Finish What You Start

I always finish games I start.

Only just recently I haven't finished these great games: Riddick, Resurrection of Evil, San Andreas, Condemned, Burnout 360, The Movies, Black and White 2, Oblivion........................

I never finished Super Mario Bros.

i think remo is talking about me, because i never finished deus ex, fallout, half life 2, max payne..... :(

The whole Star Control was amazing in every aspect. The one on one battles were kickass, especially when you finall y found yourself a willing victim (friend) and choose the leeliou (or whatever that space ship that could warp in and out of existence was called) and you teleported from one to the other location and zapped his big-ass ship with the eenny weeny lazer :)
Hours of friendship destroying phun :)
Oh, and not to mention SC 1, the campaign was kickass. I once had a campaign map spawn on a 2 player splitscreen setup where my base spawned RIGHT next to the opponent meaning all I needed to do was whup his ass in one round of battle to win the whole darn thing.
I still remember planning a whole day of campaigns with friends at my house in africa, eating pizza and just kicking the !<rap out of each other :) Was awesome. I wish the guys who designed SC knew what a BIG impact it's game had on the whole gaming scene (that and the original DOOM, oh, and DUNE II).
Oh happy memories :)

About a year ago I made a list of all the games I owned for the current gen consoles and noted which ones I had yet to finish. I then tried to finish every game I had. I just finished GTA:SA a few days ago so now I'm up to having finished 32 out of 41 games for PS1/PS2/Xbox/GC.

I try to finish most games I play, though the main reason I don't finish them is stupid game design.

I've never finished GTA: Vice City because of that mission where you have to drop bombs on a boat with a remote controlled plane.

Or in Tribes: Vengeance where you have to do those tests, I could never do the time trial one fast enough. RUNNING BACK AN FORTH IN A TUNNEL? WHAT GREAT GAMEPLAY!

Or I got about half way though Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time before I gave up in sheer frustration after trying to fight these dudes who knock you down then you try to get up they knock you down again and if you try to do that vault move they knock you down again then you try to get some breathing space and they teleport in your face then you finally manage to kill them all with a tiny bit of health left a second batch respawns... <breaths out>

I never finished Doom 3... :(

Diablo I and II I loved but never finished. Morrowind either. Damn you, RPGS!

Ratso Fatso Rat? Rats of a Tsorat?

Phew! Good to know others are in the same boat. I was considering going to therapy for ADD.

I wonder just how many people finished Symphony of the Night without the glasses and still think that was the end?

does anyone else here play shooters (like raiden) for infinity without ever getting bored? I think raiden is one of the games I've been playing again and again for over 10 years, and I still haven't beaten it completely without dying, gotten close. it's not even because of fullfilling nostalgia, the games don't feel old. The first level or 2 in these games don't even have the "ugh" factor of the thought of having to replay doom 3, or whatever FPS again, I dunno. maybe thats the same as some movies you only want to watch once, but others you will watch again. i dont know. sfbafbsdfuwer

So instead of doing my work I decided to watch Batman instead. I just want to reiterate that Jack Nicholson as The Joker is fucking brilliant.

That is all.

Hmmm...does anyone know how to finish Tetris? The blocks just keep coming....I think I've been had.

Just wanna say that if you never found Meche, you missed one of the finest endings in video game history. I make a stubborn point of finishing almost every game I start, even if I have to cheat my ass off to do it, because I want to see how they finish. I played the second half of Doom3 in god mode because, even though the game bored me to tears, I wanted to see the ending. Not bad, I thought. Shame about the middle.

Possibly the only worse thing you can do is never install the game you bought. That's happened to me unfortunately. Expansion for BF2, Dungeon Siege 2, last expansion for Neverwinter Nights. I still have to install these and I've had them for a while now. I blame WoW

One of the main reasons I don't finish games is because there is often little incentive to do so. With many games, after you've played them for 10-20 hours, you've experienced all there is to see and do in the game, and the act of finishing it is just doing more of what you have already done, just with a few tougher enemies and maybe a couple of new levels.

when i was younger i used to rent a game (NES then SNES) every weekend and consistently finish them before turning them back in

i stopped doing that when the N64 came out because I got my first computer, which of course had games that were 1000x times more interesting to me

since then I find that I lack the time and the desire to finish most games I play, of course I can still finish games that are really good, i.e.: RE4, DQ8, LoZ:WW...

