Poll: Can you play a game based on the promise that it will get interesting later on?

Recommended Videos

MrMixelPixel

New member
Jul 7, 2010
771
0
0
If it's an rpg or pvp game, I can probably stomach it. Just knowing I'm gonna get more and more powerful is enough to keep me playing. Anything else though, I'll probably lose interest fast and move on to something else.
 

Savryc

NAPs, Spooks and Poz. Oh my!
Aug 4, 2011
395
0
0
It depends, a slow opening hour or so for a massive RPG? That's fine.
25 hours of shite for corridor sim 13 to get "good"? Nope.
 

immortalfrieza

Elite Member
Legacy
May 12, 2011
2,336
270
88
Country
USA
Depends on my mood really. There's plenty of games that I've played that I have considered to be uninteresting that I have dropped pretty quickly then picked up later and powered through said uninteresting part, and others that I've stuck through the uninteresting part from the start to get to the good part, most Bethesda games would be an example of the latter. Of course, I prefer it if the game is really good from the start and never lets up, but I think that's true of most people. I'd say the Tales series of games fits that requirement.

In the end though, the game has to have something I find appealing at the start or I'm not really going to play it.
 

NihilSinLulz

New member
May 28, 2013
204
0
0
I think books are a bad example. I mean, even if events take awhile to progress, writing-style can go a long way keeping you engaged. The same can be said for video games. Even if the story proper takes awhile to kick in, the game mechanics can still keep you engaged. Hell, games can even be forgiven that what with many games opting to deprive of you of the more fun tools until you're already heavily time invested. A good game then needs at the very least, good 'gamefeel' to keep you hooked. A great example is Mario Brothers. Barely a story, bizarre world/enemies, not a lot of options mechanically, but damn is it fun.
 

OtakuNinja

New member
May 25, 2010
90
0
0
After/Since 'Spec Ops The Line' yes i can!

on the flip-side i can't seem to watch a film with the promise of it 'getting better'
if it doesn't hook me in 10mins I'm out sadly

i wonder if these two statements are linked...
 

Dalisclock

Making lemons combustible again
Legacy
Escapist +
Feb 9, 2008
11,286
7,086
118
A Barrel In the Marketplace
Country
Eagleland
Gender
Male
I'm more then willing to deal with a slow start, but something needs to be happening to get me to the good parts. A good mystery is set up, some intriguing atmosphere, something to draw me in to make me wan to continue to the good part.

The game/story/etc hasn't gotten going by the 25% mark, you're seriously need to rethink your pacing.
 

Nouw

New member
Mar 18, 2009
15,615
0
0
Sure. Having a slow pace, dumping some exposition and setting things up is fine with me as long as it's still compelling. For example, it could be argued that most of Ever 17 is a lead-up to the true ending but even so, the four routes leading up to it were still interesting. If I don't feel my desire to know more and play more intensify though, I'll probably drop it as I did with the Witcher 2. I have no doubts that it's a solid game but eh, I'll get back to it later.
 

lunavixen

New member
Jan 2, 2012
841
0
0
Well I got all the way through Heavy Rain and that had a REALLY slow start, I thought it was okay.

I prefer to either be entertained all the way through, or the game has to have a proper build up to justify the slow start and has to have a satisfying conclusion to the build up. If the game is slow and half assed, I will walk away from it.
 

BloatedGuppy

New member
Feb 3, 2010
9,572
0
0
Vivi22 said:
BloatedGuppy said:
Yes. I have a friend who can't, though. If he's not enjoying a game in the first hour or two he'll dump it, regardless of how much promise it has or whether or not he is assured it will eventually get good. Drives me nuts.
See, I'll dump a game after a few hours if it's not interesting because every single time I haven't it didn't actually get better.

I'm a big believer in not wasting time with a game you don't like. So what if it gets better five hours in, or ten hours, or whatever? You're still playing a game you hate until then so is it really going to make up for the time that you're just plodding through completely uninterested to get to the good parts? Will you even find the good parts that good? You aren't liking the first few hours and those were made by the same people. And why should I pretend it's acceptable for a company to make a shitty first half of the game just because the second half is good? I don't want half of a good game, I want an entire good game.
Most recently, Dark Souls and Mount and Blade leap to mind. Both games started ugly. The former was glitchy as hell and violently anti-intuitive. The latter was ugly as sin and saddled with a cumbersome, player-hostile UI. I've put almost 70 hours into the former and almost 200 into the latter.

