Games which took over your schedule

[Quitch]

I'd like to have a discussion of games which you loved. Not games you enjoyed playing and moved on, but ones which bit you so hard you couldn't shake them off, thought about them all the time, considered phoning in sick to work to play some more, etc.

For example, I've played a lot of Dawn of War Dark Crusade and I love the game, but I don't feel compelled to play it, I just went through phases of tackling a campaign but it was more of a space filler until the next great game emerged.

I'd also like to keep this a discussion of games you first played recently (without defining what that means).

Kohan II - Q1 07

Four games spring to my mind with the first being in January 2007. Kohan II. I finally decided to settle down and give this game a fair crack and it was a nice enough twist on the genre, and I liked not having to micro powers and seeing little guys emerge from forts to fight people. However, for me the crowning moment was when I watched a replay from a campaign mission and realised that rather than having been defeated by the usual massive enemy base, the enemy had started the mission much like me with a single town, had expanded and then crushed me. Once I realised that not only wasn't I going to have to hunker down and play tech war, but that the AI wasn't limited in how it would attack me, the game took on new life. Every waking second I had was spent playing the campaign, trying for every secondary objective, ensuring that I out-expanded and out-thought the enemy. It's also the first time that AI cheating hasn't irritated me, the entire process of the enemy units getting aids was so transparent and fit in so well to the fear the shadows were supposed to inspire, that I fully embraced it and went about revising my plans to avoid the usual attack move blob.

I was very sad when the game finished and was so obsessed with making skirmish last that I ran over a hundred hours of automated AI fights to figure out which ones were the toughest, resulting in the Kohan II AI League (http://kohan.chimaerica.com/ai_league/ai_league.htm)


Space Rangers II - Q2 07

My next obsession was that same year when I decided to put some time into Space Rangers II. Oh my God, what a fantastic game, the single-best living world game yet created. I could follow anyone anywhere and see them live their life and do pretty much the same things I did (except missions) and vie to do better.

This is also the first game where I've enjoyed mini-games. Spending an hour in a prison text adventure only to emerge and see stars again and realise that you were in a mini-game... just amazing. I even liked the RTS component, because I'm a sucker for anything which encourages aggressive play and that was all about the parry and thrust of taking and re-taking factories without over-extending yourself, even if the robot balance was rubbish.

I'm surprised, it's really a game which strings you along action-RPG style, with slightly better equipment and scouting for sweet loot, yet those type of games normally do nothing for me. Here I would obsess over each new hull and loadout.


Command & Conquer 3 - 08 sometime

My guilty pleasure. I really like the C&C storyline, recycled and over-acted as it is. Even though it's avoided telling a deeper story about the GDI sacrificing vast swathes of the globe, and NOD who put themselves forward as the protector of the people, I enjoy its rather black & white approach.

This game works for a number of reasons. First, it takes itself seriously. The story may be silly, but this is gaming not a novel, I find that once I'm immersed into something it doesn't matter how silly the story sounds, if I'm personally invested then I'm there. But it's less the story as told in the FMV (of which the NOD stuff was much, much better) than the story told in the missions which makes this game magic. You start in the blue zones and slowly progress to the red zones, a truly alien wilderness with strange music backing to put the unsettling atmosphere in place.

On top of that you have some excellent mission variety, a lot of destroy the base, but with plenty of objectives usually between you and that point. And the missions would use opening waves or timers, or even three factions in one mission, to really put the pressure on you, which mitigated the tedium of teching up your mega force to crush the enemy each mission.

They even made the third faction interesting and I loved the way they were introduced and, when you finally play from their side, the way you discover their perspective on matters is possibly even more desperate than that of GDI and NOD.

C&C3 is one of those games where playing the skirmish before the missions will really ruin the experience.


