Time Wasted

[DarkTone | 984]

Have you ever looked back at a game you spent hours on, and felt they were wasted? Maybe you reviewed a game to the end and hated it. Or hours on a game, lose the save, and refuse to restart over. 

[Gloves | 11,774]

Time spent having fun is never wasted, so as long as I was actively having fun in that moment, I do not consider that as time not well spent.

[Andy_Bogomil | 815]

All the time back in the day when rental return time was approaching. I remember one specific time where I got really far in Claymates for SNES and asked my Mom if I could keep it another night and pay the late fee as I suspected I was close to the end of the game. She initially refused so I turned the game off but then she changed her mind. It was too late though, the game was off and I lost all my progress and just ended up returning it. 

Edited October 31, 2021 by Andy_Bogomil

[twiztor | 849]

i bought Mario is Missing (snes) way back in the day. i was psyched to play a game with Luigi as the main character.  the game was trash and i hated every second of playing it. but i forced myself through to the end, so that i would never again feel any desire to play it. to seal the deal, i wrote the final password on the cartridge itself with a Sharpie. sorry to whoever now owns this cart.

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,104]

I rented my share of bad NES games as a kid and spent the entire weekend playing them to try and get my money's worth out of the rental when I had better options.

[peg | 370]

Final fantasy x2.  The only ff game I started and never finished. Definately signaled the point when the series become unrecognizable to me as anything resembling the games I grew up playing.

[erac | 78]

I don't really understand the question. If a game sucks, I cut it early, not spending hours on it. Preferably I don't even start it, by reading reviews beforehand. If a good game loses a save, that time was not wasted even if I can't be bothered to replay.

[OptOut | 8,883]

I don't understand the question either... Every second of life is a waste of fucking time isn't it?! 

[Sumez | 2,941]

Yes. I'm playing Civilization VI these days, enough said.

[LeatherRebel5150 | 1,056]

13 hours ago, twiztor said:

i bought Mario is Missing (snes) way back in the day. i was psyched to play a game with Luigi as the main character.  the game was trash and i hated every second of playing it. but i forced myself through to the end, so that i would never again feel any desire to play it. to seal the deal, i wrote the final password on the cartridge itself with a Sharpie. sorry to whoever now owns this cart.

That’s too bad you didn’t like it. I had this game as a kid and liked it well enough, but I was big into history as a kid so it definitely serviced that

[Nintegageo | 582]

FF XIV 

[Kguillemette | 1,544]

Final fantasy X. I spent a solid 6-7 hours waiting for it to be good and fun. I turned it off in the middle of a boss battle and that was that.

[WhyNotZoidberg | 585]

Ah, yes. The corrupt save file. FF VIII was it for me. I must have been 20 hours in? Don't remember. I never went back to the game.

I feel like I have wasted my time playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. Don't get me wrong the game is great. It's just that I'm never smart when it comes to job/class systems and so I invested many many hours playing FFTA and I was having fun, until the cursed day when I looked at a GameFAQs guide that made me realize I had fubar'd my character builds. It was too complicated to get back on track and I was too deep in to just restart the entire game. I decided then this was a hit it and quit it situation and I never played the game again.

edit: the FFTA incident also convinced me once and for all that RPGs that are too customizable just aren't for me. I feel like I'm missing out on a bunch of content. Too many "what if's". 

Edited November 1, 2021 by WhyNotZoidberg

[themisfit138 | 523]

FF XIII was a complete waste of time. All the reviewers at the time said, it gets good after 20 hours when you make it to pulse. I beat the game, but it never was enjoyable. 

[Reed Rothchild | 9,520]

I don't necessarily regret my time with WoW (some of those guys flew in for my buddy's wedding in August)...

But I could have done a lot of other things with that time.

[TDIRunner | 2,731]

My first time playing Tomb Raider Legend on PS2 I accidentally activated a glitch that soft locks the game.  It's a common glitch, but I wasn't aware of it at the time  It occurs about 75% of the way into the game and your only option is to start the game over from the very beginning.  I was so annoyed that I just gave up on the game all together and didn't start it again until 5 or 6 years later.  I think the game is great, but that first experience left such a bad taste in my mouth that it felt like time wasted.  

[Andy_Bogomil | 815]

I never finished Thousand Year Door. Got really far in the game but then deleted the save file by accident. I didn't really feel like going back at the time but never got around to it ever again. I did enjoy the bulk of what I played though. Maybe some day. 

[Tanooki | 4,932]

Well to be fair, not really, at least not back in the day when whatever system was on the market I was getting stuff for.   Between good instinct and some reading up on NP magazine seeing the full game stage spreads I could get a good feel for what was garbage and not.  We weren't given the choice to rent stuff other than movies, so there was no play like hell and still never finish it moments other victims have had.

