What do you do when your passion for gaming is wearing thin? Why, play a bunch of old favorites for hours straight, of course.
We all know what it’s like – a few weeks go by without picking up a game for a round of Deathmatch or to attend a raid, and we suddenly stop and gasp: “Have I gotten bored of gaming?” Sometimes, for whatever reason, we lose that spark – and as Connor Scully-Allison argues in Issue 224 of The Escapist, the best solution is to play until your eyes start to blur and you remember why you do it all in the first place:
Here, finally, in the face of an insurmountable challenge, is when I start to feel the allure of the binge. In a sustained fit of masochism, I return to confront my indomitable foe again and again, only to suffer brutal defeat each time. Under normal circumstances, I would give up, annoyed and tired. But today that isn’t an option. I know that I absolutely must defeat this Jedi or remain in a limbo of death and rebirth until the day is over. So I decide to stop playing fair and kill him from a distance using only my force lightning. It works! And despite the “cheapness” of my strategy, I feel like I have succeeded against impossible odds. This feeling of dubious accomplishment is what gaming is all about.
My session with The Force Unleashed continues uninterrupted thereafter. But at some point near the seven-hour mark, I begin to lose interest. Unfortunately, it now feels more like a vaguely interactive movie than a videogame. I know my long sojourn from hardcore gaming is partly to blame for this drop-off in excitement, but I can’t help but wonder if the developers’ preference for storytelling over gameplay contributed to my dwindling attention span.
Because there’s no better cure for what ails you then to game until your legs feel stiff and your fingers are callused from hours of wearing them to the bone. Give me 100 ccs of intravenous gaming, stat! To read more, check out “The Road to Recovery” in Issue 224 of The Escapist.
