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[LastBattle]

I’ve been playing Spider-Man Remastered recently and have realised I approach open world games with the same attitude early on, however generally reach the same outcome after hours of gameplay.

For example in regards to Spider-Man I’m enjoying the combat (mosty), love the traversal and think the story is quite interesting. During the early game I approached the side content with enthusiasm picking off backpack quests, crimes, photos, etc on my way to each story mission. I think to myself. Im going to platinum this. I can do this! I’m about half through the main campaign now and am beginning to get very fatigued on all the extra busy work. Also as the story progresses more and more additional side content is added and none of it is really engaging. Not to mention all included DLC.

I’ve reached the conclusion that I’m going to start disliking the game if I continue down this road, however my lizard brain keeps telling me to push forward.

This brings me to my original comment on how open world games always play out for me. I reach a point and say fuck it, it’s not worth it and focus on the story.

So I ask you. What type of gamer are you?

The well intentioned gamer
You start a game with the intention of doing all the things, but fatigue after hours of gameplay?

The masochistic gamer
Grin and bear it, push through and tick off all the busy work. Even if your suffering while doing it.

The completionist gamer
Relish in finishing every last morsel and licking the plate clean.

 

[AV]

Yeah, I'm almost over this now. I platinum'd Ragnarok as it's more open-area and I just really love that world and what they've built, but I bailed out of Spider-Man 2 after the main story and I didn't even think about doing anything other than mainlining the plot of Horizon 2. Incidentally that game is absolutely not designed to be mainlined, and you'll be almost forced to do some side stuff to keep up with the stat bloat if you don't just drop it down to easy (at which point the whole thing is brainless).

BOTW and Elden Ring are the way forward for the subgenre. No big checklist of what you haven't done, just go off on an adventure. Sure, there's map icons, but not in the Ubisoft way.

 

[Guilty_AI]

The well intentioned gamer
You start a game with the intention of doing all the things, but fatigue after hours of gameplay?

The masochistic gamer
Grin and bear it, push through and tick off all the busy work. Even if your suffering while doing it.

The completionist gamer
Relish in finishing every last morsel and licking the plate clean.

None of these, i'm:

The bulldozer gamer
I immediately try to find ways to break the game and cheese the story using the mechanics.

 

[crackajack]

I rarely enjoy open world ever. Spiderman was probably the most recent example I ca nthink of where it worked sufficiently to not become a distracting choire.
AC:V was tiring until it got removed from Plus, definte fatigue material. Same with RDR2, that required a huge effort to suffer through it. Same with Yakuza games where I tried to give Zero and 6 a chance and both felt terrible outdated, just slow, with stretched content and with cringe writing, often entirely useless dialog and dumb weird (not funny weird) characters.
I much rather take Mafia (1! obviously) with a pseudo open world and nothing to do beside the main quest. Or unbloated like in Metroid Prime. Or kinda open but linear stuff like in Crysis or Bloodlines.
An AC game in the style of Hitman or PoP would be nice, but we get instead either quest markers all over the place or if you deactivate them, still way too many subpar tasks to find on your own, which just hides the underlying problem of qnatity over quality.

 

[lughnasadh123]

Usually I'm more inclined to finish most if not all of the content if either that's my only main game being played or that the content is just that amazing. Usually though nowadays it's mainline it baby because there's a growing list of things to go through. Still, it's great having extra optional content for those that want it.

 

[Laptop1991]

Depends how well the game is made, i like to be an immersed gamer, so i will try to do most thing's in an open world game, but if i get bored due to the content being copy and paste , and not made very well, i don't stay immersed for long and stop playing.

 

[a multicultural team of v]

I remember when I first played Assassin's Creed 2, those feather collectables I was just like "this is absolutely insane, who the hell would actually run around and collect every single one?"

How far we have come... and I've definitely done much heavier busy work than that in games since. It has all just become so normalized.

That said, sometimes busy work can be enjoyable in its own way if done right.

 

[Deerock71]

Huh, what a positive spin. I guess I'm a well-intentioned gamer, too. Now, I find myself appreciating a well put-together game that simply has no fat.

 

[Daneel Elijah]

In GTA 3, I didn't care at all about doing all the really useless find the packages. I prefered the missions and it continued to this day. But back then I could play for hours each day. Now I saw myself change my habits and play only 1 hour or 2 a day, and not every day. Spiderman is perfect in small doses, and the side quests and collectatons are also given to you slowly. So if you let a few days between each tentative to do the check list, and do a few big missions each time, it does not seems like a chore, but some fun. Same for games like Ghost of tsuchima. Find 2/3 fox a few times a week don't make you sick of the map. But doing 10 or more will make you hate seeing the same animation really fast. GOW Ragnarok was the same. Do all the stuff you can do and in the endgame only a few things are left to find. But this way I may spend months to play a game that others finish in days. I also have the default of being relatively bad at gaming, but give myself some self imposed rules like using really few healing items in games like Resident Evil. So lot of die and retry when others would just blast with grenades and shoot using all weapons. Or just not using the resurection stone in GOW no matter what(not buying it). So I would consider myself the picky eater, a subdivision of the completionist that try to eat it all in small doses, but often stop if something bad is found midway.