I guess really if I had to start listing stuff, it would come only in college on N64 games.  I was so happy with Super Mario RPG when Square bailed but Nintendo pressed on supposedly under a so-called sequel of sorts with Paper Mario I was expecting more of the same general mechanics for gameplay.  Oh hell no...forceably kept low level where you hit a hidden cap you get 1xp per battle vs whatever per kill made it so.  They also made it a requirement to survive being a rhythm heaven type of player, you had to have the eye/ear for tempo to nail down the ability to 1/2 damage block or you were effectively dead in the latter half of the game, same to do enough damage not to drag out battles too.  Old SMRPG it was a perk *NOT* required.  That's when I learned of the XP cap, then I learned I WASTED a good many hours and $50 on an utter piece of shit.  It was one of a very exceptionally tiny short list of games I was happy to get rid of in a period where I sold or traded nothing, ever.  I still feel 'fuck that game' feelings over it, the franchise on the whole, other than the Gamecube title which wasn't such a picky ass about it.

Second to that on N64 too, Mario Party.  Wasting like 30-45min playing the fun mini games to hit the last random roll card thingy that spins a chance for bonus or punishment.  My luck was bad, but over THREE games, each time I got the return star or whatever it was sending me backwards through most the game board against the AI from 1st to LAST.  I played a baseball rule on that, after the third strike in a row that game like Paper Mario as *OUT* gone, dead to me.

 

I've tried to be fair to them in future years when I'd find a super cheap copy of the titles game hunting, still felt the same after trying once more having the same general results... bad is just bad.  And that was more time wasting, even if only to make sure I wasn't being hasty.

[CMR | 519]

I've always been more bothered by the money I wasted.

[cj_robot | 540]

4 hours ago, TDIRunner said:

My first time playing Tomb Raider Legend on PS2 I accidentally activated a glitch that soft locks the game.  It's a common glitch, but I wasn't aware of it at the time  It occurs about 75% of the way into the game and your only option is to start the game over from the very beginning.  I was so annoyed that I just gave up on the game all together and didn't start it again until 5 or 6 years later.  I think the game is great, but that first experience left such a bad taste in my mouth that it felt like time wasted.  

I had the same experience with The Darkness on PS3. There is a glitch (I guess it's avoidable, but I didn't know about it at the time) that corrupts the save file. I don't remember how far into the game, but it was definitely at least halfway thought, several hours into it.

The difference here is that, despite the decent review scores it got, I really wasn't digging the game very much. The game's story and atmosphere was extremely dark and creepy, but not in a way that was entertaining to me, but rather just left me feeling kind of depressed... so definitely regret spending the time I did on it. The glitch was definitely a blessing.

 

[cj_robot | 540]

@Tanooki I felt the same way about Paper Mario. I was not impressed with it, especially considering how great SMRPG was, and it instead really just frustrated me with its mechanics.

I think the Mario Party games are fun to play with other people, because so much of the game is left to chance and anything can happen, but that same aspect really kills the fun when playing one-player. Definitely hurts to be winning for the majority of a game, and then lose it at the end because of bad luck. That's why the Mario Kart games frustrate the hell out of me as well.

[DefaultGen | 5,401]

I'm in the time spent isn't time wasted camp, but at the same time I'm hesitant about games like MMOs and endless grindy RPGs specifically because they can take up such a huge chunk of life. I'm literally perfectly happy to sit and play Runescape or Path of Exile for 8 straight hours, but it comes at the expense of experiencing other games or literally anything productive I can do with my life. Even when I just play the same old NES favorites or something, at least I'm engaged and getting better at my favorite games. Some genres have so little skill or player input really needed that it's mostly about spending hours of your life to watch little numbers go up.

[TDIRunner | 2,731]

@Tanooki

@cj_robot

Oddly enough, my experience was the exact opposite.  I've tried three times to play through Super Mario RPG, but I simply cannot get into the game.  For some reason it just does nothing for me.  If anything, it makes me want to go back and play Paper Mario or TTYD.  I even prefer Super Paper Mario to RPG.  

[CodysGameRoom | 2,008]

Whenever I'm doomscrolling Instagram or Reddit, or sometimes if I play Pokemon Go or Mario Run for too long, I get done and think... man, I really should have been doing something else during that time. Like playing an actual worthwhile game of substance.

That said, I do enjoy both the mobile games I mentioned. 

[MagusSmurf | 577]

Uh. No objections to preferring Super Mario RPG but Paper Mario is not a hard game. At all. You shouldn't really need to grind (certainly not to the point enemies stop giving experience!) and while Guarding helps, it only reduces damage by 1 so doing it consistently is certainly not essential. Something must have been seriously wrong with how you were approaching it.