Far Cry 2 - Q1-Q2 09

So little depth to the world, but who cares? You're put in a huge sandbox with a number of different battle arenas to try out, given a variety of guns to try different approaches with (and most of those approaches are useful so you'll probably try them), and the diamond hunt to get you out and about to appreciate the lush African scenery. This is simply the most drop-dead gorgeous game I have ever played and the world is probably what kept pulling me back in. Hell, having completed the Northern map I restarted the game to because I missed some of the tapes, and I proceeded to finish it again, trying different approaches to each battle arena each time.

Just bloody fantastic.


Fallout 3 Q4 09

This is my current baby. I really liked the way they establish your background in the playable childhood opening, and it made the wastes all the more awe inspiring when you finally emerge into them, this strange and alien landscape which you need to learn to understand.

I just find myself compelled to continue, even though the characters never really develop in a satisfactory fashion and the world is static, I find this such an interesting place to be with each questline telling its own little story, often through imagery, that I must continue.

I'm already planning my second run-through.

[Lunch of Kong]

darkwinds

[metta]

Life™

[copet]

Starsiege: Tribes. I never phoned into work, but I will admit that there was more than 1 day I skipped classes in Elementary/Middle School to play this game. In particular, I have a scene in my mind of doing fast Rollercoaster (map) flag caps using the scout and flying it through the flag stand. That game, for me, was the first major multiplayer FPS.

[Nixxter]

Playing WOW from launch for a couple years definitely took me over like some kind of symbiotic brain influenza.

I played a rogue and I remember walking downtown in Chicago irl amongst millions of pedestrians getting in my way and thinking, "I can slide right behind this 'widester', gank 'em, and disappear like smoke in a flash".

Somehow I pulled out of that tractor beam (mostly because I wasn't able to play other games I was missing out on). Though lately I have been wondering what it would be like to return, because I did love me that game.

[schurem]

Eve-online,
I play this off and on for three years now. At times i get sucked in so completely that the world outside seems less real than the world in my pc room. Then i get bored and only casually log on for some time until the bug bites again.

Empire total war,
Despite the unit AI bugs, and the opponent AI that barely manages to rise above roadblock level, this title invites me to bad three-day binges from time to time. There's just something about having hundreds upon hundreds of little dudes at your command and littering the battlefield with dead little dudes. This has worked from me from the first time i played Shogun.

Far Cry 2,
Not just the graphic display of the african nature in this title, but mostly the soundscape of jungle and savanna make it a permanent fixture on my hard drive, one i return to once in a while. Currently playing on very hard, which is awesome.

[Omniscia]

SMAC had me in its thrall for a good long while. There was a time I could play for up to 16 hours without moving once, for sustenance or anything else. It helps that I apparently have a large bladder and slow digestive system...

But I never thought about giving up work or school for it. That one kept me from getting any sleep, but never did I miss anything else on account of it.

Few have, and they've tended to be sprawling, epic RPGs. Most recently Fallout 3 (I just had to keep exploring the wastes, to find that next tableau or Bobblehead) and Dragon Age (the gameplay was rote, but the character interactions were like playing through a grand high fantasy novel).

The only games I've played enough that they enter my dreams, on the other hand, are Daggerfall and Command & Conquer.

[Quitch]

SMAC is rather stretching the definition of "recent" unless you only just discovered it.

[Omniscia]

SMAC is rather stretching the definition of "recent" unless you only just discovered it.

I'm not offering it as a recent example; just to establish a baseline.

[Aleck]

It's not at all recent, but the original Gold Box Pool of Radiance sucked up an ungodly amount of my time. This was back when you made your own maps and took your own notes, and I filled up an entire notebook while playing that game.

I played it over summer vacation, and I seriously think I spent most of the month of July sitting at the computer, playing (14+ hrs. a day, 5-6 days a week). Looking back, it's a little scary, but at the same time, I LOVED that game. :)

[Jorune]

2nd Quarter 09 - present

For me, it's DEMIGOD. It's the FIRST game that sucked me into online multiplayer gaming. I'm one of those single player type people that never ventured online. But learning the basics was easy and than the deepening strategies that unfolded, yeah.

