How many of your games do you finish?

[frogbeastegg]

Obviously MP only/primarily games don't count, nor do those which don't have an ending, such as Civilisation.

Second half of the question: Do you complete them to 100%, finding and doing everything possible, or do you count them as done when you've seen the main route through and the ending only?

Just curious to see how many others are in the same situation as me.

I'm terrible for not finishing my games. If they get too hard, or too fiddly, or too annoying, or too repetitive I tend to stop. I have a habit of ceasing play for days, sometimes weeks at a time, then either not bothering to go back, or going back and finding my skills and/or memory of what was going on have rusted and I need to restart but can't be bothered to. Though to be fair stopping playing isn't usually my choice; it's more a lack of time and a refusal to slow down my reading and writing to keep on playing.

I prefer to finish them to 100% on my first run through. When dealing with 60+ hour RPGs which take me months to complete replaying is not helpful. If I don't manage 100% on that first go I usually leave it at whatever I got.

[Keba]

Depends on the game, really, but I have finished nearly all games I have, but not seen/explored 100% of the content.

I have been known to play through a game over and over (reaching about 8-10 times for the Fallouts ... that's each, not together, and I only count 1 and 2 here) until I was satisfied that I had seen and done everything there was to do in the game (sometimes playing through a few more times for good measure) ... while at other times, I would throw the game away without playing it through once (Black and White being a prime example in this category, I simply grew tired of the game).

Though I generally prefer to discover everything in a game, most of the time I simply can't be bothered for a variety of reasons, from lack of time, to a dislike of some choices presented in games that simply prevent me from continuing down a certain path.

Personally, I blame my peers for this behaviour.

[econ21]

I very rarely finish them. I find that once I get past a "tipping point" where the game is not challenging, I give up and restart. This is very common in strategy games, like MTW and RTW mods. Alternatively, when the end is insight and there is not much discovery left, just hard slog, I sometimes quit. Best example: Jagged Alliance 2 - one of the greatest games of all time; I keep coming back to it but have never got to Meduna. Most RPGs also tended to fall into the latter camp - especially the old school RPGs like Might and Magic VI where you had to kill 100 Greater Werewolves and 100 Dragons to get onto the next map (where you have to kill 100 Titans).

I do seem to be getting better at finishing games - most of the games I've finished are ones I've played in the few years. Or perhaps game designers are getting better at introducing some closure or at least choosing a sensible game length (100 hours of great graphics is probably expensive to design).


The few games I've finished include the following CRPGs:

Fallout 2 - probably the first RPG I ever finished and almost the last. Fantastic ending.

Baldur's Gate 1 - man, did I have to sweat to finish that. Probably 300+ hours including restarts.

KOTOR1 and KOTOR2 - now that is how to write RPGs with a story and with closure (I won't listen to the legion of critics of KOTOR2s ending); shame replayability is low.

System Shock 2 - hard work getting through the Rickenbacker, but the Von Braun was so good, you feel obliged to do it.

Vampire Bloodlines - sadly, it gets progressively worse as you move through the game. But then again, it is falling from a very, very great height.


I don't play many action/shooter games, but the few I've tried tend to have sensible lengths and rather nice payoffs as their endings:

Vietcong - "don't mean nuthin', man"

Max Payne 2 - "dearest of all my friends"

Shadows of Udrentide - not listing NWN or HoTU is significant here

Mafia - has such a nice, sweet, happy ending.

Ghost Recon - no, I lie, they did not bother to make an ending for that otherwise superb game.


Some strategy games I've actually finished:

Civ2 and Civ4 - yes, froggie, they do have ends. And the only Civ4 game I finished, I lost (the Russians built the space craft) - the indignity!

RTW - finished my first campaign (Julii), then the game blew up my computer and the scales fell from my eyes. Don't believe I have finished any other TW game, outside of PBMs.


I'm not listing the scores of other games I've played and not finished, but the above is much less than a quarter of the total.

[Husar]

Depends a lot on the game, I would say about half of them 100%.
I finished for example Mafia but not all the bonus missions.
I don't remember about most strategy games but I tend to prefer skirmish, except for TW games where I often stop before the end date but the campaign goal might be reached by then.
Now that I think more, 100% for a quarter might be more accurate.
I also finished H&D2, Act of War(not the addon, the last mission there put me off, looked way too hard) and maybe other games.
Gothic 1 and 2 are the only ones I remember to have finished more than once, Gothic 3 not yet, restarted before that until now, the story is not that great anyway.
In some RTS games I tried but got bored before or something else kept me from finishing them.
Another one I finished was POTC.
And then both Mech Commanders and MW 4(plus the addon IIRC)
And StarSiege2 or what that was called, with those big robots that are not called mechs.
That should suffice for now, maybe 100% for half of them was right.
JA2 I usually stopped before the end, ended it only with cheats IIRC, but I don't really remember.

