Cleansing your gaming palette

[Infernai]

Inspired partly by something from Yahtzee's Medal of Honor: Warfighter review. I'm guessing all of us have had our 'gaming slumps', periods of time when you simply have no motivation to pick up a controller and start to play through any game because...quite frankly, you just can't. Maybe a game left a particularly bad taste in your mouth, maybe you've just made no progress in your current one..there are different reasons for it, and then it comes time to, as Yahtzee put it, "Cleanse my palette"

So, what game did you play to do this the last time you had the need to do so? For me, of all things it was recently with Devil May Cry 3:

I had somewhat forgotten how much fun it was to run through and unleash chaos on demons with Dante, and just how graceful and powerful Vergil is to play as. It was rather fun and after my binge i felt quite a degree of happiness and felt more like i could go into other games i've not gotten around to as of late given how on and off i've been with games since i played through Mass Effect 3.

So Escapists, when was the last time you cleansed your palette? What were the causes of it and what game was it that brought you out of it?

Captcha: bangers and mash. Great..now I'm hungry

 

[krazykidd]

I usually pick up a new genre . My slumps are mostly due to playing too much of the same genre of game . Last time it happened was a yesr ago . A friend recommended UMVC3 to me . I haven't touched a fighting game since Street fighter alpha 3 on the ps1 . Not only did UMVC3 break me out of the slump , it go me into fightin games , i even bought an arcade stick and participated in local tournaments.

 

[Beautiful End]

Well, I try to keep a balanced gaming diet. But the last time that happened to me, I went retro and played the original Megaman games (The PS2 collection). It's great how they managed to make such fun games with few elements. Jump/ shoot/ rinse and repeat. Screw the graphics.

It kinda makes you look differently at the modern platfomers, which are not as popular as before.

 

[Guffe]

I had during my time in the army, I was there and only home at some weekends and during that time I had better stuff to do than play video games, at the moment Pandoras Tower isn't feeling too appealing but I'll get through it slowly but surely, hour by hour.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

Funnily enough, the games I play to 'cleanse my palette' are the Call of Duty games. I'm a big fan of huge, long, open world, story driven games such as Mass Effect and Red Dead Redemption. I love them, but every once in a while I get to the stage where I just can't stomach anything so... heavy, so I pick up Call of Duty in all its simplistic, linear splendor, and have fun not engaging.

Minecraft is a good palette-cleanser as well. It's uncomplicated, has nice soothing music in the background and reminds me of all the fun I had with lego and mechano when I was a kid.

 

[The Wykydtron]

You know, I think I pick up new genres as well thinking about it. I picked up UMVC3 on launch day simply because Phoenix Wright was in it and goddammit he was going on my team every single game and nothing will ever stop me playing him. Happy to report that has been the case throughout my UMVC3 play time.

I picked up League of Legends back in April and I love it. I never played anything like it before.

I've also picked up BlazBlue CS Extend and I really like it, I prefer the single character style over the teams. Simply because there are no horribly broken team comps and I can focus on becoming really good with one specific character. For example if I could have 3 X-23's in Marvel I would be hardcore owning the scrubs every single game.

It's not like I can pull off some crazy combo it's just I can get in for resets and simple low hits every time. Her standard charge lunge move (the light version) is so safe on block, yet it looks unsafe as hell so they go to punish it and get owned. It's ridiculous.

I can sort of get the stick movements better than UMVC3's, unless it's the one where you point the stick forward do a backwards 180 then go back to forward. The motion for Noel's Fenir super, it's weird.

Oh and BB has a load more subtle mechanical stuff. You can cancel Noel's standard throw into her command grab for example. Mind. Blown.

You can also cancel it into her one projectile move but I guess it's not as useful

 

[sextus the crazy]

If I have nothing I want to play, I pick of up one of the many books that I'm half way through and read it. Other wise, I'll play something on my emulator.

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

My TV is messed up currently, so its a welcome break from Borderlands 2. I have a love/hate opinion of that game. I actually prefer Borderlands one in a lot of ways. If I could have Gaige in Borderlands 1 I'd play that.

Crappy scopes and all sigh..

So as I'm relegated to DS, since my PC chose to also start having hardware issues (I think some kind of electrical event happened in my room unbeknownst to me that took out my TV/PC and spared my PS3 and DS) I've been playing Etrian Odyssey 1-3.

It was seriously painful to have to overwrite all 3 finished saves, but worth it. I'm surprised how much I still love EO1 even though it lacks so many improvements in the UI and is full of skills that are broken and/or of highly questionable utility compared to their description.