I bought this game early in the beta stage but never played it until it's release. And I've been playing almost everynight since. I got one of my friends (also a single player kind of guy), to buy the game and now HE'S addicted to playing (worse than me, he wakes up early and gets a couple games in before work). While we try to play with each other, it doesn't always happen. We always talk the following morning about battles we were in.

This game is pretty close to a gladitorial-type experience. I still get excited before I settle in to play an online match, and if I didn't have to go out and shovel some snow, I think I'd sneak a game in now.

Wow, I just realized that if I've been playing this game since launch, mid-april, than I've been playing it for the last eight months!

Either 07 or 08

CIVILIZATION IV with BEYOND THE SWORD. I put it on Epic game with large land mass. I picked the French. I played every morning before work began and than the evenings afterwards. It took me a solid month + to finish that game. I had the Persians next door whom I got along with. They, however, were conquering everybody else. I had high culture and had nabbed a city or two from them. At one point, I made the mistake of attacking them (I had out teched them and thought that would be enough). Well they hit back and big. I had expanded to another continent and was doing well with my colonies. However, the Persians were slowly but surely taking my cities and moving towards Paris. At one point, I had lost all but my three original cities on the mainland (actually, I had taken back one of my original cities). On the very next turn, the Persians were set to take Paris, my capital, both by land and by sea (I don't remember why, but I remember that this would have given them the victory). And than the game suddenly ended. I had won. WTF??? I had won??? Yes, my three oldest and larget cities had maxed out cultural ouput, I had a culture victory. And I wasn't even trying for one (it's a new victory concept that I wasn't sure how it worked). What a great game.

jorune

[Justin Fletcher]

If we're talking about games with beginnings and endings and a single play through, then Demon's Souls and Fallout 3 win. I never play games for 100+ hours, but judging from the save files, I've done exactly that with these two. Demon's Souls is on top not only because I've clocked the most time with it (I haven't played any Fallout 3 DLC), but because it engenders the kind of mania you describe despite being the kind of punishing level grind that I normally hate. It also doesn't make Fallout 3's mistake of capping your experience level.

Persona 3 FES was a serious challenger, but the repetitive combat coupled with the announcement of the upcoming PSP version knocked it out of the running.

If we're talking about all games of any sort ever, then Rock Band 2 is the champion.

[kerzain]

It's all sort of a blur now, but I logged in to EverQuest when it was first released in March of 1999, and judging by how little else I remember during those years I'm willing to bet that I didn't log out until mid 2004.

Other games of note:
Duke Nukem 3d, playing Multiplayer on Kali. Besides text muds (Gemstone III most notably) and BBS games this was the first real online multiplayer game that compelled me to keep playing until my eyes bled. It owned me for at least a year.

Age of Empires 1: I don't know what it was about that game (walls obv), but I could piss away entire weekends playing it only to wonder where the time went when it was time to go back to work (begrudgingly).

[chequers]

Civilization 3 was my 'just one more turn' game. I spent many, many weeknights playing far too late and suffering in real life as a result. The game is also responsible for a deep seated irrational hatred of Germans.

[awdougherty]

Recently I would have to say Lord of the Rings Online, Oblivion, Flashpoint/Arma, and Fable.

Lord of the Rings Online has become the game I've spent the most time with ever. I had tried EQ1 before and hated it, but dug the middle earth setting and heard LOTRO was pretty soloable. Was instantly drawn in by the little intro instances and got hooked from there. The books kept the storytelling going strongly and I never got tired of the sights. Moria actually dampened my enjoyment of the game, but the Warden class and now Mirkwood have me itching to dive back in (my traits and in-combat power regen are embarrassing, so it may be time to actually start pimping the Warden ride out a bit).

