I, like many gamers, grew up playing Pokémon Red and Nintendo 64 and was obsessed with Nintendo products. I graduated to a PS2 and PS3 and became super into Metal Gear Solid and Call of Duty and Fallout. Also spent a ton of time with the Guitar Hero series. I loved the escape gaming brought me and it genuinely helped me relax.
Fast forward a few years and I hadn’t really played a video game between the years of like 2011-2017. College, moving cross country and busyness of life kept me from gaming. Finally in 2017, I bought a Switch and Breath of the Wild and felt the same magical feeling I remember when I first started playing Ocarina of Time, or the first time I booted up Metroid Prime, or Metal Gear Solid 4. I started to get into online gaming and made a lot of friends. I played my Switch frequently for a few years.
During the beginning of COVID lockdowns, I turned more to reading than gaming and my Switch gathered lots of dust. I ultimately ended up buying an Xbox Series S when it was announced because I’d never owned an Xbox system and Game Pass really intrigued me. I went through a phase of being very into Destiny 2, Halo, Gears of War, Forza Horizon…a bunch of games I had never played before.
Then, a divorce, a new job change, another cross country move brought new levels of stress to my life. I lacked an attention span strong enough to focus on a video game. FPS’s seemed boring, online games couldn’t keep my attention long enough to get through a match, and eventually I’d just leave a game on the pause menu while I messed around mindlessly on my phone. Gaming wasn’t even a way for me to decompress anymore, it seemed more like a chore I was procrastinating—which sucks.
I’ve fallen deeper into this lately, as more life changes have come along. I work a stressful job with long hours. I’m now a stepparent to two young boys. The little free time I have I spend walking the dog, reading, and trying to just let my mind settle and decompress. Let alone, if I try to turn the Xbox on or have the Switch on my lap, it turns into a whole event where the kids want to sit and watch and participate and ask tons of questions (which is fine, but sometimes I just want to do something by myself for me!)
I miss the time of my youth where gaming was a relief and a release for me. I miss how I felt when I first got a Switch and felt so excited and so nostalgic and reinvigorated and looked forward to playing a game! Now…I feel like I can’t even consider myself a gamer.
So. That’s a long winded way to ask if anyone else has gone through similar ruts, or fallen away from gaming, and if so, what games helped you get that spark back? What games brought you back to that nostalgic feeling you had when you first got into gaming? What games help you decompress after a long day? What games have you recently become obsessed with in such a way that you look forward to playing them and are always thinking about them?
I want to get back into gaming. I want to feel the magic again.
Sounds like you have a lot on your plate and smaller gaming sessions might be what you are looking for.
I usually get an hour or so a day to play and I've been having a blast with Deep Rock Galactic. The game is a buy once and play with the only monetization being cosmetic DLC but I believe it is FREE on Game pass (I think); $30 on Steam but on sale for less than $10 for the next week.
It is an horde based first person shooter with 4 classes that feel unique, balanced, and bring their own strengths and tools to help out each mission. Locations are all procedurally generated, which means that you can select the same mission in the same area and it will be a new layout everytime, and it's done well so you won't get screwed over my stuff morphing into the terrain or areas blocked off cause the cave generated all screwy.
Mission difficulty can be customized to suit your wants, ranging from super chill and very few enemies, to "OH GOD THERE ARE SO MANY ENEMIES AND WHY ARE THEY SO FAST?!". I have been known to play the hardest difficulty one mission, then crank it down to the easiest to finish out a quick mission before bed just to relax a bit.
You can play solo or with a group of 3 other people but playing with others is the way to go, as you get to see how all of the classes interact and help each other, plus the community has actually been wonderful; out of the hundreds of lobbies I have been in, I have had maybe 3 annoying people total. I also never use my headset for talking (sleeping kids and whatnot) but in game text chat is lively and most of your communication can be done through the "ping" system where you point your reticle at something (enemy, item, player, etc) and call it out for everyone to see. Also there is a button specifically to shout "Rock and Stone!" Which will be around 90% of what you need and will use when communicating with teammates, lol.
Unlike some other games that pressure you to keep playing to "progress your character/battle pass" I feel no urgency with this game. While there is a battle pass style system, it is all cosmetic, FREE, and usually last a few months at a time (like 6-8). If you happen to miss something from a current or previous season, they are still in game and can be found naturally through gameplay by finding "lost crates/gear" during your mission.
All in all I recommend this game to anyone who is comfortable with a FPS. Developers are friendly, community is great, game is fun and forgiving. I feel that, in a worst case scenario, it's fun for a bit and you pick up something else. Hope you find what you are looking for, Rock and Stone!
I actually just downloaded this on Game Pass - excited to try it out. Your description and recommendation is great!
I also found smaller gaming sessions to be a big help in my enjoyment. I got a Steamdeck when it released and switched to playing smaller indie games. It allowed me to pick up and play with a lot less setup time or time to overthink about what I actually want to play. I also found that shorter games helped a ton in making me feel like I’m accomplishing more in less time. My biggest burden was starting larger games that required sitting at my PC so by the time I was actually in them I already decided I wasn’t too interested. If I managed to play the game by the time I was halfway through the game something else caught my attention and it was tough to return to the original game.
I've been having that issue too. Just this year alone I tried to pick up some games I never started or never finished, mainly Stardew Valley and Kingdoms of Amalur: Awakening. Both are about halfway through and no urge to finish them at the moment...maybe in the future, but my focus is elsewhere at this moment.
My issue is with games like that I want to sit down and invest longer periods of time or immerse myself, which requires more time and less responsibilies than I have now being an adult with a job and kids. The hard truth isnt that gaming hasn't really gotten more boring for me, I just have more going on in my life and what I'm feeling is mostly just nostalgia.
It gets better, for sure. I had to take a step back and work on what was stressing me out (surprise: it was mostly my job) and everything, including my gaming sessions, seemed a bit more rewarding. Hoping the best and the best of luck for ya