What were the last games to truly get you hooked?

[south carmain]

Like the title says, which games really drew you in so much that you couldn't put the controller down for hours?

This topic isn't about the games you just liked or even those that stood out for you but those that really made you want to blow off all your responsibilities, eating and sleeping just so you could get a few more hours in to it.

For me I will admit that these days I find video games increasingly uninteresting. Maybe it's because everything feels familiar or I'm just growing out of it I don't know but these days I really just play games to pass time rather than as a passion and it's increasingly feeling like a time waster.

That said there have been a few titles that have kept me up until the late hours of the night or even early hours of the morning although few and far between compared to before.

Ni No Kuni - Although I felt like taking a break from it after around 20 hours of gameplay those 20 hours were consecutive and I think the longest I played it was 6 hours straight which is something very rare these days where I usually play a game 30 minutes to an hour before moving on to something that feels like I'm actually doing something.

Sleeping dogs - I decided to play through it again and this time I was just as hooked as the first time playing it for hours every day until I had 100% it. Although it's true this game doesn't particularly excel in anything the fact that it is an open world martial arts epic set in hong kong will always make this game stand out above most others for me and it's great for virtual tourism.

Assassin's creed: Brotherhood - Probably not the best game of the series nor even that good of a game (it's not bad but it has many faults such as too sensitive freerunning, gamebreaking bugs, it didn't make me care about the story at all, felt very repetitive by the end) though somehow it had me hooked playing it for hours on end completing all the side stuff. The only explanation I have for getting so hooked by this game is probably that Italy is as beautiful as ever in it and that when you did the side stuff it felt rewarding. Ever since I played Skies of Arcadia as a kid I absolutely fell in love with the base-building feature and the fact AC:B had something similar (where you could buy and upgrade shops and fix locations somewhat building yourself a real estate empire) had me spend hours earning enough money to buy all the locations.

Yakuza 4 - similar reasons as sleeping dogs. A brawler with an interesting mafia themed story and virtual tourism galore and a ton of side quests to complete always has me putting hours in to this game when I pick it up.

[Thief]

Honestly, the only game I can ever recall doing this was Shenmue. I crawled into my room for nearly an entire weekend doing nothing but playing Shenmue 1. I felt like I was a part of the world -- I would call Nozomi on the phone just to see what was up and get pissed that her grandma picked up and then just said "fuck it, she's probably at the flower shop" and would just go visit her. I got stuck in the loop where I just work at the docks, and managed to work there for like a solid month (in game). I felt as if I was just getting up to go to work as usual. We'd sit during the lunch hour and I'd get up and walk around and relax at the harbor and then go back to work. Eventually the game ended and I crawled out of my room confused as to both where and when I was.

The week in which I had to wait for Shenmue 2 to arrive in the mail was horrible... and that moment in Guilin was bittersweet, since I knew it was soon to end but it was all so beautiful. God, we all clearly like Shenmue to some extent, but it was really a special experience for me. As I imagine it may have been for many of you.

Never, in all my life, have I ever been so truly engrossed in something.

[Perfect_Chaos]

Destiny. Im still playing it. been playing it since release. I cant even count how many times ive rolled into work on four hours sleep. Im not even a FPS kind of guy but i just cant get enough of it. if its time for me to go to sleep but we havent finished the raid yet then i go to bed once said raid is complete. Every tuesday the game has its weekly reset and once a week you can do an activity called the nightfall. every tuesday before i get home i google on my phone what that weeks nightfall is. im in over my head lol

other than destiny, id have to say Ni No Kuni also. that game was just brilliant. i loved every second of it. Batman Arkham Origins comes to mind also considering i beat it in one day :/

[JMan]

The Mass Effect series, Deus Ex Human Revolution, the Tomb Raider reboot and the 3DS remake of Ocarina of Time have been the only new releases in quite a while to truly engross me and keep me happy for 6 hours or more of playtime.

I think before that it was 2005's Splinter Cell Chaos Theory.

[MiTT3NZ]

Skyrim had me hooked non-stop. I imagine I'd still be playing it now if I had it for the PC with mods installed.

SC: Blacklist is also giving me sleepless nights on account of the fact I can't decide whether or not it's better than Chaos Theory. The only thing I don't really like about it is the awful lag issues and numerous exploits on SvM.

Minesweeper's had me hooked for fuck knows how many years at this point.

Football Manager 2012 is a game I still play to this day (it's 2030 and my custom club have only not won three competitions in the last fourteen seasons)

FIFA 13 became an addiction for a good while n'all. Constantly on FUT, and had friendlies with our kid every Friday night. Til he got FIFA 14. Then when I got 14, he got 15. Cunt.

Assassin's Creed: Revelations got me addicted to the multiplayer for about a year, maybe a year n a half. I'd like to go back to it, but it's probably either dead or no longer in service. Besides, why the hell would I stop playing SvM?

