...Know When to Fold 'Em

I'm only halfway through my first official week of summer break and I've already lost track of what day it is (I forgot to post yesterday...my bad for all the AI bots who missed out).  Anyway...I thought I would highlight one of the difficult decisions that we sometimes have to make in gaming--should I stop playing?  For some people, this choice can be tough and we often force ourselves to knuckle through something that we're not enjoying.  It has been one of my personal goals to stop doing that and I've had a bit of minor success this week(ish).

Last week I wrote up my feelings/impressions around Graveyard Keeper.  I was feeling a bit mixed about it but would estimate that I'm probably about 75-80% through the main storyline.  Generally when I'm that far along and struggling with enjoyment I will just grind it out.  This time around though, I decided that I was done.  The gameplay was feeling far too grind-y, like I wasn't making much progress, and I was constantly having to look things up (annoying).  Does that mean it's a bad game?  Not necessarily (although apparently there were a lot of issues when it originally came out--like the fact that the game wasn't ever officially "finished" and things like gamebreaking bugs...but I didn't encounter many issues and just found it a bit cumbersome)--I think there are things to enjoy, but for me personally, I lost patience and interest.  Forcing myself to play felt like clocking in to work...and that's not a great feeling.

Why is it so hard to quit when we aren't enjoying something?  I think part of it is about time and money.  I invested 45.2 hours into the story so felt a bit obligated to see it out to the end.  There's also typically the money factor--if you paid for a game you want to get your moneys worth out of it.  (*Here's where I will remind you that I did not pay for this game and received it free as part of a giveaway)  Those two factors make it tough to simply put something down (...and maybe secretly know that it's going to land firmly into your pile/mountain of shame).

Then I made the curious decision to stumble directly into that pile of shame and try to pick up another (beloved by many) title that I had struggled with in the past.  Shovel Knight is a game that I originally bought a long time ago.  I apparently played it for about 1 hour before uninstalling.  I couldn't really remember what the issue was (and thought that maybe it was just that I forgot about it) and that I should give it another chance.  Well, I did that and discovered that, in the words of the great Taylor Swift, "I'm the problem, it's me."  I am so horrible at Shovel Knight that it is demoralizing--I am constantly dying in sad and pathetic ways.  This time I gave up after about 2 hours.  That's progress!

So here's my advice--if you're not enjoying something, just let it slowly slide back into your library.  Don't force yourself to struggle through something.  You can always go back to it later--and, I suppose there's some kind of chance that you might enjoy it at a different point in your life.  In my case, that didn't really shake out, but I tried.

I've been trying to spend more time outside in the glorious summer weather.  Now's the time to be touching the grass, my gaming folks.  Happy summer to all (and hopefully next week I'll remember what day it is).