Oblivion was the first elder scrolls game that I really dove into. I had Morrowind and liked what I saw, but it just didn't click. Oblivion, despite having a more generic setting, still had plenty of atmosphere, graphics that were stunning at release (I play on the 360), and some gameplay refinements that hardcores may have hated but I loved. I liked the fast travel system that required you to actually go there once on your own but then you could snap back on future trips. I liked how melee combat was overhauled. I liked that at 25,50,75, and 100 for skills you got perks. I liked the compass giving you a steer where to go. And I loved that they added a bit of Thief to the stealth side of the game. When I got the game, I decided just to take a stroll around the main road circling the main city and just explore what I encountered. Over 30 hours later, I finally completed the circuit, had explored dozens of dungeons for the hell of it, and really screwed over the difficulty level for the main story trying to do the fist Oblivion gate story quests as a level 20 stealth archer who got the crap beat out of him for a long time. With Fallout 3 fixing the auto-levels, I'm looking forward to really jumping in.

Flashpoint/ArmA. Just endless hours of co-op multiplayer. Warfare added a lazy perfection to the co-op experience. No need to find missions, jump in and out as you need... I hope that continues with ArmA 2 when my group all upgrades their ancient PCs.

Fable was a surprise and even though the experience only last about 30 hours for me, it was one of those rare games that I looked forward to getting home and firing up. I thought I would be turned off by the cartoon style and the pull my finger farts, but underneath it all was a fairly dark story. Exploring was fun, combat was also a blast, and overall it was a great time.

Icewind Dale is a little older, but I've played through that 3 times and started numerous other times. Love the atmosphere of Kuldahar and really get into exploring the surround locales.

Older school would have to go to Bard's Tale 3, Ultima 5, and Darklands. Spent so much time in the latter 2 just wandering the countryside.

[Talisker]

Pretty much any halfway-decent RPG can manage to hook me something fierce. Lost Odyssey, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Oblivion, etc etc etc. I've probably spent 200-300 hours playing Fallout 3.

[The Bird Flu]

I played EQ1 from release to 2006. Granted I played off and on, but I logged over 200+ days on several characters and seen most of the game up to the TSS expansion (I don't even remember what TSS stands for).

I did have fun, but when I think about the stuff I could have been doing with that time I feel guilty.

[Demon G Sides]

Halo 2. Reminisced about this last night with the guy I played with most of the time, and I logged hundreds of hours into it. Sure, not as much as some people, but the amount of games I played was staggering, over two different accounts. Almost 3k games played, not including private games I don't think. Hours every night with the same people over and over and over again.

I miss it. I really do.

[Foxstab]

Game cycles, huh?

Hmm...well, Contra, Double Dragons and Battle City for a while was all I played with my homeboy...then there was Bad Street and Thexder, maybe Golden Axe....Defender of the Crown I kept playing over and over...Prince of Persia was a big thing and all the "new hot stuff" I had at some point so that one got replayed a ton...there was this 4-games pack that had a maze, a tank and two more games I can't remember for the life of me, I replayed the tank portion a bazillion of times....oh, even further back I recall the bootable era, that really simple Tarazan game, boy, did I play that one a ton and PitStop II, hah, I feel sad even remembering those....The Lost Vikings, couldn't get enough of them...F-15 Strike Eagle, F-19 Stealth Fighter and Gunship 2000 during my simulation days...Sango Fighter...Tyrian...Halloween Harry...Privateer...OH OH, Master of Magic I must have put months onto that monster...original Doom of course and II that went down for a good chunk of my life...OverKill, I think there's a corner in stage six where they made a monument in my honour...Pinball Dreams, oh you wretched beast...System Shock, was too hard to put down and kick the habit...X-Wing/Tie Fighter, I must have played the bejus out of them SOBs...Tower Toppler...X-Com...I've gone through a quite the large amount of games for quite the long periods (months on end), mostly in a genre-oriented lust spree, rotating between the same 3-4 games of that genre continuously until I jumped on to the next genre I was hungry for.

The most recent was Diablo and then came these two stupid dorks answering to the names of Rod Humble and Jeff Petersen and since then the only game that I've been playing religiously with short breaks only to return to was SubSpace, with a four years off-time of Infantry (which still counts as SubSpace).

[shift6]

I skipped university a few days to play A Tale In The Desert back in 2002.

