I like playing video games, which should be obvious given I have an entire blog where I don't shut the hell up about them. Even when I'm disappointed in a game, I still enjoy approaching them as an anthropological artifact worthy of study, looking into what draws people toward liking something that I don't. However, one of the drawbacks that come from looking at games from such a high-level point of view all the time is that it's hard to not always see the man behind the curtain, so to speak. The older and more jaded I get, the less I've come to see games as the objects of wonder they were to me as a kid, and the more I've come to see them as a bundle of mechanics that I've probably already seen before. When I was a kid, I didn't know what hit-stop or revenge values were, I just knew that Kingdom Hearts 2 was the greatest game ever made because I got to hangout with Auron and call Hades a clown and cut buildings in half with a Keyblade. I didn't care about the difference between 3D or top-down Zeldas, I just played them all because every time I got to control that funky little twink I knew I was going to have a blast. Pokémon wasn't a vehicle for instant debate with whiny babies online, it was an incredible journey where I climbed Mt. Silver and got goosebumps from a piece of media for the first time. Obviously some of this is nostalgia. And it's not a feeling I can actively capture, but will probably feel in the future for games I'm playing right now. But there's definitely a disconnect that comes from the fact that most games are nothing new. And I don't mean that as a bad thing! Just that the more games I play, the more it takes to surprise me. Usually when I hit that level of unsatisfied with the games I'm playing, it means it's time to take a full-on break from the medium for a while. Despite talking about games more than anything else, I do have other hobbies, and it's nice to indulge in them more fully. Read a couple books, make some music, or even work on my own games, and I'm usually back to feeling more immersed in the games I was playing before. Sometimes I'll boot up a game just to fill up the free time, even if I'm not *super* interested in it. I'd rather use that time for something else that truly engages me. Another way I've found to keep the medium fresh is to find multiplayer stuff that I can enjoy with friends. It's a lot harder to be hypercritical about a gameplay loop when I'm too busy spamming the "Rock & Stone" button and giving the homies workplace tea. (As a sidenote, this is just an example - Deep Rock Galactic is the perfect game) In retrospect, this is probably a silly "problem" to have, but I'm curious anyways: do you ever have trouble turning off critical brain and just enjoying a game for what it is, or am I being a weirdo? Let me know!