[professorspatula]

I don't tend to finish that many games now, but in the past I used to. When it comes to PS2 games I must have completed nearly all the ones I played, but then they tend to last for a very short length of time anyway. Back on the PC, I don't really have an urge to complete games. A lot of the ones I have go on for ages or have loads of depth which means I enjoy starting over again with different characters, factions or whatever to see how different things will be from the start again.

Many games I tend to play bit by bit every now again. Such as Half Life 2 and Doom 3 - games I've had for 2 years but have no real desire to complete.

The games I most recently completed are mostly old ones - Baldurs Gate 2 (I got to 99% completion a few years ago on my old PC, but it wasn't until earlier in the year I finally completed it, ending my 7 year stint with the series); Jagged Alliance 2 - I only got it a few months back, but loved it enough to complete it, and I've since installed some mods and playing it over again - though I typically keep restarting with different teams; Call of Duty 2 - with the checkpoint system and healing health system, it's a game that is incredibly easy to play from start to finish. But in some ways that makes it more enjoyable; System Shock 2 - another oldie I bought 2 years ago but only completed a couple of months back after finally getting over my jitters when it came to dealing with all those zombies and cyber midwives! Oh and I also completed UFO: Aftermath after discovering the game isn't actually impossible when you start bringing disposable machine gun turrets along. Then it's easy as pie.

I've got another dozen or so games I'm currently 'playing'. I say playing, but I mean loading, having a bit of a go, then forgetting about them again for 6 months. Games like Painkiller, X-Com, Total Annihilation, Evil Genius and loads of other ones I probably should just delete from the harddisk to make room for the stack of other games I've bought but don't have room/time to play.

[Geoffrey S]

I finish most all the way through, attempting to find as much as possible. Exceptions are Doom 3 and Morrowind. Don't have the oppurtunity to even start many games recently, though.

Mafia - has such a nice, sweet, happy ending.

I loved the ending of that one. Sad endings are a rarity in games, and it was great to see this one executed so well.

[naut]

Finished most of the GTAs 100% and any FPS I play 100%. Otherwise I couldn't be bothered.

[Xiahou]

This is definitely a big "problem" for me. I think I'm a chronic non-finisher when it comes to games and it's not always because I lose interest either... Alot of times, when I actually like a game I'll put off playing it because I don't want the adventure to end yet. Unfortunately, what happens is that I take so long to get back to them I forget where I was or what I was doing so I either have to start all over, or just don't bother.

This happened, at first, with Eternal Darkness- which is an awesome game. Eventually, I started over, got hooked again and played it to conclusion- twice. I trailed off again about halfway thru the 3rd time, so I guess I havent truly finished it either(those that have beat it 3x know what I mean).

Other games, like Vampire: Bloodlines, I just couldn't put down. I think I won it twice in a row (different clans/endings) while barely even playing other games. Tales of Symphonia on the GC was another game that I played almost relentlessly until I won it.

[screwtype]

I long ago gave up trying to finish games. I mostly just sample a game these days, get the flavour of it, enjoy it for a few days or maybe weeks if I like it. I've got better things to do than waste time trying to complete stupid games, especially if they're not all that compelling.

It does also depend on the game to a degree though. If it's a good strategy game, like say a TW game, I'm far more likely to try to close out a campaign than if it's, say, a shooter.

At the moment though about the only game I play is Imperialism II, I always have a game going and I generally complete a campaign either to the point where I've lost it or got to the stage where I've obviously won and there's no real point in continuing. I have actually finished quite a few Imp II games though, these days I probably 100% complete about 1 in every 10 or 12 campaigns I play.

But then, Imp II is a very special game, it's one of the very few games I've gone back to again and again, even after years of playing it I'm still finding out things I didn't know, encountering things I didn't expect, and working out new strategies I hadn't thought of before.

[KukriKhan]

I have a stubborn streak - even when I've lost interest in a game, I wanna get my money's worth, so play to completion. Plus, then when someone else wants to discuss a game I've played, I can talk semi-intelligently about it.

However, I can see the wisdom in not wasting time on a doomed effort.

[doc_bean]

I try to 'finish' most games I buy, in the sense of getting to the ending, but I don't think I've ever gone for 100%

I also often fail in actually reaching the ending...