That's a stupid theory. You don't have to finish games. You don't HAVE to finish books. Sucky game, buggy game - don't finish. You get bored by a game: don't finish. You love Morrowind's first two hours then you realize - uhm, kinda awkward - don't finish. There's an essential difference between fun and this competitive "Schwanzvergleich" attitude where you go: "Hey look at me I finished ooooh so many games, I'm the man."

No.

Zenon was one of the hardest games I ever completed. Alice I had to clip through the last 2 levels because the jump puzzles were just stupid hard.

And of course, I have to admit I never finished Daikatana (I guess I just admitted paying for it though =\ )

I dunno if it's gamer A.D.D. that's overtaken the age group i'm in or what?

I'm 23 now. started with an NES, went to Genesis, had a gameboy, got my first PC, started playing all those Kings Quest/Space Quest titles, Duke Nukem came along, so did WarCraft 2 and what not.

N64 rolled around and the next thing you know I'm trying to get all the stars in Mario and beat the fastest times to unlock codes for Goldeneye. Couple of years past on and somewhere along the way I picked up a PlayStation with RE1, RE2, Silent Hill, Dino Crisis (dunno, was feeling evil that year), a bunch of the Final Fantasy's and a few other titles like Metal Gear Solid and what not.

Then more PC bombardment.. half life came out-- we were soon playing counterstrike beta 1, beta 2 with all the gun-running and the two maps, cs_siege and cs_mansion (so many memories, i cannot even begin to tell you)

I picked up a PS2, GameCube and Xbox shortly after that. It was madness. I honestly don't think I finished any Nintendo game I purchased on GameCube.

Finished Halo on Xbox, got halfway through prince of persia...

ugh, this list could go on

shadows of collossus stares at me.

It's bad... real bad.

I'm pretty terrible with finishing games, partly because maybe i'm just a retard and they made guidebooks for people like me, or I just have some sort of acute gaming a.d.d. and i cannot keep myself paying attention.

i actually started playing FF games simply because of all the text reading-- i love reading, so for me, those were always getting my attention-- but they were simply too fucking long. ugh.

don't even get me started on GTA. Forget that game.

I think the number one thing that has destroyed the 'finish the game' feel for me is something that has cropped up in games more and more these days...

the stupid completion percentage bar/#.

It stares you in the face like:
'h4w h4w, you've only completed 4% and you've played 10 hours, gg.'

soooooooo yeaaaaa..... i just bought metroid hunters for my DS-- i WILL try my best to finish it (as I didn't finish either GCN counterparts :( )

What if you got too scared to finish the game? :(

Ultima Underworld oh why did level 5 have to be so dark and scary.

I kind of see it a different way. If i don't finish a game it's not because of gamer ADD or because I'm lazy or even because I'm too busy, it's because the game just didnt grip me and make me want to finish it. I admit i'm not a hardcore gamer, but I wont finish a game I don't like just so I could say that I finished it. The games I finish are the games I enjoy all the way through and made it worth my while to invest my time. The games that just sort of faded away before seeing the end are one's that I either didn't like, or didn't have enough consistency to get me though.
So yeah, I blame the game makers more than the game players.

What about really bad games? I never want to see or touch Grandia 3 again and i never beat that game.

Good lord was it bad....

I never did finish Pac-Man

It is VERY rare that i don't play a game till i see the end..
as long as there is content to discover i'll play it..
f.e. the godfather game which i pretty much finished now..did all the missions etc.. but don'T have the desire to get all the bonus filmreels etc..
too tedious of a task..

( the game is better than most reviews tell you btw.. no masterpiece though )

Also got to the "end" in oblivion.. still got some fighters guild quests etc open.. but the desire to play the game is gone.. i'll probably start it up occasionally from now on..

Post NES-era (wherein many games were simply too hard/repetitive/reflex-based for me to finish), I have finished just about every game I've ever purchased, since. Perhaps the point is reiterated by the fact that as a gamer, I gravitate towards more story-based games that warrant and reward completion from their more sharply defined play arc of 'beginning', 'middle', and 'end'.

There are only a small handful of games that I didn't finish - either from a (very) soured gameplay experience, technical difficulty, or some other physical side effect (illness).