More recently, this summer I took a week vacation from work and instead of "going out and doing things" stayed home and played Oblivion all the way through. I'd owned the damn game since I got my X360 in 2006 and was tired of not having played more than a few hours of it. Final tally for the epic vacation re-playthrough was ~150 hours which did include one 35 hour stretch (microwave TV dinners FTW). That was a great week.

[Athryn]

Let's see, I have a number of games that fall into that category:

Ultima 7 - playing this in college caused me to get poor grades and was a contributing factor in me dropping out.

Dark Age of Camelot -- played entirely too much, partially because my divorce started during this time and I used it as a way to not deal with things.

World of Warcraft -- I have pretty bad insomnia, and World of Warcraft didn't make it any better.

[Greybriar]

It's not at all recent, but the original Gold Box Pool of Radiance sucked up an ungodly amount of my time. This was back when you made your own maps and took your own notes, and I filled up an entire notebook while playing that game....

Pool of Radiance was the game that got me hooked on PC gaming twenty years ago. There have been many single player games throughout the years that have scratched my gaming itch, including Master of Magic, Colonization, and the Civilization, Heroes of Might and Magic, and Railroad Tycoon series, just to name a few.


It's all sort of a blur now, but I logged in to EverQuest when it was first released in March of 1999, and judging by how little else I remember during those years I'm willing to bet that I didn't log out until mid 2004....

I remember well my EQ1 days, and little else during that period. I did try out Meridian 59 and UO as well as DAoC, but the first Neverwinter Nights by Bioware was my pick of the four--provided some of my friends were available to group with.


....World of Warcraft -- I have pretty bad insomnia, and World of Warcraft didn't make it any better.

With the exception of a one year hiatus, World of Warcraft has pretty much filled my gaming days since I cancelled my subscription to EQ1. I still enjoy some single player titles, but not as much as I once did.

[McKnight]

I have a tendency to play one game, get completely addicted play it none stop for a week or two and then completely forget about it. Anyone else like that?

Oblivion was the most ridiculous though. I remember logging something crazy like 100+ hours in Oblivion in the first week I bought it. It took a long time to finish scratching my elder scrolls itch, but now I cant even remember the last time I played it.

[scharmers]

Life is what goes on between games.

[BobJustBob]

Life is what happens when you're not at work.

[divorced]

First game to ever "take me over" was Darklands from Microprose way back in the day. The game had a ton of bugs, but it was massive and I just couldn't stop playing. Everquest had a similar affect on me as did European Air War.

[Sarkus]

Fallout 3 would be my most recent example. I played it through to the end, not touching anything else, then restarted and played it through to the end again. I never do that.

[hong]

Baldurs Gate 1 and 2 ate two years of my life back in 1999-2000.

[Crispus]

Battlefield 1942. I've never really played the later games from that series - I'm sure my 8-year-old computer couldn't handle the more recent incarnations even if I wanted to - but I played 1942 to death. I loved it because it was the first "non-frantic" fighting game I'd ever played. If I chose, I could lie down with a sniper rifle, miles from the action, listening to the wind and the faroff drone of enemy planes in the distance. Not only was it not frantic, it was relaxing. It also rewarded thinking, because being sneaky could often win maps where brute force failed.

Plus, I loved the simple target practice of shooting down enemy planes with anti-aircraft guns. I played the Coral Sea map untold times, doing nothing but shooting down enemy aircraft and tracking down enemy players who'd parachuted onto my carrier (or who were swimming toward it). And because all the players were human, it never really got old. I'd guess that BF 1942 (with its expansions) was my game of choice for a year, maybe more.

Runners up: Various "conquer-the-map" games (in the order I played them: Master of Magic, Alpha Centauri, Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic, Spellcraft & expansions, Heroes of Might & Magic III), Morrowind, City of Heroes

[Fugitive]

The original EverQuest pretty much took over my life for a few years, initially sucking me in with having so much to see and do and then keeping me through all the friendships developed. It's one of those weird things where I kind of regret the time spent in it, but still feel nostalgic for it.

