Games for my inner masochist

At times I run into games I want to like. I want to like them so much, that they bring the inner masochist out in me, when I try, despite cursing how much I really hate the game, to complete it. Normally, when I dislike a game, I very nonchalantly uninstall and forget about it, maybe after moving it in a specifically named category "shit" on my Steam or GOG collection. But then there are those games. Games I dislike but keep installing time and time again, trying to complete them, because, you know, something in my brain is trying to convince me that my feelings about them don't match the reality.

Diablo II, Borderlands and Dragon Age Origins are three good examples of such games. I know, shocking. Games, that are usually thought of as being great games by almost everyone, but also games I've come to loathe. In many cases almost immediately I've started playing them.

Diablo II for example I disliked from the get-go: I consider it to be a tedious mouse click simulator. I liked Diablo I quite a bit, as it was more simple and more fun, whereas Diablo II just has too much of everything: too many locations, too many enemies, too many collectables, etc. But, as stated, it also brought the inner masochist out in me, as I did end up completing it, wondering why in the name of all that's holy people think it's so great. It did take over four years for me to finish it, but I did, not that I'm proud of it, as far enjoyment goes, it was fully wasted time.

Dragon Age Origins didn't take as much time for me to complete, but at the same time, I was wondering why it was such a well-liked game. As it is, I don't think it brought anything really worthwhile in the CRPG genre unless you've wanted, and been prevented of, the possibility of playing the game a gay dwarf, as that to my knowledge is the only really novel idea it has, the rest of being fantasy cliches that try, and mostly fail, to be hardcore. Funnily enough, I liked Dragon Age 2 better, despite it being similarly cliched, but I liked its more personal view of things, as it was, in the end, a tale about the family in the turmoil of war. It isn't a great game either, but it was more bearable and a game I didn't even uninstall but played through in a short time span.

And then there's Borderlands. My god, how I detest it. Yet I've re-installed it a couple of times in order to continue where I was left just to rage quit it and uninstall it again. I've not yet played it through, but I have a suspicion that I will. What I dislike the most about Borderlands is, that it's nothing more but an FPS with a level grinding mentality. That's all it is: you level up in order to get better weapons and skills and kill an endless mass of respawning enemies until you've levelled up enough in order to go to a different location with those same enemies but a bit tougher.

Unlike with many other games I dislike and discard, there's something almost obsessive with the previously mentioned, and with some other games as well. I do not like them, at all. I don't get any amount of pleasure from playing them, as I don't like the design nor the writing, yet there I am, playing them. Pushing them through. And I guess that's a good way to describe them: they are something I feel I must just push out of my system and the only way to do that is to complete them.

I've pushed Dragon Age Origins and Diablo II out of my system. I have no desire to ever install or play either of them again. Borderlands, that still haunts me. I just uninstalled it, swearing I'll never install it again, but I know that at some point I probably will. And I play it and I dislike it and ask WHY I keep doing that. But I know the answer. I know that I just need to push it through, no matter what.

And that's terrible.

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