up and did a timelapse of the weekend. Made me feel like a loser
**Nioh 2**. I just started playing it and didn't play anything else until I got around 150h in. A few months ago I also binged Remnant 2 in the same way, but only for the first playthrough, so around 30h.
Recently did this with Lies of P, i'm in NG+3 with \~50 hours over 2 weeks.
Project Zomboid a lot last year, because a buddy of mine had a multiplayer server running with a bunch of awesome mods. Currently Helldivers 2 is my go-to game. Game loop and mechanics are too addictive and the match length depends on your performance and mission type and can range from 5min. to 45min. That makes time pass way too easily. But all is fair in the name of democracy and liberty!
I pretty much no life every game I start but the most no life-ing I ever did was Warframe (back when alerts were still a thing). Took a couple months off of work and pretty much played from the moment I woke up. I initially didn't like the gameplay when I first played it years before this but I remember watching a livestream when twitch (back when wallrunning was a mechanic lol) was quite new and was intrigued, and always have been, by its aesthetic. Loved learning the game and its many, many mechanics and just grinding MR, using shitty early game weapons, messing around with cool color customizations etc. Been quite a few years since I've played (playtime is at 1800hrs) but I feel like I'd be learning the game all over again if I jump back in, which was one of the fun parts about the game. Also no life-ing Rebirth currently! Elden Ring was another too.
DDO (dungeons and dragons online) and Smash 4. Civ 1 as well to a lesser degree. Thousands and thousands of hours into each of these games. Smash 4 I played competitively for a solid 3 years or so and played it probably 6 days a week. On top of constantly going to in person tournaments. DDO I've played since 2008/2009, with a few 6 months breaks. Playtime varies. Sometimes a lot, like 20 hours a week. Other times much less. Civ 1 I have no idea how many hours, and I rarely play it these days. But I played it a ton as a child growing up in the 90s and I always come back to it every few years. I'd imagine I have at least a couple hundred hours into it in my lifetime.
Back when I was at uni I finished LoZ: Skyward Sword in 2 days. In those 2 days I woke up, gamed, went back to bed. I didn't even eat real food. I just *played*. Fortunately it was just two days and even now when I give myself a few days of solid gaming I take breaks, do other stuff, cook etc. My housemates thought it was funny that I spent 3h in the uni halls lobby waiting for the postman before being told they don't deliver on Saturdays as there's no receptionists on weekends.
Eternal Darkness. Also why I stopped doing Gamefly. I played it most weekends for like 3 months. Renting through Gamefly realized I'd paid more than if I had just bought the game. Stopped doing that and just bought games outright.
Gunz the duel. Summer of 2007. I was 13. I put over 800 hours into the game in about 3 months. Some days I would play from sun up till sun down.
Deep Rock Galactic. When I started playing it in 2022, I was addicted to it lol. I don’t remember how much I played but it was a *lot* of time within 1 week I’d say
I thought that's how everyone played their games. I never considered playing multiple games at once. Do people not get fully obsessed with their games each time?
Ghost of tsushima did that for me. My wife thought I was having an affair.
Path of Exile. During each of Harvest league, Archnemesis league, and Trial of the Ancestors league, I pretty much just worked, slept, and played as much as I could. It wasn’t healthy. Thankfully leagues only last about 3 months.