This year has had most of my time wrapped up in two big games: Horizon Forbidden West and The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. With limited playtime, I focused on Horizon for three months and Zelda for about three and a half months. While I have beaten Horizon (sort of), Zelda remains unfinished and I have not fired it up in about two months.
I think my character is ready to move the story forward, having explored most of the three maps that compose the sky, land, and underground of the game. I've gotten a lot of health and stamina built up, acquired some great weapons, upgraded my armor, beaten some bosses, and so forth, but I have not yet been able to get motivated to finish the job.
Even with these two games being near perfect, their giant open worlds - with so many locations, quests, and other goals - were just too much to enjoy in one three month setting. By the time I get near the end, I end up rushing past a lot of content and just wishing it was over. Even with every side mission and plot development being fun and engaging, I find myself eyeing the next game down the road and wishing I was there.
So this malaise I feel with giant open world games is a result of my gaming wanderlust, where I want to play and beat a large variety of games from different eras. When I was single, I would squeeze every drop out of games like these, but as an old ass nerd with a lot of other commitments and an ever-growing backlog, I don't want to spend all my time with just one or two games a year.
So I took a break from the unfinished Zelda and jumped into a bunch of smaller, shorter games over the last two months and have found those experiences to be varied and enjoyable. When returning to Zelda hits me as something other than "work" or "unfinished business", I'll pencil it back into the schedule. Going forward, however, I think I will only choose one of these types of games a year.
Again, the games are awesome and near perfect, and I am glad that they have so much content and continuing playability. The current version of me, however, is imperfect and less capable of staying in one place for long periods of time, it seems.