Trials HD & Evolution got me hooked on account of having an incessant need to be top of my friends leaderboard on everything. I really need to get to work on doing this for Blacklist n'all...

Red Dead Redemption was just sheer quality. One of the few sandbox-style games that I never felt bored with. Hunting, poker, bounty hunting, liar's dice... Just awesome. Then there's the story and online modes.

Shenmue. For obvious reasons. Never Shenmue II though, funnily enough.

Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart: Double Dash. Despised 64 (maybe coz of the controller), but I don't think any other in the series have matched these two, despite how good the Wii version was.

Pokemon Red and Yellow. No explanation needed.

Sonic Adventure. I'm really getting to the point where I'm just listing games that I were hooked on instead of the last game(s) that did it, so I'll round it off...

So finally, (despite their being no particular order) Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Why oh fucking why did it have to end? I always tried - and failed - to get into the original game, from the PC to the PS2 version. Thankfully, I had no issues with this one.

[south carmain]

Yeah the first deux ex seemed more like the kind of game you had to play during it's time to really appreciate it properly. DE:HR got me hooked too though I didn't list it since that was about 3 years ago. I'm really looking forward to the sequel.

[Sonikku]

Hooked? Bold words. Probably not since Knights of The Old Republic. What an amazing game. It seemed the first in what would be the standard of choose your own adventure on consoles. It had an amazing story and was centered in Star Wars, one of my favorite mediums. I remember the story being so good that it was putting the prequel movies to shame at the time. I could not put that one down. I think the only game since I enjoyed half as much since was Mass Effect. It's really good, an extension of KOTOR in a lot of ways. But I guess after the break through everything after that will always feel more evolutionary than revolutionary. And also Revan would kick Shepherd's ass.

[MiTT3NZ]

Oh yeah, Mass Effect n'all.

As for Deus Ex, the tragedy of it all is that I had it not long after it was released, but my computer was never up to scratch. When I found out that it had been released on PS2, I bought it, but kept telling myself "I'll play it after Splinter Cell", "Just another few sessions on Fight Night Round 3", "Oh, I got a new game for Christmas, better check it out."

Eventually my brother played it, and I was happy watching him on it whilst I was blazed off my tits. But I didn't see it all. And whilst he's good at stealth games, he chooses to just sneak n head shot fuckers (still surprises me how good he used to be on games) Needless to say, I didn't see him complete it. And I didn't even remember half of it.

So when I finally got round to actually starting it, I was at a phase where I wasn't really into games. So I stopped playing in favour of Wii Golf. Then a little while later, news of Deus Ex: HR came out, and I knew I was gonna get it. So I tried playing it around the time it got released. Got up to the same point again and stopped playing it. Then I completed HR and thought "well, that happened, so surely the next step is to play the original then move onto Invisible War", but I never got round to it. Again.

Then when I really wanted to play it, I didn't have a PS2 anymore. I also felt it was a bit too dated, graphically. So I looked into the texture/graphic overhauls in the works. None of which were complete at the time, so I told myself "hey, doesn't matter, I'll just wait til they're finished".

Nowadays I know that the only hopes of me playing it is if a HD remake is released, which I seriously doubt is gonna happen. Such a shame. Such a tragic story. No one will ever know the pain...

[JMan]

I cant get enough of Deus Ex - the futuristic noir, the music, the liberating amount of choice and customisation. The original on PC is pretty much my favourite game ever along with Thief and Morrowind.

I remember truanting school just to sink any more hours I could manage into Knights of the Old Republic. Thank God that was a year or two before I started studying hard for my GCSE's or I would have been screwed big time. It was my very first WRPG and I loved every minute of it. I even enjoyed KOTOR 2 but noticed that something wasn't quite right with that ending even in the absence of internet and reviews at the time.

If we're including any games not confined to new releases then I'll add the original Still Life on PC which I played on Christmas break. It really engrossed me using all of the FBI detective gear and trying to work out who the killer was. Makes me want to try out the Westwood Bladerunner game which sounds to play very similarly.

[Henry Spencer]

Bloodborne. Didn't stop playing once I got it, practically. Loved the atmosphere and combat.
Armored Core 4. Same deal, only stopped since I got hand cramp playing it so much.
Armored Core 5. Not got hand cramp with this one, thankfully, but been playing nothing but this for around a week or two now on PS3. It's much longer than 4 was.
Front Mission 4. Been playing this one a lot too, alongside Armored Core V, normally at the weekends when I have more time to divulge in such a big SRPG with tons of customisation and story scenes.

Basically everything I've been playing lately. Really been in a mech game mood, so these games are really scratching that itch. I generally get in the mood for a certain type of game (either genre or game style) or setting, or even a game from specific developers and then go all out on it.

Thinking I'll go for Yakuza: Dead Souls on PS3 next since I got that off my bro for my birthday and it's the last Yakuza game I haven't played up until this point. Yakuza games always tend to catch my attention span for long periods of time.

