Problems Finishing – Why do I drop games right before the finish line?
It happens to Men, Women and thems, no matter their age. A worldwide scourge, no race is unaffected. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, it can happen to anybody – Sometimes you just can’t finish a Video Game.
I’m not referring to dropping a game because you don’t vibe with it, that’s understandable – not every game is for every person and sometimes it can be a swing and a miss. No, I refer to games you’re enjoying, having a great time with but don’t have it in you to see all the way to the ending credits, for one reason or another.
For me there’s plenty of games that come to mind, primarily 3D platformers funnily enough. As a kid, the final boss fights against The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night and its sequel Dawn of the Dragon both proved too much for a young Craig. The Eternal Night is notoriously a poorly designed unfair game and the three stage boss fight had no checkpoints and a lengthy (like couple minutes) unskippable cutscene before every attempt. No thank you. In this same vein, Rayman Revolution and Banjo Kazooie had lengthy final boss fights that I just never saw through to the end. A final fight should be a challenge, not a slog.
Not a slog? That’s something my most recent drop could learn from. I’ve recently been playing Pac-Man World 2 Repac (Review soon) and my god the bosses do not need six hit points each and the final boss did not need three phases with a total of 15 hits. I did go back to it as I wanted to go for the Platinum (which I later decided against but that’s neither here nor there) with the caveat that I used the invincibility accessibility option because otherwise I wasn’t bothered enough to grind it out.
It’s not just 3D platformers and not just final bosses that are victims of this phenomena. A few years back, I quit Rise of the Tomb Raider at the 11th hour (I’m pretty sure) just feeling burnt out on the story and not wanting to play anymore. I don’t remember looking up the ending either so I really must not have cared about what happened despite playing up until that point. Around the same time (In a vague 3 year period which I’m not bothered enough to check) was when I played Astral Chain. At the time, I was looking after my poorly dog but I remember putting in around 4 hours straight in the switch’s handheld mode. For whatever reason, never went back despite enjoying it. Was it the circumstances that let me enjoy it? Who knows but at present I don’t think I’m bothered about retrying it any time soon.
I used to scoff when my friends would tell me they didn’t finish games in favour of just watching the endings on YouTube but this whole time I’ve been guilty of doing it myself. Of course the reasons stem from diminished interest to lack of perseverance to poor pacing and bosses that spike difficulty beyond what the game had set so far.
I think another major factor is options – a recent study from Circana has 63% of American Gamers buying two or less games a year. Of course this doesn’t offer the nuance of Multiplayer titles, older games as well as subscription services like GamePass but I’m willing to bet that if you only buy one game a year, you’re going to play it front to back and all the way around, really getting your money’s worth. In terms of game purchasing, I’m probably in a fraction of a percent given how many I tend to buy. I have average salary but I apparently don’t seem to care about getting my money’s worth, just that I’ve had “Enough” of the game. Time is Money of course and time wasted on a game I don’t care about is time I could be spending elsewhere. Perhaps if I had less options, I’d be more inclined to see each title through to the end rather than jumping to the next thing. The problem is, I’ve always got the money and inclination to partake in the endless onslaught of game releases so this is a mental challenge to overcome.
There’s an argument that the journey is more important than the destination but that’s more for rationalising a disappointing ending to a story rather than justifying an arbitrary end to something before it’s designated finish. Is it better to treat video games more like a nice meal that you stop eating when you’re full rather than clearing your plate, even if you’ve not enjoyed all of what it had to offer. There’s no real correct answer, you can enjoy games however you want at the end of the day
You can always return to a game at any point. Which I’ll inevitably do for popular games I didn’t manage to make it all the way through. Like Clair Obscur Expedition 33. Sophie.
