Games that wear you out

[ManuelMarino]

Have you played a game, or a demo of a game, where it starts out pretty well, but after a few hours you're totally sick of playing? Discuss here or in my forum at http://bit.ly/Lv1YEJ

[Artinum]

I remember one when I was at University called "Space Empires 3" (I think). It was a simple turn based resource/space colonisation game where you researched technology, built spaceships, met up with aliens. You know, sorta like Civilisation. That first night I was hooked. I built up a huge empire, which was still dwarfed by a friendly alien one, and all the competition were dead or harmless. Then I realised it was 4am, dragged myself to bed and kept waking up because I was trapped in a dream about the game. I was very tired the next day and left the game alone for a bit.

I returned to Space Empires 3 a couple of days later, started a new game... and lost all interest in it within minutes. Never played it again. Weird experience all round, really.

[dantheman363]

I remember one when I was at University called "Space Empires 3" (I think). It was a simple turn based resource/space colonisation game where you researched technology, built spaceships, met up with aliens. You know, sorta like Civilisation. That first night I was hooked. I built up a huge empire, which was still dwarfed by a friendly alien one, and all the competition were dead or harmless. Then I realised it was 4am, dragged myself to bed and kept waking up because I was trapped in a dream about the game. I was very tired the next day and left the game alone for a bit.

I returned to Space Empires 3 a couple of days later, started a new game... and lost all interest in it within minutes. Never played it again. Weird experience all round, really.

Is this the game that you are talking about?

http://www.malfador.com/se3.html


Actually, it does look interesting...

[Artinum]

Yes, that was it.

[dannthr]

I have had this problem with the replayability of games where a lot of what I enjoyed about the experience was the novelty of the gameplay or the story. When I go back to play those games over again, I just get exhausted by the prospect.

I would think that making a 4X game really enjoyable from the beginning every time is quite a challenge--a lot of strategy games have lost their luster for me once I've played with all the units (like a kid who's played with all his toys after a birthday).

Actually, I've found that a lot of games where I completely customize my units leave me wanting in interesting in-game unit strategies--almost as if making the units customizable made the units too generic to be truly interesting strategy-wise.

Honestly, I'm sometimes amazed that I ever find myself going back to Super Mario World or something like that and just enjoying myself.

[Ratboy]

You reminded me of a thing I did in Master of Orion 2 way way back in the old days. Using a little hack that allowed you to turn a hotseat multiplayer game into a single player game, I modded all the races including my own to have the Uncreative trait. If a tech you wanted didn't come up (and it usually didn't), you had to trade for it, spy for it, or capture it from someone else. It made for a very fun, very challenging game.