I know exactly how you feel, I felt the same way after playing Deus Ex Human Revolution a couple years ago, a game I played twice in a row, despite never doing so with any game, since I started working on my backlog a few years ago. After that game, my expectations had increased to such a level that all other games seemed so bad as to not even be worthy of my time. Although, I knew that they were only bad in comparison with something I knew to be great and still felt like they were worth playing.

I've felt like that in periods and afterwards I've occasionally found a game that makes me think "oh, this is the good stuff", but then I give some lesser game a chance, because I can't just play the ones I know I love (that's how I ended up with my backlog) and I'm back to thinking "why I am wasting time on this". I don't really know the best way to cure such gaming blues, if it's by only playing games in your "bound to be great" list or to try to slowly work your way down to less great games or the reverse. Expectations are tricky.

I tried to prevent my disappointment by slowly working my way up my "most anticipated games" list, so that each game would feel better than the previous one, but perhaps I started too low. After playing and being disappointed by Enslaved: Odyssey to the West and Hunted: the Demon's Forge, I entirely lost interest in gaming and every attempt to start a new game (Sleeping Dogs, Saint's Row 2, Arx Fatalis) ended in disappointment, because they werent great from the start. Its been roughly 4 months since that happened, but right now, I'm just starting to get back to my previous joy of gaming, thanks to avoiding stuff in games that annoy me.

Saint's Row 2, that I'm playing right now, has lots of side missions and you have to do them to gather enough "respect" to unlock story missions, but I only choose the ones I like (and struggle with the completionist in me that wants to clear them all, raise that % completed statistic to the max). Have started to play Arx Fatalis again as well and will play Sleeping Dogs later, although its "leaving mission area!" and other BS really pisses me off.

Enslaved and Hunted have very good parts (graphics, characters, voice acting), but bad combat and general gameplay. I feel I am getting more annoyed and less able to put up with the flaws of games than I used to (feeling that they make the whole game stink), but I've also bought more games that I'm uncertain I'd really enjoy, because of Steam sales and other ridiculously cheap offers, as well as my own ambition to broaden my horizons.

I do have Saint's Row 2 and Hunted - Demon Forge on my lists to do, but they have lower priority.
TBH I'm no longer completionists collector that need to max out the game, made exception for Just Cause 2 for max achievement but that's it.

I guess it's time to find yet another hobby...

Mary Skelter: Nightmares has been devouring a lot of my free time. I chose to play on Hard Mode which - for any DRPG - is a grind of a grind. I'm finally at a point where I have figured out most of the advanced battle mechanics - as well as being at a point where the plot is about to climax!

Also, I'm finally playing Abe's Oddyssee's remake. It's gorgeous, a lot easier than the original - and so much fun! I used to play the original on PS1 and I am glad to say that I am not disappointed!

I started Witcher awhile ago... not sure when I'll return to it.

I can't wait to fire this one up - it's finally going to be sooner rather than later after drooling over it for years. I'm still on the fence as to whether I want to *waste* points on the Pet Perk. I knew about it all the way back from game release. I think for pure humor value it'll be classic. But while I'm not a compulsive Min / Max type RPG player I don't like to grab "niche" sort of perks.

I've actually sunk a bunch of time into Regalia. Pretty fun game. A bit simple (the town building is minimal) and I'm not really sure how deep the combat is, but it is fun. Probably due to swapping in a lot of characters - trying new combinations is a decent draw.

And the game / story is pretty hilarious. It looks a bit "kiddy" but the dialogue is fairly funny at times. I like it.

Well, I'm still in the early going, but from what I've seen so far the pet perk actually is useful. Yeah, it's funny but it seems like they tried to make it a reasonable option for advancing through missions (e.g., talking to a dog in the town graveyard can help you rule out suspects of a murder).

Corpse Party (the PC version)

Currently finished with chapters 1-3.

Not gonna lie, this game is getting more under my skin than I thought. Something about the way Corpse Party combines descriptive text with the audio (especially the effects and voice acting) just gets me more than most other horror games. Some of the wrong ends have moments that make me flinch with what's going on, and plenty of in-game encounters have had my heart race.

That being said, I am definitely enjoying it. I love a game that can stick out in my mind in such a way, and Corpse Party is really doing that for me.

I don't care about achievements, I just usually have the urge to do every quest, talk to everyone about everything and explore every little piece of the map. I want to get the most out of every game, but I've also come to realise that quality beats quantity. If a game is a buffet, then I don't have to eat everything that's available, I just pick the good stuff. My spare time is too valuable to spend on things I don't like doing.

As for other hobbies, I watched a lot of movies I had recorded on my TiVo and read some books during the time I stopped playing. I still have a backlog of movies, but it's not as severe as my gaming backlog.

XCOM enemy within.

I have already lost 7 countries and all but 1 of my most powerful soldiers and I haven't even researched alien containment yet.

I've got about 25 hours into that one now. Still not making any progress though. Think I may grab the 'play an old favorite again' DLC.

The Broken Sword III: The Sleeping Dragon

Terrible controls and ugly 3D graphics.

Doing a playthrough of the s.t.a.l.k.e.r series.

Plus a lot of sokoban puzzles. Terrible game indeed

Beaten the dos version of earth 2140 main campaing for UCS wonder if ED will be harder.
And there are still mission pack 1 and 2 to do, wonder if the right order is from up to down.

Exactly. Those sokoban parts are extremely irritating, because it's in general quite obvious how to solve it, but it takes ages to execute the sequence because of clunky controls.

I've checked BS4 on HLTB and I'm not sure if I'm strong enough to spend next 10 hours like these on my way to BS5... :/