Ive lost the kind of romanticism i had for gaming as a kid, so I dont really fall in love with games anymore. Im also generally self aware enough to stop playing before I start hating a game. I may get sick of a genre, leave it be and return in 5 years.

Reading the title of this post though, the first game that came to mind was gta. Last time I played gta V was on the 360 when I 100% the campaign and I didn’t really feel the same way as I did for IV. You might say I fell out of love with gta, as a franchise. This after having playednand loved all of them in the 15 years before V launched.

For me it was Warframe. I adore the style of the game and it’s lore. The gameplay and variety of the different weapons and characters gave me a lot of fun playtime. But the way RNG is used and how timed special missions are abusing dark patterns became more and more clear, the longer I played.

And at a certain point I realized the addiction it nurtured in me and I had to stop cold turkey and never touched it again afterwards.

fallout new vegas just bores me to sleep now. literally, I’ve fallen asleep playing it more than any other game

Almost anything i found had a chore based quest with shit loot after finishing a campaign.

Eg: destiny2 and dying light2 DL2 was a great campaign and fun mechnics while i enjoyed some of the quests after until i ran into the sprint ones and then it kept force injecting this feature to compete with the person you’re finishing the quest with which just felt gross and overall detracted from the drama and fantasy like it was trying to inject a mario cart feature that was misplaced.

I’ve tried to get back into binding of Isaac. I love it still, but I can’t get into it like I once did. I spent probably a solid 3-4 years playing little but it and civ, and it’s not like I wasn’t gaming much, I was a shut in using rounds of boi as my reward for steps in homework. I’d say at least 600 of my logged hours were already playing it.

I think it’s largely that I’ve fallen out of it and already passed my skill peak but still know enough to not be excited to find new things. 11 years ago I was 20, disassociating, single, and didn’t really have any friends in college yet. I had all the reflexes I’d ever have, the most free time until retirement outside unemployment (and even then, I exercise, socialize, and spend a lot of time with my wife even when unemployed now), and the energy to throw myself deep into a game that I could just lose myself in. These days gaming is a few competitive hours after work or a Saturday.

World of Warcraft. It was a magical, formative game for me as a kid who had just got his own PC. When eventually I had to stop paying subs because I was a poor teenager with no income, i always yearned to go back, and mostly played on private servers. When I finally got both the time and money to revisit… bizzard was in their cosby suite era, and the game kinda sucked ass. It felt gross and i havent been back since.

Generally just online games where the changes are enough that they don’t play the same way that I enjoyed them. Counterstrike, WoW, Overwatch, and others all did reworks that ruined the gameplay I enjoyed.

Older single player games aren’t as fun because they are clunky compared to newer games, like Neverwinter Nights compared to Baldur’s Gate 3. But I didn’t fall out of love, just don’t enjoy interacting with their controls.

The Forest. Man, I had a fantastic time in that game. Solo, and co-op. But after I beat it with a buddy, and we used the end-game artifact to create an excellent trap and base, it basically lost its appeal. The fun is in the struggle.

Nexus: The Jupiter Incident. I loved everything in that tactical spaceship battle game and I play it at least once a year (modded to work on 2026 hardware).

It’s so sad they never made the second one and the other games that somewhat look alike are, meh…

Then it was KSP, Cyberpunk 2077 and recently Clair Obscur.

I love elite: dangerous and there’s still so much I haven’t done but it’s all as deep as a puddle, after 300 hours it started to get boring. (makes sense) I planned to take a break and come back to it but then they tried to add p2w microtransactions (they went back on it from backlash) and now the company behind it has replaced the ceo who cared about the game with a marketing guy and that’s made me lose interest in it entirely.

World of Warcraft. Was addicted for the first hundred hours but then was disillusioned really quickly.

Alright, here’s a long one. Overwatch.

I’ve never been a fan of PvP games, but hero shooters might be my one exception. Even then, I almost exclusively play support because I prefer helping my team to fighting the enemy. But the better I got at the game, the more I realized support was just the damage role but you also attack your team sometimes. A Lucio with only 1,000 damage or with 80% healing uptime by the end is a bad Lucio. I guess what I was looking for was a healer role, not a support role.

This pushed me more and more into just playing my favorite character, Mercy, because she kinda lives in her own world and rarely interacts with the enemy team. Her movement is fun, and I genuinely enjoy playing her. So I’d be more than happy to pick OW back up as a Mercy one-trick, but that brings up several other problems.

First of all she’s straight up ass in high-level play. Which is fine I guess, I don’t need to play comp, but the more consistent matchmaking than what shows up in quickplay was appreciated. Secondly, people expect you to switch if things aren’t going well… the game’s been called counter-watch for a reason. This is also fair enough, I understand my team shouldn’t need to baby me if I’m hard-countered, but like… I don’t want to. At this point I’m here to play Mercy, not OW, so I’d rather just lose than switch. Which can make me a useless teammate.

The biggest issue though is their expensive and greedy monetization and abusive use of FOMO. Anybody that has played the game before knows Mercy is one of a few characters that gets beautiful limited-time skins every season, because they sell extremely well. Most of them cost $20, and some can only be bought in $45+ bundles. Unfortunately I’m a sucker for pretty Mercy cosmetics and struggle to stop myself from buying a lot of them. So I stopped playing entirely, because hating myself for spending $20 on pretty Mercy skin #37 is bad for my health and wallet.

Skyrim has aged REALLY poorly.

Overwatch. Got into it several years back, before it became Overwatch 2. Nice gameplay, balanced and diverse characters, I loved it

Then comes realization thar matchmaking is fucked. Throwing someone who just installed the game into match between teams of players who have hundreds, if not thousands, hours in - that level of fucked

Then comes realization Blizzard doesn’t give a fuck about lore they themselves built. WTF is these skins for Mercy that look like anime teenage girl? She is over forty, if I am not mistaken, and has seen tons of shit as battle medic - that level of not giving a fuck

So… guess I am done with the game. I gave them years to come to their senses, but no more

Counter-strike. I remember it being a casual experience back in the 1.6 days and even in the earlier days of CSGO, but at one point competitive play took over. Eventually to be decent you had to know lineups, executes, economy, common angles etc.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I love watching competitive CS and think for viewers it’s one of the best esports games to watch, but I can’t get back into CS without having it take over my life.