I have this pattern with video games: I like a game and play it for awhile. Then something comes up where I don't play for two weeks, a month, longer. When I go back to the game, I'm way past the (easier) tutorial phases. The game is harder, and I don't even remember how the controls work. I usually give up pretty quickly after this point.
Back in the day, I could go a month or more (although I rarely did) without playing the NFL 2k games, and picking up next years game or starting back after a layoff was no problem.
The games I'm playing are: Infamous 1 and 2, Deus Ex, Red Dead Redemption, and LA Noire.
I'm not a gamer, so I get my ass kicked a lot anyway. How do you get back into a game after enough time away that everything is new?
1. "It only takes me a few minutes usually" In response to Reply # 0 Sat Jun-16-12 07:01 PM by Nodima
I'd beaten Infamous when it first came out, sold the game, later sold the system (idiot college days), bought another system shortly after and re-downloaded the game as part of that PSN Welcome Back package. I played it right up to the very end when I switched to Evil and didn't realize all my powers would be knocked back with no way to earn XP. So I sat on that save for over a year, and while thinking about grabbing PS+ I realized I had a save from JUST BEFORE that moment, so I bit the bullet on PS+, started my Infamous 2 download and booted up a game I'd already beaten twice, nearly three times. Granted that may have had something to do with it but after stumbling around like an idiot for a few minutes, the intensity of that last mission with the Ray Sphere really forced me to remember everything.
With basketball games it's basically muscle memory for me, I play 200-500 online games a year depending on how addictive the gameplay is (slowly pulling back since 2K9) plus multi-season Associations (except for this year because of the super-cheap AI and lack of rookies until February) so it's hard to forget how those games work if I take a couple month break. The Rockstar games are all pretty easy for me to get back on the horse with too - Red Dead and GTAIV are two of the only other games I own and whenever I fire them up it's like I pick up right where I left off, mainly since they've all essentially controlled the exact same way since GTAIII dropped.
