selenicseas

Last week, the trailer for Control Resonant dropped, and it's consumed most of my spare thoughts since. I can't stop thinking about it. The first Control remains my favorite video game of all time, and learning that there's a sequel coming out next year (and not in 2027 like I though it would) has me really wanting to replay the game.

I'm thinking about doing something akin to a text let's play, where I focus on anything that could possibly be relevant to Control Resonant. It would be split up into plenty of parts, updated perhaps weekly.

The only problem with this idea (well, the only problem I can think of at this moment) is that I have no idea when I'd have the time to do this. I'm still trying to get plenty of things done before the end of the year. Maybe I can revisit this idea in January?

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As the weather's now cooling off, I've found myself wanting to get back into gaming. I don't have any particular games in mind; I just want to be playing something that isn't Minecraft.

The problem with this is that I have a little too much on my plate at the moment. I'm trying to finish another 10 books, watch everything I have saved on Hulu before that subscription expires in a week, and get through the 70+ short stories from various SFFH magazines I've let pile up over the last few months. All of that is taking up most of the time I could otherwise spare for gaming.

So, it's looking like I could potentially start a new video game in early 2026, provided I manage to get through all the other stuff first.

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gaming

While I haven't been in the mood for gaming all year, there is one game I keep booting up every week or so: Minecraft.

I can play in windowed mode, so it's easy for me to click over to a browser and look something up, or check my email. I can play in peaceful mode – and I usually do, because I hate suddenly getting shot by skeletons or a creeper blowing up my house. I can dig a giant quarry, or build a giant farm, and it takes very little of my processing ability. I turn my brain off and do things on autopilot.

Uh, yeah…I think I may be using Minecraft to dissociate. That would explain why I haven't been able to finish other video games. I have to actually use my brain to play them, rather than turn it off.

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gaming,
minecraft

At the beginning of the year, I made a goal to complete six video games that I hadn't played before. At this point in August, I've completed one: Horizon Forbidden West. I've started three others – Mass Effect: Andromeda, Quantum Break, and Divinity: Original Sin II – but ended up dropping all three.

Of those four, only Horizon Forbidden West was really able to hold my attention, and even that became difficult toward the end of the game, where I started skipping things just because I wanted to be done. With Mass Effect: Andromeda, I stopped playing after an hour due to lack of interest. I almost got all the way through Quantum Break before dropping it. And with Divinity: Original Sin II, I slowly stopped playing and haven't booted the game up in a few weeks.

I'm not sure why these games couldn't interest me long enough to finish them. They're in genres I tend to like, from developers whose games I've liked. I liked the Mass Effect trilogy, I liked Remedy's other games, and I liked Baldur's Gate 3 a lot.

Am I burnt out on gaming? Do I need to take a break from video games for a while? Am I not playing the right games at the moment?

Maybe what I need to do is go through my game libraries and try various games until something hooks me. Or maybe I need to replay something I've wanted to replay for a while. That wouldn't help me accomplish any of my goals, but it would potentially help me feel like gaming isn't the burden it feels like at the moment.

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gaming

At 78.9 hours, I felt like I spent too much time on Horizon Forbidden West. That's not nearly the longest amount of time I've spent on a game – Breath of the Wild took 135 hours, and I currently have 292 hours in Baldur's Gate 3 (although the only playthrough I've completed took me 123 hours). I never thought Baldur's Gate 3 took too long to finish a playthrough. Breath of the Wild was pushing it, but Horizon Forbidden West was, for some reason, too long, despite taking the least amount of time of these three mentioned games.

I've been pondering for about a week just why I thought the game took too long, and what I've come up with are my typical annoyances with open-world games (too much padding for me to go for 100% completion). I've also been thinking about the length of video games in general, and what I think is an ideal length for a video game.

And what I've come up with is that I don't think there can be an ideal video game length. Some games would outstay their welcome if they were longer than 6-8 hours, while others have enough non-filler content to keep me engaged for 100 hours.

That doesn't mean I don't have my own preferences – I do! For most games, I've found I can spend around 20-30 hours before wanting to move on to something else. Occasionally this goes up to 40 hours, if it's a game with a longer main story.

But that's only for games that aren't CRPGs. I have zero problem playing a CRPG for a hundred hours for more, mostly because they have the content to justify that length. Most other games just don't.

Tags:

gaming

We're almost four entire months into the year and I still haven't finished a single video game.

For the past couple of years, I've had a goal to complete 6 new (to me) video games per year. I did and still do have a pretty big backlog to get through, so finding new games to play has never been a problem. Actually finding the time to play those games, on the other hand, is a problem more often than it isn't.

Gaming is typically the last thing on my priority list, as it typically requires more time than the rest of my other hobbies. Recently, I've been lucky to spend 1-2 hours a week on playing video games. That's not a great way to get games finished, especially not long games like Horizon Forbidden West.

I really thought I'd be done by now! I finished 8 games in 2023 and 6 in 2024, and wanted to keep a similar pace up for 2025. I'm nowhere near close to finishing Horizon Forbidden West; at this pace, I expect I'll be done by June at the earliest.

I sure hope I get to finish more than one game this year. Who knows – maybe I’ll be able to finish two. Or even three.

Tags:

gaming

Entries tagged with gaming

I can't stop thinking about Control

Maybe I want to get back into gaming

Why am I playing Minecraft so much?

Gaming burnout

Thoughts on video game length

On being a slow gamer

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January 2026

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