No offence, but I can see why some people get bored with games now, especially if sticking with mostly triple A games released nowadays, which is why I'm going back to PS2 and PS3 for a safe haven of the good "old" games that I've never got around to playing until now, there's certainly plenty of them, especially on PS2.

If we're going a while back - the last real game to wow me with its storyline was really between Nier and Flower, Sun & Rain. Nothing else last generation really came close to either of those. I mean, I loved Human Revolution too, but I liked certain parts of the story rather than the game whole. I have a good feeling that the sequel will be a big improvement on that front.

[Kenny]

Tekken Revolution and Tekken Card Tournament.

It's an ongoing thing.

[Riku Rose]

I think the most recently released game that had it's hooks in me was The Last of Us. That and the Uncharted games aren't very long so I normally beat them within a week and I love them so much they pull me right in. The Last of Us was one of those where I stayed up that extra hour or two just to see what happened next.

Walking Dead Season 1: I beat that in about 2-3 days and would rank it as one of my favourite games. Telltale made a fan for life with that and I now end up playing Walking Dead, Fables and Game of Thrones episodes the day they come out, except for the Boarderlands game as I've never played the series.

Mass Effect 2: I really liked the original Mass Effect but the sequel blew me away. Just like Thief with Shenmue I thought the best part was hanging out on the ship and talking to the characters. The stories the cast told you always had me wanting more. The first day I got it I pumped about 8 hours into it which is rare for me these days, I normally only play a game for about 2 hours at a time.

Back in the day though I would play Final Fantasy VII or Ocarina of Time for hours every day. I'd rather have a short amazing game then a long ok one but I find it's hard to say you're hooked to some games these days that're only 8 hours long. When you can beat a game in a weekend without much effort and be done with it that game has hardly got it's hooks in you. It felt like a played FFVII every day for hours for about a year, I find you get hooked more with games like RPG's that have a fair bit of length to them.

[MiTT3NZ]

Tbh Spence, I'm kinda with you on the boredome thing. To an extent. The transitional period between the PS2 gen and the PS3 one was quite tedious, imo. The odd game or two jumped out, but it all just seemed so... dull. Like they were just rehashing what they'd already been doing. New lick of paint, new name maybe, but nothing truly eye opening. Sure, they'd been doing it since the midway point of the previous gen, but it felt more like momentum than decay...

Maybe this is just the same thing. We're seeing games we woulve expected last gen creeping up on this new lot. Nothing's saying "hang on a fucking minute, I haven't seen that before!" On top of that, a lot of people are looking backwards now. They don't want what's next, they want what's left behind. Everyone's spoilt for choice with the type of games that they already?know and love, but I haven't seen a single one that's made me fall in love with it. There's no Sonic Adventure, no GTA III, no Mirror's Edge or Arkham Asylum. Maybe that's the problem.

Less "I can do this better than you" and more "Bet you never thought of this one!"

[Kenny]

You can thank the incredibly complicated process and extremely high budgets for that one.

Back when games were cheaper to make and took a few guys in a garage to code, they could afford more creative risks.

[MiTT3NZ]

No no no no no, this is where that one doesn't apply. The key ingredient can be anything from aesthetics to a single gameplay feature. It could be the same type of game you've played before, just looked at from an entirely different angle.

Look at the leaps from Pandora Tomorrow to Chaos Theory to Double Agent to Conviction to Blacklist. Every game was something entirely different. The Assassin's Creed series, Arkham series, FIFA, etc., they move in steps.

The same goes for general gaming trends. Much like JRPGs and Platformers before them, the FPS genre is fading out and making way for open world games, so everyone's tryna get a slice of that. Rockstar take leaps. Bethesda take leaps. Everyone else seems to spend too much time taking notes from them and throwing in their own little spin "but we'll do it in a different city", "ah, but in this one... it's 1876", "everyone in the game's a pineapple", they're usually just substituting one thing for another.

I understand the need to play it safe, to release a game like Kameo coz Fable was popular, or to give us games like Bloodborne coz of how much everyone loved Dark Souls, but goddamnit, the time for hand-holding is gone. When I get a new console, the one thing I want to be familiar with is the controller. Nothing else. It's the new possibilities of a generation's birth that excites me. On some level it's the same for everyone else too.

Point is, repetition isn't a sustainable enough business model, and devs know that. Sooner or later they're gonna have to make a hit. It doesn't have to change the market, or be some huge unimaginable innovation. Could be something as simple as a game going for a clay/stop-motion (whatever it's called) look, or making an Age of Empires RTS that you can free roam around in 3rd person as king to interact with villagers or participate in battles.

It's got nothing to do with budgets or team size, it's design.

As I say, I like a bit of repetition in the form of momentum, but not to the point where it feels like the guy you thought might make a decent mate ends up bein an utter bellend who repeats the same fucking jokes and irritates you after an extremely short amount of time.