How to catch up?

[egparadigm]

This is a perpetual problem, and I wish that developers would put more effort into helping people get up to speed.

The other thing that's difficult is forgetting "how" to play a game. I had this problem with Stranger's Wrath, although I eventually completed it with heavy reliance on GameFAQs.

The last game that was completely destroyed for me was Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. I initially loved this game, but because I wasn't doing much travelling, I fell out of the loop. The damned Temple of the Ocean King was so confusing and I couldn't remember where I was meant to be going. I eventually made it to the end, but it was never the same afterwards.

[davesol]

I normally restart games if I haven't played for a long time. Had this problem with trauma centre for the ds when i didn't play for a while because each level is timed and builds on what you have learnt before so if you haven't played for a while and have forgotten each procedure you've got no chance

[S3M]

Catching up with a game you haven?t played in a while can be a real mind ****. I did it recently with Fallout 3, played the first 30 hours when it came out gave up due to the sheer number of bugs, picked up the GOTYE and just carried on my save file. Now clock up over a hundred hours of gameplay on it, my worse example of this was Majora?s Mask took me 5 years to finish.

I?m someone who never restarts a game unless I?m really near the start of it. Best idea to get yourself back into the follow of the game is to, one use gamefaqs as mentioned if needed to find what you need to do if it?s not clear. Then I tend to spend about an hour getting used to the feel of the controls and hope that it jogs my memory.

After that I play the game for about 3 ? 5 hours and hope that gets you back into it, you have to push yourself to keep playing some games else you?ll just give up. I suggest either carrying on the main quest or revisiting a few of the familiar location in the game and your memory of the game should start to come back and hopefully you can carry on your game as if you never stopped.

[saif]

To get back into FF12 recently, I just started doing some sidequests (hunts) as that reminded me of the system, if not the story.

[Womble9]

A good topic and one that I've thought about a good few times. My free time vaires massively and as such I often get nicely into a game only then to have no time for it (we're talking time consuming games here that need 1-2 hrs min input, I get plenty of sub 1hr aracde game sessions). Would it really be that hard for developers to put in some kind of re-training / recaping option or maybe a viewable log of key events that you've so far covered?

[fallenangle]

I very rarely stop a game mid-way through but with Morrowind the Elder Scrolls III GOTYE I just had to. I'd been playing it exclusively for over 3 months and although I was far from bored I felt a great need for a change.

Left it for 6 months and then, like others here, had trouble working out not just what I was supposed to be doing next as regards the main story but also how to play. Gamefaqs helped on somethings but not on working out my position in the game as I couldn't remember even what quest I was on, if any, let alone who I was supposed to go se next. The in-game diary couldn't help on that either.

Three hours wandering around doing random tasks, re-learning the controls I eventually stumbled back into the central story quests. Spent another month completing the main game. That was 5 months ago but this time I deliberately left it right at the start of the Bloodmoon add on so when I go back to it I won't have the same problem.

By the time I finish I reckon the game will have taken me almost 2 years to complete.