Finished it earlier. Went back and made sure I got every last possible thing because I was kind of sad to put it down.
Nothing super revolutionary but an extremely solid "one of those" with enough of a core identity of it's own to be worthwhile. Good level design too, rewards exploration. I liked it. Will keep an eye on this one.
Put bad games in rereleases and collections. This is the hill I will die upon.
Although it, uh, helps if it's a collection of games people would want and you're including the bad ones in it as well for completion, historical and preservation reasons. But I also don't care if you make money. It'd help such projects continue in the future but hey, you're call.
Bad games should be remembered and be accessible. No one is forcing you to buy or play something like this after all. But people worked on these, people cared about these, they should be easily available. So I approve of this project, regardless of why Aspyr is doing it. (its money)
@MrRhysReviews I'm a huge Atlus fan but I think that downplays what else they do. Even Yakuza, while not big in the west until Zero, was still almost to part six by that point. It still counts as making good games if Americans don't care.
And there's just this bizarre erasure of their entire European division. Alien Isolation was 2014. But we're talking about everything Creative Assembly has done since 2005, Amplitude Studios since 2016 and from 2013 to 2024 Relic Entertainment as well.
Total War or the Endless universe games may not scream "Sega" to certain people, but they are hugely popular, high quality games that sell extremely well.
And Football Manager is a whole world unto itself, killing it to this day. 2024 has over 7-million users.
Plus they kind of have the right idea of it with all sorts of old IP. Whether it's all their cheap, accessible, improved legacy ports of classic games by M2, or their willingness to just let independent studios take cracks at dormant IP like Wonder Boy, Street of Rage, etc, resulting in multiple bangers, or even misses like the Panzer Dragoon remakes. But at least they let people try.
PSO2 has been quietly killing it since like 2012 and was still popular enough that they did a whole 2.0 in 2021 completely reinventing it. AND keeping the original running.
AND THEN (lol, I'm passionate about this, sorry ) when people bug them about bringing back old IPs that were never huge financial successes? Completely ignoring their new initiative of bringing back IPs, which is a different thing, they made sequels to cult, but under preforming, franchises with Shenmue, Valkyria Chronicles AND, of all things, a new Sakura Wars. I think all of these under preformed, kind of as expected, but they did it. And two of them kind of rule.
I dunno. I could go on, I know that. But I dunno. To me? Sega's been doing great stuff for the better part of 20 years. Certianly some stumbling moments, Marvel and Sonic were low points. But mostly it's been great.
I didn't even mention Bayonetta or their other Platinum publishing partnership games. There's a ton of great stuff there.
Yeah, people always treat Sega like it's just the Sonic factory but really they're been putting out great product really consistently for years now.
I don't know exactly when it began, when they really found their feet again after the Dreamcast, but they've been killing it for a decade at least. We're long past the days where they were just making terrible Marvel tie-in games.
At least, so long as your view of Sega goes beyond a bunch of bad Sonic games. And even then, they're kinda sorta figuring that out? The last, what, four have at least been interesting and not complete train wrecks?
@Flaming_Kaiser Eh. Human history is nothing but a non-stop avalanche of hate, bigotry, atrocity, etc, etc.
We're not devolving, humanity has always been like this.
The crime is that humans are the one species on this planet capable of self reflection, of being able to look at their own behavior, thinking about it and making a decision to do something else. Do something better.
People aren't devolving. They're actively choosing to refuse to evolve to something better.
I suppose not just knee jerk submitting to your basic animal instincts is too much an ask for many people. Comes with low intelligence
I genuinely find this less weird and gross when they're just being up front about what the game is and not pretending it's a volleyball game. You know, by putting volleyball in it. Still not for me but especially these days there's tons of stuff like this on steam. By owning their premises it kind of validates it where as it was always a bit of a punchline before.
My real question though; do the DOA characters have any cache in 2024 still? Surely they'd be better served going "From the makers of DOA Extreme" then having a cast of original characters to... I don't know. "Date" or whatever the hell this is for. Surely the market of people horny for the DOA cast is aging out and dwindling.
