r/AfterWorkGamers

After a full week, I usually lean one way depending on energy levels.

What works best for you on this Friday night?

To preface im 38 and have two young kids so my game time is limited to say the least lol so ive been playing Hell is us. Its an awesome soulslike game with absolutely no hand holding so at times when I take too long of a break I completely forget what I was doing lol so I find myself saying fuck it and just looking up codes and passwords for locked doors because I just dont have the patience or time to really pay attention to all the I formation your handed in this game. The puzzles are really fun when I have time to actually figure them out on my own. Now I've been a gamer since I was 2 and I even beat super ghosts and goblins twice when I was 9 to get the final ending. Played tons of difficult games until I had kids than it all went to I just dont have the ability to really get deep into a game anymore. Who has felt their brains go into easy mode of the years? And which games to you play that are difficult but dont involve alot of attention as far as lore goes? I just beat chronos a new dawn and that was an awesome game laid out almost for adult life lol

Edit: yes im well aware that having kids was my choice and I wouldnt trade that for any amount of game time. I was just saying having kids makes it hard to rememeber games with longer formats is all lol

Thanks for the comments everyone I think i may try to get my ass up earlier to game more but I also just play alot of coop games with friends later in the night around 9 lately.

I’ve been building a small mobile-first app called TMG (Too Many Games) for gamers like me who spend almost as much time deciding what to play as actually playing 😂

It helps you cut through the pile, discover games that fit your available time, and build a more manageable gaming shortlist.

I’ve just put the first proper test version live and I’m looking for a few gamers to try it before I open it up more widely.

👉Early access link

If you give it a go, there’s a 60-second feedback form in the app. Brutal feedback very welcome.

I've been looking for a new game to hook me, and I recently got Cyberpunk 2077 from the App Store to play something on my Mac, but I was looking through my backlog and forgot that I downloaded The Witcher 3 on my ps4 as the free psn monthly game a long time ago and realized I could upgrade to the ps5 remaster for free. I'm currently downloading it.

I've played about an hour of Cyberpunk, and I'm having a hard time keeping going- it's been slow. I also tried to do the Witcher through the switch port a long time ago but bounced off really quick and remember nothing.

I have a really bad habit of starting games and bouncing off them quick and my backlog is LONG. The last game I actually sat down and played at least through the main story was Ghost of Yotei. I've been bouncing between Skyrim and Fallout New Vegas since.

Anyone willing to make a case for either? Will I be lost without playing the first two Witcher games? My ps remote app works well with my backbone and phone so the portability of my laptop isn't too big a draw.

Some of my favorite single-player games are Skyrim, Ghost of Tsushima, Red Dead 2, GoW 2018, the Spider-Man Games, the older AC games (and Odyssey) if that helps.

Quick explanation: I'm 30. I've been playing games since I was about 11, when the family got its first PC. Over time, like all adults, I started playing less. Games stopped giving me as much enjoyment. I went through all the phases of "no-life gamer" despair, and now I have a pile of games I can play in my free time and actually enjoy

Question: So yeah, at the beginning I lied a little. Either I don't play at all and I don't have the slightest urge for it. Even when I pick up a controller, I put it down and choose to do "adult stuff" or just sleep. Or.. I play like a 15-year-old no-life gamer. I start watching vids about the game, looking up some character leveling tactics or something like that (depending on what I catch myself hyperfixating on), and after a while it lets go of me. It's not like I'm super worried about it, but sometimes there are moments when I think, "damn, am I all right?" What do you say?

As I got older and had less time to play videogames I kind of stopped enjoying them. This sucked because when I was a kid I loved playing videogames, so this feeling of not enjoying them very much anymore kind of made me a little sad. I would look at all of the new releases and know that even though they intrigued me, I would not enjoy playing them. I found that the answer lied in the way I was playing the videogames. As I got older and had less time to play, I started to hyper-optimize the way I played so I could fit more content into a smaller amount of time. This was the problem. I wasn't playing the videogames how I wanted to play them, I was playing the way the guides and the tutorials were telling me to play. How did I fix this? I started playing again with fun being my main priority. I just recently beat Dark Souls 1 largely on my own with minimal help from guides.- I had a blast. It was really hard but fun. I enjoyed playing the game how I wanted to play it, not how some you tube guide wanted me to play. Did it take me longer to beat? Yes. Was it harder? Yes. This just added to the fun.

I don't know how to express it or anyone could relate but gaming just feels like chore to me nowadays. I feel my gaming skills have gotten rusty and somewhere I'm afraid of facing the challenges especially the tough ones even though I get through all of those eventually, I'm constantly thinking about finishing the game so that I can play something else. Feels like I'm doing it to cross it off my bucket list of games just for the sake of finishing it.

If the game is too easy I feel as if it's an insult to my IQ. And if it's too difficult then I get tired of grinding and use cheese strategies to get through that tough boss fight where I was killed like 100 times (wukong for example) and then again feel bad about it, plus I can't get myself to accept the fact that it's fine to move ahead without doing all the side quests and finding all the hidden items, if I don't it feels incomplete and I get a FOMO of missing out on something important or interesting. I can't accept the fact that I'm not that hardcore gamer teen anymore.

Most of the times whenever I turn on my pc for gaming I just end up browsing and watching youtube. And on rare occasions when I find a game really engaging I feel like I should be doing something productive and I'm wasting my time. It's not that I don't like gaming anymore, I'm always excited for what I'll be playing next but rarely for what I'm playing currently. Then there's another thought my friend planted in my mind that playing against AI is like hitting a tennis ball against a brick wall. Sure, the ball comes back, but it doesn't give you the thrill of trying to outsmart a real person on the court, basically he likes playing online multiplayer battle royale games. But the thought of having to put in so much effort in it just to get fairly decent just puts me off.

I don't know if anyone can relate, but maybe this is just what growing up does to you. The kid inside slowly dies out, leaving behind a shell just ticking boxes off a list. But I still try telling myself "Don't you dare go hollow."