And WoW to a lesser extent, though I've spent far less total time on it.

But aside from MMOs, Diablo 2 would be the game that I really obsessed over for a long stretch of time, trying out various builds, getting all the way through Hell, and trying to farm some decent equipment. Unfortunately I preferred to play on the ladder, and most of those characters are long gone (victims of not quite keeping up with the 90 day inactivity timer), so I don't really have much to show for it.

Edit: Ooh, and Disgaea 3 as well. Although it didn't last as long as the others above, for about a month or two I played almost nothing but, working furiously in nearly all of my spare time to do the grinding and preparation needed to develop a couple of 'perfect' characters.

[The Bitter Cynic]

EverQuest. It's called, was called, EverCrack for a reason.

Before the random Dungeon Finder, WoW was a casual thing. Dungeon Finder has addicted me again. It's all I do =( Geared up past a number of guild members. Now they're sad(not really).

Just having a great deal of fun dungeon crawling.

[intruder]

Unreal Tournament CTF Instagib:
Played this for 3 years and joined a clan competing in one of the online leagues. Amazing people on a kickass server hooked me.
Best online time ever!

WoW:
5 years and counting. Playing on US West Coast server as European was hard. Raiding started Midnight my time and went until 06:00 AM (Molten Core). Luckily my job didn't require much attention besides being there but boy those raid nights did wear me out.
Raiding on EU these days is cake compared to those 2 years.

[jellyfish]

WoW:
5 years and counting. Playing on US West Coast server as European was hard. Raiding started Midnight my time and went until 06:00 AM (Molten Core). Luckily my job didn't require much attention besides being there but boy those raid nights did wear me out.
Raiding on EU these days is cake compared to those 2 years.
That sounds like a good job.

[intruder]

That sounds like a good job.

Actually it's boring as fuck!

Good money but I would have left if the financial crisis didn't make me decide to stay in my "safe haven" for now...

[Fozzle]

The first game I can remember playing till 4am and thinking it was 11 was of all things Lemmings on my Amiga.

The first RPG that sucked me in and didn't let go would be pool of radiance.

The first game that made me reconsider whether I had a problem with videogaming or not was Everquest. Spending 5 hours buffing and logging to chat rooms, while everyone else prepared, then a 20 minute dragon run, followed sometimes by a 6 hour corpse retrieval process was... interesting. Spending 16 hours to try and clear all the way back to the Enchanter gear in PoH/PoF was just nuts. Raiders these days have it so easy!

[Tim James]

Company of Heroes took over my life for many months. I didn't play any games from about 2001 to 2007, and this was one of the first games I picked up for my brand new PC. I hadn't played an RTS since Starcraft, so when I did the single player campaign I was most impressed with the sounds and new gameplay mechanics. Right around the time they released the expansion, Opposing Fronts, I got into multiplayer. I already knew multiplayer games were a big time sink (and still avoid them to this day) but I let myself get hooked on this one. Played hundreds of games and spent many hours watching replays and posting to gamereplays.org.

It all culminated in winning the first Penny Arcade 1v1 tournament we put together among members posting in the thread for the game. The organizer even offered up a prize for a free game, and I chose Fallout 3.

Unfortunately, the aftermath wasn't so kind. I had practiced quite a bit for the tournament and was completely burned out when it was over. I uninstalled it immediately after the tournament and haven't been back. I was right at the point where I would have to go from "good" to "elite" and didn't want to put the effort into it anyway, so it was time to put the game to bed.

To this day, my wife cannot stand any mention of this game! I recently grabbed the latest expansion, Tales of Valor, and will dabble a bit in the single player, but I don't think I'll ever get involved with multiplayer again.

[MSUSteve]

Dragon Age is the most recent example for me. Typically I don't play games on weeknights. After working, working out, and making dinner I just don't feel like it. That was not the case with Dragon Age. I found myself planning for easier dinners and trying to get home for earlier workouts so that I had some time to play it in the evening. Of course it took over my life on weekends as well.