It's often the quality of the last thing that determines if the new thing sells.
Inquisition had momentum. It came off the back of Mass Effect and the other Dragon Age games. Not for nothing but fantasy was at it's mainstream peak at this point as well; Game of Thrones was still new and beloved, The Witcher 3 was looming and people were hungry for it, Dark Souls was on the climb, etc. There was a huge audience of people ready for a big fat juicy Bioware Fantasy game.
How many of those 12 million sales were happy with the game and will come back for the new one? That's a much harder question to answer. Inquisition sold... but was it loved? I never got that sense.
I wonder if we'll ever hear what actually happened.
Two dozen real human beings, all with lives outside work, bills to pay, taxes, children to feed, etc, just don't simultaneously up and quit their source of income all at once without a damn good reason.
Negotiations falling through on "spinning off" their division, what ever that means, isn't enough on it's own. What was the impetus to want to do that spin off to begin with? Why was the alternative so unacceptable for so many people?
Realistically; What heinous ***** was the parent company/owner trying to pull that was so bad an entire office was willing to bail as a favorable alternative?
Until PC's become idiot proof, maintenance free, simple, impossible to mess up plug and play devices Consoles won't go anywhere. So consoles won't be replaced by PC until PCs become consoles. So never.
PC's are a hassle. They're also increasingly niche. Most people don't know what thermal paste is. Most people browse the internet on their phones and tablets, that's what "a computer" is to them.
People want to play games not tinker with driver updates and graphics settings. Or rather enough people do that it's a non-starter. As big as the PC gaming market is it's still a subset of an already enthusiast dominated market. Casuals, the largest part of the market, don't mess with that kind of stuff.
Then venn diagram of PC gamers and gamers is basically a big circle that reads "games" and a second smaller circle entirely within it that says "enjoys tinkering with hardware and menus"
New announcements? All these other games I already know if I'm in or out on. And aside from stuff like fighting game character reveals I really don't need to see more of any of them. And even them that's mostly for funzies; I know already if I want Fatal Fury or Dragonball.
Seeing more of something like Space Marine 2 or Re:Fantasio would be detrimental at this point. So start the marketing cycle for the next batch of games. Announce some indies, etc.
@Ainu20 I do wish it was game by game. I get the oversight though as this is the only time I can think of where the situation has ever come up for me personally.
Anyways here's the quote from the reveal;
"While you’ll be able to carry over progress you made on your old character like equipment and loadouts to “Reign of Sand,” starting a new playthrough is highly recommended for the optimal experience to fully immerse in the breadth of new features and enhancements."
And they talk about new environments, voice acting, characters, etc, etc.
Its implicit that you don't HAVE to restart... but come on. It's also pretty clear you're intended to. It'd be pretty weird to load up a save two thirds of the way through the game having already bypassed all the new characters and other features they're talking about.
Like a cutscene starts and whatever character they added that Ben Starr is voicing is there, being a super important NPC (because why else make a point of promoting that you got Ben Starr), and you just kind of go "Who is this? What's happening?"
Nah. That's weird. At least it is to me anyways. It's like a book changing half way through reading it.
Ironically as someone who rather liked this game as it was but was only around 2/3rds of the way through it this kind of screws me over. At least I think it does.
It's neat they wanted to keep working on and improving their game. Like I said I liked it, it was worth supporting. But they've said that this is such a massive update that you should probably completely restart the game which... I have a hard time seeing myself doing.
So by "improving" their game they've basically put me in a position where I might have to abandon it completely. Which is kind of garbage.
It's not a short game and while I had maybe another ten hours in me... replaying the whole thing just to get back to where I was? There's too many games for that.
Although at the moment there's not enough space on my HDD to download the update so... work around? I can technically finish the game I bought, provided I do it before making any space on the the hard drive. Can't say that's a feel good solution; I don't play games under a time crunch, I play games when I choose to for enjoyment ya know.
