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Which games have made you loose track of time?

Booshka

Member
Oh shit, this reminds me of my GTA3 experience. My buddy and I played played that game for hours on end, day after day. I remember going outside after a weekend of seemingly nonstop play, and I felt like I was in the game. I was looking around at all the cars and I had this urge to get inside one and take off, like I was in the fucking game.

We played it way too fucking much.

Paging Jack Thompson and Fox News.
 
Civ is the easy answer to this, and a natural one given how it's a large-scale game that decomposes into incremental chunks and cascading short-term goals, but after a little while you realize just how much of your play time is padded with the amount of time it takes for the AI factions to take their turns, especially in the late game with most of the maps revealed.

A lot of builder games are like this: Crusader Kings, SimCity, and so on—they keep you hooked all the way to the point where the sheer complexity of what you've achieved slows your pace of play to a crawl. And for an expert player prone to optimizing everything, delegating menial late-game tasks to AI governors is never really an option.

Don't Starve feeds the same one-more-turn compulsion, but it never lets up on the density of things you can do at any given moment, and as you get further into the game you find yourself trying to squeeze all the productivity you can out of every minute instead of just sitting by the fire at night.
 

Aaron D.

Member
Sandbox titles fit the bill for me.

Minecraft
Bethesda titles (Elder Scrolls & Fallout)
Euro Truck Simulator
Farming Simulator
Paradox classics (Crusader Kings & Europa Universalis)
 
Lately, Destiny. "We were in the middle of discussing wedding plans and you just stopped talking out of nowhere for an hour!!" "An hour??? Its been like 15 min tops."

She was as angry as she was correct to say the least lol
 
Lately this hasn't happened at all to me. I remember being younger and becoming enraptured by even simpler games, finding the time flying by as I poured my attention into the world and mechanics presented to me... Whether it was some monstrous adventure with an engrossing story and enchanting world or a solid puzzle game with addicting gameplay, if it was good I'd soon find myself wondering where my time had went.

Spelunky pulled me in pretty deeply when I redownloaded it on the PS4, and the new Smash Bros. kept me occupied for a huge chunk of time, but lately I've been playing for a while, growing distracted or bored, and shut games off after an hour or two. I think Bayonetta 2 might break that curse once I crack into it tomorrow. here's hoping!

also, "lose." We got three pages deep without anyone noticing it?
 

SuomiDude

Member
There's tons of such games, and especially when I was a kid (20 or so years ago) and had holidays, we had all the time to play games. Made the time fly so quickly, but of course there's been cases even this year (not as long periods of time at once though) although I barely have time to do anything anymore :D So here's a short list of games that I at least remember now (in no specific order):

Master of Orion II (PC)
Ultima VII: BG/SI (PC)
Jagged Alliance/JA2 (PC)
Faxanadu (NES)
Secret of Mana (SNES)
Might & Magic VI/VII/VIII (PC)
Baldur's Gate/BGII (PC)
Icewind Dale (PC)
Fallout II (PC)
Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii)
Paper Mario/PM:TTYD (N64/GC)
Lemmings II (SNES)
Sim City (SNES)
Resident Evil: Revelations (Wii U)
Batman: AC (Wii U)
Assassin's Creed IV (Wii U)
Mass Effect 3 (Wii U)
Lego City Underground (Wii U)
Fire Emblem: PoR/FE:RD (GC/Wii)
Diablo II (PC)

And probably tons more. The biggest single time course during playing these games has been around 6-9 hours, in biggest cases way over 12 hours.
 
I remember this happened when I first got portal 2. Started playing it around 9am, and didn't stop until around 5pm after I realized I was really hungry from not eating anything all day.

Most recently happened playing dangan ronpa 2. Went from start of class trial #3 to end of class trial #4 in one sitting. Got done and was like "wait, when did it become night?"
 
n71XV5XRRBLiw.gif
 

woopWOOP

Member
Fallout New Vegas
Civilization IV
Minecraft
Mariokart 8's online mode

CIV and MK8 especially have that 'one more turn/match' power over me.
 

n0razi

Member
Counterstrike 1.6 back in college... good god i still dont know how i graduated

Simcity 2000 was hard to put down once you got a groove going
 

shandy706

Member
Horizon 2. Haven't played this late in years.

