[Felix]

[Gironika]

it's a bit surprising - to me, at least - that nobody has mentioned racing games so far.
I am an avid racin' gamer and be it arcade or hyper-realistic sim, I'm down for driving what it can offer. I also like the lot where you have to do warm up laps, qualy etc., and don't mind fighting in a lower class on the same track and being lapped 10+ times in a race, e.g. by prototypes while driving a GT2-car.


However, there are times where just keeping up with the last car can be a nightmare, and I find these races being the most mentally exhausting ones, being on your toes on every corner, every lap can be the hardest thing even if it's just 15 or 30 minutes or so. If one wants to try his hands at that - Forza Motorsport 4, No wheel/only pad driving, Maserati MC12 GT1-version, no setup or tuning, no driving aids, Mugello (long version). Sometimes I manage to hang on to third place or so, but more often than not I end up somewhere off track on a gravel trap adventure … and this can make me go from "yeah let's race!" to "too exhausted for more" in less than 20 minutes.
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[Felix]

I'm not an avid racing game person by any means but I do really enjoy their particular brand of tension. I can easily imagine that if I were playing Forza in first-person or something it would have a similar effect on me to Metro 2033, but as it stands the difference between Forza and Sanic Kart 2 might be similar the difference between Metro and Unreal Tournament.

[diplo]

JRPGs -- especially ones where you're standing still in battle, and especially ones where that's combined with random battles -- are very taxing for me now, which means that I'm less likely than ever to play through Must Plays like Chrono Trigger or FF6 (although I'm still waiting to see if anything official is done with Mother 3). I think that comes from a mixture of the segregated presentation (re: JRPGS with random battles, it's tiring to have the majority of your interaction be a introduced by a jarring shove into an alternate reality (and to have a lot of your time spent in anticipation of that)), the kind of repetition that happens, and the knowledge that a given game will probably be very long and there won't be much development in anything besides the story.

[Talbain]

One of the things I've always loved about Chrono Trigger is that just about every "random" battle in the game can be skipped by simply knowing where the zones are for initiating combat. There's a lot of other stuff I love about it, but that's definitely one of the bigger things about it that I remember. It became kind of a fascination for me, figuring out how to run through areas without ever hitting one. It's not super difficult, but it's difficult enough that it requires you to think about how to proceed through the game's space and made you a lot more observant about how smartly enemy placement was conceived.

FFVI is a game that, once you get the Moogle Charm, is pretty breezy. Plus suplexing trains.
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[Tuxedo]

Goblet Grotto is definitely the most mentally exhausting game I've played.
I want to play more of it but damn

[RadRad]

I guess elaborating more on games that I find "exhausting" are open world games, current JRPGS, certain puzzlers, and various action games.

GTAV. The amount you can do, see and explore is just overwhelming, and I just have to stick to the main missions. Otherwise, I just check out.

Ni No Kuni. Great world, but the battling, fetch quests and story set up just turn me away. And I want to like the game so bad!
I recently purchase Okami HD, which I never really played back in the day. And boy to I not miss the days of Banjo Kazooie speech bubbles. Okami's text-to-speak sound fx are atrocious. Still want to play through the game... Sort of...

Metal Gear Rising. The over-the-top ridiculous plot and cinematics.
Add Lollipop Chainsaw, Killer Is Dead and DmC to the lists.

Persona 4 was another one.
The constant "talking" and time-investing story with Persona, along with the school-sim stuff, well, definitely made me feel old. If I was still in highschool, like 10yrs ago, I would have had all the time and interest in the game. And I should have played it back then.
Now, I just don't have the patience.
Which I why I like Shin Megami Tensei IV. Short on words, and all grind.

Oh and TellTale's The Walking Dead.
I've only played through 3 episodes, but they felt SO LONG! I just can't get into it. But I appreciate what its doing, though at the same time I'm shocked that there this much of a fanbase around the games. Then again, after reading the comic book, watching the TV show, maybe it just chalks up to burn out from the franchise.

So pretty much games with too much story set-up, fetch quest, and open-"You can do anything"-worlds.
Which is why I haven't gotten into WatchDogs, Assassins Creed, Far Cry, Destiny, or the Mass Effect series.
It all just seems like "work".


Speaking of racing games, I've been craving some Ridge Racer lately...
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http://www.iamthefourth.com/

[km]

I've found Persona to be my super-chillout game, oddly enough. Basically, as long as I keep myself from trying to 100% perfect every arcana, I'm content to just wander around, hang out with whoever, kill some demons. Those games specifically are probably helped by the fact that I enjoyed high school (or at least it doesn't bring back traumatic memories) and that I tend to mute the BGM and listen to lounge music while I play. I have really fond memories of just sitting around on hot summer nights, basking in AC, drinking lemonade and playing P4.

On the other hand, I tried playing some remakes of the early FF games and couldn't even make it through the first dungeon without abandoning it in disgust. There's just nothing there.


Last night I was playing the Vita remake of Crimsonland, which is and old twin-stick shooter I remember playing in high school. I was thinking about this thread and worried that I wouldn't enjoy the onslaught... but the game acknowledges that you're supposed to die. There's no penalty for not doing everything perfectly the first time. You just hit "Try again" and... try again. Refreshing!


I really enjoyed Peace Walker, except for those stupid boss battles. The S-rank carrot is dangled in front of you for so long, but you're not even remotely well-equipped to S-rank them for a long, long time. And you have to clear the missions in a bad way to get there. The game chides you for retrying for the 50th time after the last guy you need to capture accidentally spots you 20 minutes into the mission. I found them hugely stressful and they are the reason I haven't picked the game back up even though I'm probably 90% done with it.
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vi) RPGs (Role-Playing Games)
For adolescents; half-formed personalities roaming (in packs) in search of identity.

[Felix]

I would say that I almost universally detest PSP titles for the way they seem to share the traits I describe in the top post (even those that aren't jRPGs). it took me a while to realize that this was actually a PSP-centric thing (I think people usually generalize from MonHun) and I don't really get it other than "Japanese game design busywork."

[Family Computer]

Anything where there is a time/turn limit. I started playing Valkyrie Profile recently and once the game told me I had X amount of time to beat the game I was like nope.

I found whatever genre Diablo is to be exhausting until I played Diablo 3 on a console with a controller. Somehow that made it fun for me.
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3DS Friendcode: 2337-3480-4823
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This summer, become Buried In Games.

[Talbain]

Yeah, Valkyrie Profile does kind of have a war sim thing hanging over the entire game. I'm not sure if it feels like an arbitrary challenge or not, but you can easily disable it via a gameshark code.
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[Gironika]

[mauve]

felix i think we're on the same general page but taking different conclusions from it. i think persona is very story focused; to the point where the mechanics are split away from it to the point where it's basically two separate games and they're not very good at supporting each other or independently standing alone. and social links are plain just a bad idea imo (was really disappointed to see them in devil survivor 2, though that game was a downgrade from the first in basically every way anyway). i appreciate any game of the genre that tries to destroy the concept of random encounters though.

for racing games, my hands give out before my brain does, so there's that. same reason i'm not a speedrunner!
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twit

[Kinto]

[capgamer]

Un-lurking for a moment...

Online multiplayer of pretty much any sort gives me this sense of tiredness. I like being able to set my own pace when playing a game and feeling like I'm either waiting on other people or holding them back bothers me.

Guild Wars 2 is about the only multiplayer game I've really enjoyed recently and it's because nothing you do in the game especially matters as everything progresses your character. So, if I'm not having fun I can just say "screw it" and move on to something else and partying with other people is a luxury, not a requirement.

[Schwere Viper]