Based on the gameplay this seems to be much more Sekiro then anything Souls-like. It's extremely parry heavy, as in you seem to be expected to parry every hit of every attack from the bosses. So that'll be fun for some folks.
Also, you know, no "souls" equivalent, prefab characters, etc. I'm wondering if you don't even build a character. I'm guessing you're just swapping between those premade characters and that's your "build" variety.
It really just seems like an action game with heavy Sekiro-style parrying.
Naw, it's just a genre now. It'd be like saying you're "sick of" fighting games, or FPS', or metroidvanias.
They're here to stay. There will be good ones, there will be bad ones, there will be super derivative ones and there will be ones that really push innovative mechanics that really blur the "Is this still a souls-like" line.
Just don't play them if you don't want to. No one is picking what games you're playing but you.
I play a bunch of fighting games. I didn't pick up Tekken. I'm not "sick of" fighting games because I didn't buy one.
If you don't like Souls games why are you dwelling on them? There's thousands of other games released each year. Stop letting the internet dictate what you're paying attention too. You'll be much happier.
I'd rather have professional game developers balance the game according to the design personally. I don't know what's best. Especially for something I haven't ever played before.
That's a job for the people who know why things were designed to behave the way they are and have played though and tested each scenario hundreds of times.
It's way to easy to ruin a game by tuning it poorly.
The no death thing is good though. It was a good idea in Chicori and Tunic, it's a good idea here.
I haven't been finding it notably difficult so far. Hopefully if I never turn off Offline mode I just won't get the calibration?
I'm not sure how that works actually.
But I sure was glad I beat Radahn back at release before they nerfed him. He wasn't that hard (he was hard, just not THAT hard) so I'm glad I got the intended fight.
Worst case scenario though... I dunno, each boss will take one or two less hits? No biggie. Though that kind of highlights the silliness of the update. It's just to placate the refunders. Waste of the devs valuable time imo.
You always see one particular bad faith argument when Souls difficulty comes up.
The idea of "I don't have time for hard games" coupled with this weird attitude that only masochistic shuts-in do. That the person making the complaint, "have a real life and friends and other things to do". That they "go outside".
Look. You're not some special edge case. You're describing most people who play these games. We all have lives beyond enjoying Elden Ring.
Here's the thing though, people complain about not "having time". What does that mean? Playing a videogame is a fundamentally a frivolous use of time that we're lucky to get to spend on a hobby. If you play games at all then you have some amount "of time". Difficult games don't have some extra time tax to them. Elden Ring being easier wouldn't magically let you play it without spending time playing it. That's silly.
Take me. My first run of Elden Ring took something like 150 hours to finish. It took me about nine months to finish the game. So technically I could have done that playing less then an hour a day across that duration and still had plenty of days where I didn't touch the game.
It didn't take me that long because it was hard. It took that long because I have other stuff to do. A full time job. People in my life. Other hobbies and interests. Other games. A simple desire to put Elden Ring down now and then so that I don't burn out on it or so I could prolong the experience. I too like to "go outside".
Time is not an issue for playing a game. Time is infinite. No one is asking you to beat a videogame quickly.
You do not need to speedrun a game to play a game.
Games don't have a best before date period.
No what we're talking about really is the amount of time people are willing to put into a game, the "Why?" each person is choosing to play the game in the first place.
For example; the person who is only playing because they want to participate in the cultural zeitgeist and then need to quickly move onto the next thing as it becomes relevant. This person IS on a time limit. A self imposed time limit but if the game is to hard for them then they don't get to participate because the tide will quickly turn and next month there will be a new thing they "have to play".
But if you actually just want to play the game for its own sake you have an infinite amount of time to do so.
I also see another common issue where people just psyche themselves out. They see discourse online and for some reason think they too need some encyclopedic knowledge of the game systems, of stat point allocation efficiency, to be able to no hit bosses and parry crazy attacks. So knowing they're "not that good" they get intimidated and never even try.
So you don't need to beat games quickly. You also don't need to "be good" at them.