Oddly, while most of the time, the gameplay is rewarding all the way through to the end, more often than not, the actual coda or ending cutscene is absolutely unrewarding. Conversely to the observation above, I can probably count on one hand the number of games that have had a satisfying sense of reward or closure, post completion. For someone that actually takes the time to see games through to the end, this is a personally disappointing aspect of gaming, even if it is relatively small in the big picture of playing/experiencing a game.

Over the years, I've come to learn that starting a fresh game and playing the beginning sections are usually my favorite parts of the game. I love the ritual of installing a game, reading the manual(s), customizing my controls and getting acquainted with the engine and the performance settings. I love playing tutorial levels, for their gentle learning curve, and general "safe" feel, as well as the usually exposition heavy introduction to the game's world, characters and story premise.

The often repetitive nature of near endgame scenarios and gameplay, as well as the gimmick-y "funneling" aspect of the narrative as the climax approaches is where my interest begins to wane. Actually, the above closely describes how I feel about movies as well. The endings for both mediums, in many case, seem to feel more like a necessary chore that the creators and consumers must both endure, rather than them being relish-able, savored experiences in their own right.

Usually, the truly great games are the ones where that fresh, excited feeling of awe and curiosity is continued 10-20+ hours into the game and where I am continually left amazed, all the way through to the end.

I went a step farther. I only keep the games, that I really thought were awsome. I don't keep the games that were "good enough".

I have sold over 100 games in the last 3 years or so.

I have my small game collection, and I guess I like it better that way.

I am moving away from games in general anyways.

Games I have not finished:
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (PSP)
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 2 (Xbox)
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest (GCN)
Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (N64)
The Thing (Xbox)
Dungeon Siege 2 (PC)
Gran Turismo 3 & 4 (PS2)

Several others which I can't remember. Most if not all of these I haven't finished were because some other game was released. Not due to lack of interest. Does anyone else have the habit of buying a DVD and not watching for three months?

I never finished psychonauts :( I know remo will probably ream-o me for it, but the last level was just so annoying with it's jumping puzzles with people throwing fireballs at you while water is rising from below.

But up until then, I love that game.

I never finished Zelda II. Got past the statue thing once, and could never beat shadow link :(

F-yeah.. Star Control 2 for 3DO was the greatest game ever.. great RPG element, with the classic super melee! SC1 was also the shit on my old pc.

I stole my 3DO back from a friend who I had sold it too, when his family was moving.. just so I could play SC2 again, and again, and again. SC3 wasnt anywhere as near as 2.

Also if you liked the RPG element of SC2 check out Space Rangers 2.

Ur-Quan!

Not a 100% rule but normally the better the story in the game, the more likely I'm going to finish it. The better the game play, the more likely I'm going to replay it.

This dosent just apply to gamers, either. Publishers like EA barely finish developing the games they start.

my character in oblivion is strugglin with the ghosts and magic menz i am now encountering. The main quest has gotten pretty hard. I have no mysticism to use soul trap, no filled gems, no more weapons with charge..
i am a fighter with minimal magic. :(

I know that as I have gotten a life outside of gaming, finishing games is not on the priority list. Most of the games I play now are of the portable variety, as most of my time that I have free is time that I am on a plane or travelling. The PSP and the DS get lots of use while my gamecube and PS2 are both left unused.

I am a dirty gamer leech.

Most satisfying game I actually finished last year:

Oddworld Stranger's Wrath

I find that when I don't finish a game it's like a dark spot on my shelf. Viewtiful Joe and Ninja Gaiden are glaring at me, but I just don't have the patience to finish them....stupid pirhana fish.

games that I haven't finished and really regret
- half-life 2
- halo 2
- ocarina of time
- none of the GTAs
- system shock 2
- planescape
- vampire: bloodlines

The stack of games I have unfinished is ri-goddamn-diculous, and posting them here would surely exceed the 4000 letter limit on the postform. Much like Mr. Remo, I too am working through some of my backlog, including at the moment, Castlevania: Curse of Darkness and The Suffering 2.

Damn it, I loved the Suffering and was glued to my seat from start to finish, and the next one looks promising. Why didn't I put more time into it? Well, I know that that's 'cause I bought about 6 games at the same time and the others ended up taking precedence somehow.