I got twelve hours in before I decided to cut my losses and realize that it likely wouldn’t get better.
It had alright reviews so at each step I kept going “oh it’s probably just me… I’m sure after this chapter the next one is where things get interesting.”
There are definitely games (and books and movies etc) that I didn’t like at first but which grew on me by the end. I often think of this as "finding the [media’s] voice. I perform public readings sometimes, so even in my private reading if I can’t read a book in “the voice” it feels like the author was going for then I can’t connect to it. Same in video games.
Like I recently started on RoboCop Rogue City. It’s good and I’m enjoying it. But it took me a month to get past the first stage. Partly I had some crashing issues but I also just didn’t get it. Its an FPS, you play RoboCop, the aiming feels off and the shooting seems clunky and wooden to me…
But, at some point it clicked and I started enjoying the game and moving through it at “normal” pace. It’s almost more like a gallery shooter, like Time Crisis. Yeah its an FPS but the way enemies arrange themselves in layers in a big warehouse, popping their juicy vulnerable heads in and out of cover: its clearly drawing on that “shooting gallery” experience, and this is to play into the film’s language as well.
However, there’s a limit on my patience for this. Sometime i just know a game mechanic or character is going to be too annoying for me and I bail. Or if i get about 6 hours in and I’m still not getting it, not enjoying myself. That’s usually when I’ll give it up.
A lot of people have trouble feeling like this, and is a big part of the sunk cost fallacy I think. “I know I’ll like it more later” then eventually becomes “well I’ve made it this far”.
You like what you like, you don’t like what you don’t like. You can’t really change that. It’s okay to put something down if you aren’t engaging with it.
Anecdote ahead:
I keep telling my wife if she doesn’t like one of my books, I won’t be offended if she stops reading.
But she feels like it’s just her “being dumb” and that she’ll like it more next chapter.
I took her to half price books the other day so we could get a bunch of books she likes, and the only reason she decided to buy as many as she did was because “we can sell them back to the store” even though I fully intend in giving away any books she won’t read.
The $2 I’ll get back for it isn’t worth the 45 minute trip there. And someone will probably get more than $2 worth of entertainment from it.
This has been me playing Avowed this week.
I got twelve hours in before I decided to cut my losses and realize that it likely wouldn’t get better.
It had alright reviews so at each step I kept going “oh it’s probably just me… I’m sure after this chapter the next one is where things get interesting.”
There are definitely games (and books and movies etc) that I didn’t like at first but which grew on me by the end. I often think of this as "finding the [media’s] voice. I perform public readings sometimes, so even in my private reading if I can’t read a book in “the voice” it feels like the author was going for then I can’t connect to it. Same in video games.
Like I recently started on RoboCop Rogue City. It’s good and I’m enjoying it. But it took me a month to get past the first stage. Partly I had some crashing issues but I also just didn’t get it. Its an FPS, you play RoboCop, the aiming feels off and the shooting seems clunky and wooden to me…
But, at some point it clicked and I started enjoying the game and moving through it at “normal” pace. It’s almost more like a gallery shooter, like Time Crisis. Yeah its an FPS but the way enemies arrange themselves in layers in a big warehouse, popping their juicy vulnerable heads in and out of cover: its clearly drawing on that “shooting gallery” experience, and this is to play into the film’s language as well.
However, there’s a limit on my patience for this. Sometime i just know a game mechanic or character is going to be too annoying for me and I bail. Or if i get about 6 hours in and I’m still not getting it, not enjoying myself. That’s usually when I’ll give it up.
A lot of people have trouble feeling like this, and is a big part of the sunk cost fallacy I think. “I know I’ll like it more later” then eventually becomes “well I’ve made it this far”.
You like what you like, you don’t like what you don’t like. You can’t really change that. It’s okay to put something down if you aren’t engaging with it.
Anecdote ahead:
I keep telling my wife if she doesn’t like one of my books, I won’t be offended if she stops reading.
But she feels like it’s just her “being dumb” and that she’ll like it more next chapter.
I took her to half price books the other day so we could get a bunch of books she likes, and the only reason she decided to buy as many as she did was because “we can sell them back to the store” even though I fully intend in giving away any books she won’t read.
The $2 I’ll get back for it isn’t worth the 45 minute trip there. And someone will probably get more than $2 worth of entertainment from it.
I created a nerd, send bookshelves…