No one is grading you on these things.
So many of us would not describe ourselves as "good at games" yet love and have beaten Fromsofts titles.
It's also ok to just not like a game. I don't know why this is so hard for so many people.
People make games and sometimes you won't enjoy playing them. Ok. You don't have to. There's literally too many games for someone to ever come close to playing all of them. So play something you do enjoy instead. Seems obvious.
Stop trying to force yourself to play something you don't enjoy just because people on the internet are talking about it.
Comments 22
Re: AI Limit PS5 Demo Available for One Week Only
Finished it earlier. Went back and made sure I got every last possible thing because I was kind of sad to put it down.
Nothing super revolutionary but an extremely solid "one of those" with enough of a core identity of it's own to be worthwhile. Good level design too, rewards exploration. I liked it. Will keep an eye on this one.
Re: Love Classic Lara Croft? Play the Crap Tomb Raider Trilogy on PS5, PS4
Put bad games in rereleases and collections. This is the hill I will die upon.
Although it, uh, helps if it's a collection of games people would want and you're including the bad ones in it as well for completion, historical and preservation reasons. But I also don't care if you make money. It'd help such projects continue in the future but hey, you're call.
Bad games should be remembered and be accessible. No one is forcing you to buy or play something like this after all. But people worked on these, people cared about these, they should be easily available. So I approve of this project, regardless of why Aspyr is doing it. (its money)
Re: SEGA Has Been Quietly Killing It This Year, Regularly Publishing Bangers
@MrRhysReviews I'm a huge Atlus fan but I think that downplays what else they do. Even Yakuza, while not big in the west until Zero, was still almost to part six by that point. It still counts as making good games if Americans don't care.
And there's just this bizarre erasure of their entire European division. Alien Isolation was 2014. But we're talking about everything Creative Assembly has done since 2005, Amplitude Studios since 2016 and from 2013 to 2024 Relic Entertainment as well.
Total War or the Endless universe games may not scream "Sega" to certain people, but they are hugely popular, high quality games that sell extremely well.
And Football Manager is a whole world unto itself, killing it to this day. 2024 has over 7-million users.
Plus they kind of have the right idea of it with all sorts of old IP. Whether it's all their cheap, accessible, improved legacy ports of classic games by M2, or their willingness to just let independent studios take cracks at dormant IP like Wonder Boy, Street of Rage, etc, resulting in multiple bangers, or even misses like the Panzer Dragoon remakes. But at least they let people try.
PSO2 has been quietly killing it since like 2012 and was still popular enough that they did a whole 2.0 in 2021 completely reinventing it. AND keeping the original running.
AND THEN (lol, I'm passionate about this, sorry ) when people bug them about bringing back old IPs that were never huge financial successes? Completely ignoring their new initiative of bringing back IPs, which is a different thing, they made sequels to cult, but under preforming, franchises with Shenmue, Valkyria Chronicles AND, of all things, a new Sakura Wars. I think all of these under preformed, kind of as expected, but they did it. And two of them kind of rule.
I dunno. I could go on, I know that. But I dunno. To me? Sega's been doing great stuff for the better part of 20 years. Certianly some stumbling moments, Marvel and Sonic were low points. But mostly it's been great.
I didn't even mention Bayonetta or their other Platinum publishing partnership games. There's a ton of great stuff there.
Re: SEGA Has Been Quietly Killing It This Year, Regularly Publishing Bangers
Yeah, people always treat Sega like it's just the Sonic factory but really they're been putting out great product really consistently for years now.
I don't know exactly when it began, when they really found their feet again after the Dreamcast, but they've been killing it for a decade at least. We're long past the days where they were just making terrible Marvel tie-in games.
At least, so long as your view of Sega goes beyond a bunch of bad Sonic games. And even then, they're kinda sorta figuring that out? The last, what, four have at least been interesting and not complete train wrecks?
Re: Random: Internet Trolls Tried to Downgrade Our Silent Hill 2 PS5 Review Score
@Flaming_Kaiser Eh. Human history is nothing but a non-stop avalanche of hate, bigotry, atrocity, etc, etc.
