I’m a separated dad with a demanding job and a fiancé. I only have the kids when I’m not working but I want to be fully available for them.
Recently, I’ve noticed that it would be difficult for me to play more than a story/ambiance game (next one is gonna be either Dead Space Remake or Aliens Dark Descent) and forever playable game (Gran Turismo 7 since its launch).
If I played more games with the time I have, I would forget the story or the controls. I haven’t tried but I’m pretty sure of it.
The problem with such a system is that I’m almost a aralyzed when I have to chose which story/ambiance game I’m gonna play.
So what’s your system and what are your time limitations?
During the few months of the year I consider to be my “gaming season”, I mostly stick to 1 game at a time as my primary focus, but I’ll often have a game or few on the back burner that I’ll work into the schedule now and then.
This year I’m focusing on the Doom remake (Doom 2016) as my main game. To be honest, the game is stressful for me, so even though it’s been an absolute blast for me to play, it’s nice to have some alternative games to switch over to after I’m done with Doom.
I agree, it’s very hard to keep up with the stories when juggling multiple games at the same time. Almost as hard for me, if not harder, is keeping up with the controls. Every game is different. Games in the same genre can and will have vastly different control set-ups. Even games in the same franchise / series can have different controls from game to game. Yuck.
So, the control aspect and the story aspect are part of my inspiration for my secondary games. Right now I’m playing Halls of Torment. I guess there’s a story? But it doesn’t seem super relevant or necessary to keep up with. This game is in the same genre as another secondary game I play (and the main one from last year) called Vampire Survivors. Controls for both of these games is super basic. As I mentioned, if there’s even a story line to them, it’s irrelevant to my enjoyment of them.
I also have the Castlevania Dominus Collection which is includes all the metroidvania-style Castlevania games from the Nintendo DS. I played all of them back in the day on original hardware, so there’s a great deal of “recall” in terms of controls and story. And this is probably one of my favorite genres of game.