I'm not using Immunize or Defender this time because the prereqs are useless waste of SP and I got Shelter. I know everyone rags on Shelter, because Immunize is broken as hell. But 30% more defense that doesn't wear off in 5 turns off pretty damn handy. Unlike the other 2 skills that offer a static % flat damage reduction, the higher my defense the more useful the skill becomes. Thats how I justify that anyways. Leaves me more TP for Smite, Antis, and Caduceus.

Its a shame that Alchemists are only useful for like half the game. Skills that cap damage early blow when they are all the class has.

 

[TrevHead]

Like others I play a new genre or sub genre. In fact I do it often as I generally get bored playing one genre for too long.

I also have rainy day games, unplayed classics & sequels that I know i'll love.

 

[janjotat]

I read a book or play minecraft. I got tired of minecraft a long time ago, but I can always go back to it and make something cool in creative mode.

 

[Lt._nefarious]

If I buy a game that leaves me particularly sour then I'll just play Heavy Rain, Bioshock or The Walking Dead depending on which bit of tech I have fired up at the time...

 

[The Funslinger]

I've not been gaming that much lately except the odd stab at FTL.

I'll be getting a palette cleanser soon enough when my copy of Metal Gear Solid arrives.

SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE!

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

I usually play a multiplayer game with my best mate. It's relaxing and fun. Playing another genre or more creative games like Minecraft, Dwarf Fortress or The Sims works too.

 

[King of Asgaard]

I'll usually get back into Dark Souls.
What happens is that I'll be playing something like XCOM, which taxes your strategic muscles, while the creative part of me will be coming up with a new character build to try out.
More often than not, these builds would be really effective, or fun to play with once completed.
It serves as a good change of pace to switch back to DS, as it pushes my reflexes better than most other games.

 

[SonOfMethuselah]

I've actually never tried to cleanse my gaming palette with another game. When I get tired of the games I have, or progress in the games I'm currently playing (it's always multiple titles; I'm stuck in a perma-backlog loop) is halted, I just stop playing games altogether for a while. Sometimes there's a title that gets me back into gaming - a few years back I picked up a copy of Oblivion on PC, modded the hell out of it, and played it dawn 'til dusk, and just this past summer I went retro and played through Majora's Mask again - but for the most part, I just have to ride it out. It can be a little depressing sometimes, getting the feeling that I'm growing out of games when they used to be such a big part of my life, but there it is.

 

[Jolly Co-operator]

When I go through a gaming slump, I usually just stop gaming for a while. I put extra time into my reading, or find a new anime to watch, and fill my gaming time with that instead. Usually ends the slump in about a week.

 

[Xanadu84]

I don't have something that gets me out of slumps, I just need to switch up play Aestetics. Those familiar with Mechanic/Dynamic/Aesthetic framework will recognize this. Right now, I'm playing games of Abnegation with some Discovery and Fellowship, mainly Puzzle Quest 2 and Guild Wars 2. Inevitably, this will lead me to want to play games of Fantasy, Sense pleasure, and some challenge, likely a shooter or similar action game (Max Payne is on the list). After I play those for a while, Ill likely move towards games with heavy elements of Narrative or Challenge, or possibly Discovery and Expression. This will be come meandering between indie games, dense RPGs, and some RTS and TBS. And once I play some of these super dense games, Ill probably want to go back to games of Abnegation. Ill switch around the order from time to time, but this is my usual progression. Theres no set game to clense my pallet, just something different from what I was last doing.

However, there is one other switch up that I do. If I get sick of sitting in front of a computer, Ill get some friends and play some Catan, Magic, Twilight Imperium, Penny Arcade: Gamers versus Evil or other board and card games.

 

[AgentLampshade]

I'm actually the same as OP. Whenever I'm in a slump, all I need to do is slide in the DMCHD collection and rack up another few hours of Vergil madness, maybe complete Bloody Palace for the 100th time, then I feel like I can take on any game.

 

[epidemia]

The last game that had me slumped was Minecraft because I went all OCD with modifications, so instead of actually playing, I spent all of my time messing with config files, seeking out bugfixes and compiling 32x textures to cover the huge quantity of stuff I added to the game. By the time I was finished, I didnt want to have anything to do with MC anymore. I even made a thread for it that took at least an hour to put together, what a complete waste of time that was. http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1490113-epidemias-minecraft-125-mod-compilation/