We're not devolving, humanity has always been like this.
The crime is that humans are the one species on this planet capable of self reflection, of being able to look at their own behavior, thinking about it and making a decision to do something else. Do something better.
People aren't devolving. They're actively choosing to refuse to evolve to something better.
I suppose not just knee jerk submitting to your basic animal instincts is too much an ask for many people. Comes with low intelligence
Re: PS5 Pro Boost Is Pretty Clear Cut in The Last of Us 2 Remastered Comparison Video
There's just some mad man a Sony with a whip screaming at a group of engineers they have locked up about the The Last of Us;
Exec: It's not good enough! It has to be prettier! It has to be more real!
Engineer: sobbing We tried. Please let us go. We can't push it any further...!
Exec: MOAR! cracks whip More polygons! crack More light pathing! double crack You won't stop until I can smell the blood on Ellies hands!
Engineers: x_X
Re: Ever-Evolving, Live Service Experiences Like Fortnite Are 'the Future of Gaming'
"Future of gaming" translates as "the best way to make lots of money".
Other people will continue to make real games while giant companies will continue to chase after payouts.
Re: Final Fantasy 16 Receives Permanent Price Cut on PS5 as Complete Edition Launches
Naw. The battles are still boring and button mashy. Cheaper price tag, or bundled DLC, doesn't fix that.
Re: Date the Girls from Dead or Alive in Venus Vacation Prism for PS5, PS4
I genuinely find this less weird and gross when they're just being up front about what the game is and not pretending it's a volleyball game. You know, by putting volleyball in it. Still not for me but especially these days there's tons of stuff like this on steam. By owning their premises it kind of validates it where as it was always a bit of a punchline before.
My real question though; do the DOA characters have any cache in 2024 still? Surely they'd be better served going "From the makers of DOA Extreme" then having a cast of original characters to... I don't know. "Date" or whatever the hell this is for. Surely the market of people horny for the DOA cast is aging out and dwindling.
Re: Dragon Age: Inquisition Massively Oversold Projections, Remains BioWare's Biggest Game
It's often the quality of the last thing that determines if the new thing sells.
Inquisition had momentum. It came off the back of Mass Effect and the other Dragon Age games. Not for nothing but fantasy was at it's mainstream peak at this point as well; Game of Thrones was still new and beloved, The Witcher 3 was looming and people were hungry for it, Dark Souls was on the climb, etc. There was a huge audience of people ready for a big fat juicy Bioware Fantasy game.
How many of those 12 million sales were happy with the game and will come back for the new one? That's a much harder question to answer. Inquisition sold... but was it loved? I never got that sense.
Re: Stone-Cold PS Vita Classic Returns in Freedom Wars Remastered PS5, PS4
Was this one in the God Eater universe too? Or was that just Code Vein?
Anyways the Vita folks loved this one, so this is pretty neat to see come back.
Re: Annapurna Interactive Exodus Sees Entire Staff Resign
I wonder if we'll ever hear what actually happened.
Two dozen real human beings, all with lives outside work, bills to pay, taxes, children to feed, etc, just don't simultaneously up and quit their source of income all at once without a damn good reason.
Negotiations falling through on "spinning off" their division, what ever that means, isn't enough on it's own. What was the impetus to want to do that spin off to begin with? Why was the alternative so unacceptable for so many people?
Realistically; What heinous ***** was the parent company/owner trying to pull that was so bad an entire office was willing to bail as a favorable alternative?
And what does this mean for Remedy?
Re: Failing Manufacturers Are Pushing the Narrative That Consoles Are Dying, Says Ex-Xbox Exec
Until PC's become idiot proof, maintenance free, simple, impossible to mess up plug and play devices Consoles won't go anywhere. So consoles won't be replaced by PC until PCs become consoles. So never.
PC's are a hassle. They're also increasingly niche. Most people don't know what thermal paste is. Most people browse the internet on their phones and tablets, that's what "a computer" is to them.