Sometimes patience is rewarded.
 

prowll

New member
Aug 19, 2008
198
0
0
Sorry, if a game hasn't shown SOME promise in the first... say half hour, it's going straight to Gamestop. Now, it doesn't have to be GREAT. Morrowind, as has been said, has a slow start, but it had promise, so it gets finished. FF XIII... no. nonono...
 

Sandjube

New member
Feb 11, 2011
669
0
0
Realistically, it depends. If I'm promised that after the first three hours or something, the rest is going to be amazing, I'll probably slog it out. Am I willing to play hundreds of hours of an mmo JUST to get to the end game so I can "experience" it, no, fuck off. Not that I dislike mmo's or anything, but I still don't think I've even hit the level cap in any of them, I get burned out.
 

Black Reaper

New member
Aug 19, 2011
234
0
0
In a way, yes
When you play a fighting game for the first time, you will suck, you will get raped online, you will not be able to clear arcade mode without getting massive finger pain
But fighting games are all about getting to know your characters and improving, so the boss that gave you so much trouble on normal now gets caught in 20 hit combos in the corner on hell since he doesn't know how to handle Oki, the guy that humiliated you online now won 1 out of 5 matches against you in a session you had
In a way, fighting games are all about improving
Something similar happens in games that have upgrades, you don't have a lot of moves early on, but as the game goes on you will get more, and you will finally be able to do cool combos and shit when you get them

But, in another way, no
I rented Monster Hunter Tri on the wii a while back, but the start was so boring, i only played it like 3 times before i quit
You spend the first hours of the game killing small critters that don't pose a challenge and mining, if i remember correctly, and it is boring as shit

I don't know where that puts me
 

dyre

New member
Mar 30, 2011
2,178
0
0
Meinos Kaen said:
While that may be true, the point is, why should I go on playing something for a promise? Books don't have that luxury. Either they keep you entertained all the time, or you just drop them. Why should I give the benefit of that to something that takes away even more of my time when there are other games out there that manage to hook me and never let go?
Depends on the sort of books you read, I think. I mean, yeah, cheap genre stuff needs to provide constant entertainment, but I've certainly given books the benefit of doubt on the "entertainment" factor if they've proven themselves on the "quality of writing" factor.

I think it's different for video games because the entertainment value of a game and the quality of the game are often hand in hand (generally speaking, lots of exceptions exist), while good literature is more subtle, an the payoff for hundreds of pages of reading could simply be to realize something about a character, and yet it could still be worth it.

That said, I'm actually in the same boat with you for Persona 3. The atmosphere, characters, and early plot just bore me, so I've never gotten very far into it. At least towards the beginning, the game's merely decent, and pretty boring. It'll take a bit more to warrant further investment of my time as far as I'm concerned.
 

Something Amyss

Aswyng and Amyss
Dec 3, 2008
24,759
0
0
Depends on how much I have to wait and how it's paced in the meanwhile. If it gets interesting a half hour in, it's different than if you have to wait twenty hours for it to get good.

Johnny Novgorod said:
Excuse me, how come "books don't have that luxury"?
In fairness, books are treated this way and one generally needs a hook to get people interested in the first few pages to have a hope of keeping them going.

I've personally read some books all the way through to see if things improve (and I'm usually disappointed), but the point remains.
 

RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
8,687
0
0
I believe that Yahtzee put it best in his review of FF13. "A lot of people have told me that it gets better later on. Well that's not exactly a point in it's favor. If you leave your hand on a burning stove for 20 hours and yeah you'll probably stop feeling the pain but you'll have done considerable damage to yourself in the process."

For me it just doesn't make sense. "It gets better later on!" "Oh, so the first 20 hours are just a waste of time, then? Why not just start where things "start getting good?" Or here's a novel idea: have the stuff that makes the game "better" at the beginning, don't make me dig through 20 hours of crap before finally deciding to do something interesting.

So no, someone telling me "It gets better later on" doesn't make me reconsider a game.
 

DementedSheep

New member
Jan 8, 2010
2,654
0
0
Depends on how long until it gets interesting and how bad it is before that point. A couple of hours? yeah I'm willing to slog through that but if its "oh don't worry the game gets interesting around the 15 hour mark" then no.
 

The_Great_Galendo

New member
Sep 14, 2012
186
0
0
It depends on who made the promise and the length of the wait before the payoff (and, I suppose, how much I paid for it; I'll give a game I paid more for more time, on the sunk-cost-fallacy principle). I'd probably give a game a couple of hours by myself, maybe as many as five if some random people online say it gets good. On the other hand, the same claim from someone whose opinion I trust and whose tastes match mine could get me to play a game for probably ten or twenty hours, assuming the experience to that point was not too terribly objectionable.