Started playing around 9pm....it's 2am and I just shut everything off. Time for bed!

(Counting recent games only in this case)
 

Vorheez

Member
Very recently, Don't Starve. Played it during the free weekend, and suddenly my day was gone (and so was my money, as I purchased it right after).

Basically, any game where there's lots of exploration. Dark Souls, Terraria, etc. I just get lost in them.
So much this... Nothing has done that to me like Don't Starve has, I actually avoid playing it because of that reason haha. Everytime I turn it on I lose hours of my day/night instantly.
 

Daft Bird

Member
In the older Pokemon titles I would spend literally all day playing. Now days the only game that does that for me is Madden but to a lesser extent.
 

Aces&Eights

Member
Oblivion
Portal 1 & 2
Fallout 3 & New Vegas
inFamous 1, 2 & Second Sun
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
Final Fantasy VII
Chromehounds
Trine 1 & 2 (looking for those damn potion things)
Metal Gear Solid 2, 3 & 4


Jesus, i have a problem.
 

moerser

Member
wow, in vanilla i managed to play for 16 hours straight before realizing i would have to get to work in 3 hours...
 

Tonguer

Member
Diablo III right now for me. GTA V before that.

Many games that I really get into cause me to lose track of time, though - part of when I know I am /really/ enjoying a game is that I don't have that sense of 'I need to get to a good checkpoint / chapter to break here', I just lose track.
 
In recent years, Skyrim and X-Com EU. I'd sit down to play them for an hour and the next thing I know I'm like, "I'm probably not getting 4 hours of sleep before work tomorrow". I started up X-Com again recently and yeah, big mistake.
 

bootski

Member
unfortunately for me, all games do this. but mmo's are especially devastating to my time. i can sit and grind for hours if i have the time and not feel like anytime has passed.
 

K' Dash

Member
Played Melee with friends 36 hours straight when it launched, we stopped for bathroom breaks only, we ate while choosing chars for the next match.

That was insane and we did it a few nore times.
 

Sintoid

Member
Games where you have to achieve best times, no matter the genere.
When I start to play a level in Velocity or Velocity 2X i usually loose the sense of time, sometimes I check the clock to see that it's late but again I go deep into gameplay.
Mirror's Edge destroyed many of my braincells
 

ElTopo

Banned
Dark Souls 2. Played 12 hours straight the day it came to Steam.
Alien Isolation. Played for about an hour and then marathoned it one day and beat it in about 15 hours. Played for about 10-12 hours straight and took a break and then beat it in another 5 hours.
I played so much Team Fortress 2 back in the day that it effected my job at the time.
 

Ivory Samoan

Gold Member
Any RPG I'm into at the time.

One minute, just had dinner.. settling in for a few hours in Thedas/Tamriel/Temeria...

Nek minnit, it's 6am and I've got a meeting at 9am :p
 
I got skyrim (pc version) on release at a time when I wasnt working and my wife and kids were on holiday. I must have sank 3 or 4 days solid into the game. In the end I got totally bored and have never completed it!
 

Aeqvitas

Member
Crusader Kings II or EU IV.

Literally hours disappear without a trace. Can't count the number of times I realize it is 4:30 in the morning and I have to wake up in 2 hours.
 
Easily Civilization V, it honestly gets everyone who plays it to lose track of time, maybe there are some subliminal messages in the game??
 

lsslave

Jew Gamer
Europa Universalis 4 is probably the worst offender. My old roommate and I went to play it for "a couple hours" and it was probably 13 or 14 hours before we realized we'd pissed away an entire day staring at a damn world map.

Back when I was younger the (pre modern) Final Fantasy games stole days away from me.

And when I'm with a good group of friends Smash Bros and Mario Kart make an entire day disappear. For the most part I think it's the friends playing with me more than the game but they are the worst offenders.
 

Jagsrock

Banned
Mario kart and Super smash bros-so easy to get caught up in it,even when you tell yourself "OK this is the last match" you always end up playing another and another and another especially if your friends are competitive.

Red dead redemption and gtav- between doing missions fucking around and exploring its incredibly easy to lose yourself in both these games.
 
Same thing happened to me.


Got home from work aand the store around 8, decided to replay Bayo1 before jumping into Bayo2. 6 hours later I'm on chapter 7 and its 2:45 am

Thank you Platinum Games!
 
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