People want to play games not tinker with driver updates and graphics settings. Or rather enough people do that it's a non-starter. As big as the PC gaming market is it's still a subset of an already enthusiast dominated market. Casuals, the largest part of the market, don't mess with that kind of stuff.
Then venn diagram of PC gamers and gamers is basically a big circle that reads "games" and a second smaller circle entirely within it that says "enjoys tinkering with hardware and menus"
Re: Poll: What PS5 Games Do You Most Want to See at Gamescom 2024?
New announcements? All these other games I already know if I'm in or out on. And aside from stuff like fighting game character reveals I really don't need to see more of any of them. And even them that's mostly for funzies; I know already if I want Fatal Fury or Dragonball.
Seeing more of something like Space Marine 2 or Re:Fantasio would be detrimental at this point. So start the marketing cycle for the next batch of games. Announce some indies, etc.
Re: Overlooked PS5 RPG Atlas Fallen Just Got Its Game-Changing Reign of Sand Update
@Ainu20 I do wish it was game by game. I get the oversight though as this is the only time I can think of where the situation has ever come up for me personally.
Anyways here's the quote from the reveal;
"While you’ll be able to carry over progress you made on your old character like equipment and loadouts to “Reign of Sand,” starting a new playthrough is highly recommended for the optimal experience to fully immerse in the breadth of new features and enhancements."
And they talk about new environments, voice acting, characters, etc, etc.
Its implicit that you don't HAVE to restart... but come on. It's also pretty clear you're intended to. It'd be pretty weird to load up a save two thirds of the way through the game having already bypassed all the new characters and other features they're talking about.
Like a cutscene starts and whatever character they added that Ben Starr is voicing is there, being a super important NPC (because why else make a point of promoting that you got Ben Starr), and you just kind of go "Who is this? What's happening?"
Nah. That's weird. At least it is to me anyways. It's like a book changing half way through reading it.
Re: Overlooked PS5 RPG Atlas Fallen Just Got Its Game-Changing Reign of Sand Update
@DennisReynolds Oh it's fully full. I need to get an expansion drive. We've been at the uninstall x to install y for a while now.
Re: Overlooked PS5 RPG Atlas Fallen Just Got Its Game-Changing Reign of Sand Update
Ironically as someone who rather liked this game as it was but was only around 2/3rds of the way through it this kind of screws me over. At least I think it does.
It's neat they wanted to keep working on and improving their game. Like I said I liked it, it was worth supporting. But they've said that this is such a massive update that you should probably completely restart the game which... I have a hard time seeing myself doing.
So by "improving" their game they've basically put me in a position where I might have to abandon it completely. Which is kind of garbage.
It's not a short game and while I had maybe another ten hours in me... replaying the whole thing just to get back to where I was? There's too many games for that.
Although at the moment there's not enough space on my HDD to download the update so... work around? I can technically finish the game I bought, provided I do it before making any space on the the hard drive. Can't say that's a feel good solution; I don't play games under a time crunch, I play games when I choose to for enjoyment ya know.
Re: There's Potential in This Anime-Style PS5 Soulslike, But It Needs Work
Based on the gameplay this seems to be much more Sekiro then anything Souls-like. It's extremely parry heavy, as in you seem to be expected to parry every hit of every attack from the bosses. So that'll be fun for some folks.
Also, you know, no "souls" equivalent, prefab characters, etc. I'm wondering if you don't even build a character. I'm guessing you're just swapping between those premade characters and that's your "build" variety.
It really just seems like an action game with heavy Sekiro-style parrying.
Re: Poll: Are You Sick of Soulslike Games?
Naw, it's just a genre now. It'd be like saying you're "sick of" fighting games, or FPS', or metroidvanias.
They're here to stay. There will be good ones, there will be bad ones, there will be super derivative ones and there will be ones that really push innovative mechanics that really blur the "Is this still a souls-like" line.
Just don't play them if you don't want to. No one is picking what games you're playing but you.
I play a bunch of fighting games. I didn't pick up Tekken. I'm not "sick of" fighting games because I didn't buy one.
If you don't like Souls games why are you dwelling on them? There's thousands of other games released each year. Stop letting the internet dictate what you're paying attention too. You'll be much happier.
Re: Dragon Age: The Veilguard Caters to All with Completely Customisable Difficulty Settings
I'd rather have professional game developers balance the game according to the design personally. I don't know what's best. Especially for something I haven't ever played before.
That's a job for the people who know why things were designed to behave the way they are and have played though and tested each scenario hundreds of times.
It's way to easy to ruin a game by tuning it poorly.
The no death thing is good though. It was a good idea in Chicori and Tunic, it's a good idea here.
Re: Elden Ring DLC Made Easier with New PS5, PS4 Calibration Update
I haven't been finding it notably difficult so far. Hopefully if I never turn off Offline mode I just won't get the calibration?
I'm not sure how that works actually.
But I sure was glad I beat Radahn back at release before they nerfed him. He wasn't that hard (he was hard, just not THAT hard) so I'm glad I got the intended fight.
Worst case scenario though... I dunno, each boss will take one or two less hits? No biggie. Though that kind of highlights the silliness of the update. It's just to placate the refunders. Waste of the devs valuable time imo.
Re: FromSoftware Boss Puts Elden Ring Difficulty Discourse to Bed, Once and For All
You always see one particular bad faith argument when Souls difficulty comes up.
The idea of "I don't have time for hard games" coupled with this weird attitude that only masochistic shuts-in do. That the person making the complaint, "have a real life and friends and other things to do". That they "go outside".
Look. You're not some special edge case. You're describing most people who play these games. We all have lives beyond enjoying Elden Ring.
Here's the thing though, people complain about not "having time". What does that mean? Playing a videogame is a fundamentally a frivolous use of time that we're lucky to get to spend on a hobby. If you play games at all then you have some amount "of time". Difficult games don't have some extra time tax to them. Elden Ring being easier wouldn't magically let you play it without spending time playing it. That's silly.
Take me. My first run of Elden Ring took something like 150 hours to finish. It took me about nine months to finish the game. So technically I could have done that playing less then an hour a day across that duration and still had plenty of days where I didn't touch the game.
It didn't take me that long because it was hard. It took that long because I have other stuff to do. A full time job. People in my life. Other hobbies and interests. Other games. A simple desire to put Elden Ring down now and then so that I don't burn out on it or so I could prolong the experience. I too like to "go outside".
Time is not an issue for playing a game. Time is infinite. No one is asking you to beat a videogame quickly.
You do not need to speedrun a game to play a game.
Games don't have a best before date period.
No what we're talking about really is the amount of time people are willing to put into a game, the "Why?" each person is choosing to play the game in the first place.
For example; the person who is only playing because they want to participate in the cultural zeitgeist and then need to quickly move onto the next thing as it becomes relevant. This person IS on a time limit. A self imposed time limit but if the game is to hard for them then they don't get to participate because the tide will quickly turn and next month there will be a new thing they "have to play".
But if you actually just want to play the game for its own sake you have an infinite amount of time to do so.
I also see another common issue where people just psyche themselves out. They see discourse online and for some reason think they too need some encyclopedic knowledge of the game systems, of stat point allocation efficiency, to be able to no hit bosses and parry crazy attacks. So knowing they're "not that good" they get intimidated and never even try.
So you don't need to beat games quickly. You also don't need to "be good" at them.
No one is grading you on these things.
So many of us would not describe ourselves as "good at games" yet love and have beaten Fromsofts titles.
It's also ok to just not like a game. I don't know why this is so hard for so many people.
People make games and sometimes you won't enjoy playing them. Ok. You don't have to. There's literally too many games for someone to ever come close to playing all of them. So play something you do enjoy instead. Seems obvious.
Stop trying to force yourself to play something you don't enjoy just because people on the internet are talking about it.