Topic: Games to pique dad’s interest

Over the last 14 years of fatherhood, my gaming experience has dwindled. I love the latest and greatest in gaming innovations, yet don’t put forth the time to appreciate these marvel titular works.

Nintendo titular works are typically gold for me. With that being said, however, I find myself bored and lost in some of my current switch titles.

I know that part of the problem is my having too many games and not focusing on a single title. I have probably 20 games for the switch and the closest I’ve come to beating on is Gonner.

I really enjoy Minecraft and BOTW, but get lost and bored with the open world. For these games, would a strategy guide ruing the game?

How can I better focus on one game at a time through completion, especially with playing games only 1-2 times a week?

@KrispieKurt Some really hard core people swear off using strategy guides or wikis and that sort of thing. But it is really up to the person and as far as I am concerned there is no shame in it. In Minecraft there are no real goals aside from what you set for yourself. I would encourage you to play online with others and build a town or a city as that can be really fun where I had the most fun in the game. Depending on the age of your children, playing in a world with them could be quite nice too. (unless of course you use gaming as a way to relax away from your kids. Which is totally understandable too)

BotW on the other hand does have defined goals, you just have the freedom to do them however and whenever you want. There are guides and videos aplenty there if you want or need them. Perhaps aim for 1 or 2 shrines a session. When I played it, I made it my first goal to get all the towers to see the whole map. Then I aimed for finding the great fairies. I would hit shrines I found along the way only. Then I aimed for getting as many shrines as I could find without guides, then I cleared the 4 beasts, hunted down the remains shrines(guides if needed) and killed the big bad guy.

However you want to play I encourage you to set your own small goals. Recently I really enjoyed playing Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze playing 1-2 levels a day. Even if I had time to play more. By both pacing myself and yet setting a goal, I made the experience more fun, without burning out by over playing. Keep in mind you have to set goals that work within your playtime.

As for having too many on going games, I understand that too. I suggest this, you said you play twice a week? I am gonna pretend they are Monday and Wednesday. Perhaps play Minecraft Mondays and Breath the *W*ild *W*ednesdays (haha I am so clever). Plan it out and treat it as something to look forward to, if you can. Then once you are content with both games, pick another two.

I am not suggesting you treat it like a job, but adding some personal goals and a little structure has helped my gaming a lot. I used to marathon a game for huge sessions, burn out on it, and never finish it as a result... then years later I would start over again and repeat... Bad plan.

@KrispieKurt I've got to agree with @Heavyarms55 (except his horrible pun-days ) in that it comes down to taking little, measurable bites. I'm grown and fully into "Life" myself, so how I approach games is different. There's more of 'how much can I enjoy this' than 'oh, this looks fun and pretty'. I have more time blocks available to play than it seems you do, but I'm in an on-call situation 6 days a week, so I can still understand the limits as far as diving into something a long time at once.
I've structured my bouts like Heavy pointed out. If it helps, here was my Sunday:
Sunday - Morning; Fortnite for about 5 matches, played to work on 3 in-game daily challenges. Mario Aces for 2 online matches for fun. Evening; Pokemon TCG (2ds), played 2 card duels. Picross (Switch again), did 3 puzzles while compiling reports for work.
All that was about 2 hours spread over the day, but you can see i had a goal in mind and turned out to accomplish alot. It made the time more measurable and I felt good.
/ramble

I feel your pain and I am not a dad...which is a shame.
The Switch is my first full-fledge console since the SNES/N64 days. For a long time I was done with modern gaming. The PlayStation Portable was really good. Too bad Sony abandoned it.

What sort of games do you have, can you make a list?

Also, I'm of the camp that there is no shame in using a guide.
I'm all pro-guide.
It doesn't take the fun out of exploring for me anyway and instead makes me wonder how I never found this or that there in the first place which is an awesome feeling.

Also, guides do amazing stuff but what's more amazing is how we use it to our advantage as we learn more about the game and apply it. Like for games with skill trees and stuff, you can prep and think about which direction you want to go and create save states accordingly which makes replayability more fun as you aren't grinding over dumb bits of a game.

So I'm all pro-guide. Always.

@KrispieKurt Everyone here has good advice, but my first tip would be not to worry about it. Gaming is supposed to be a hobby, something you enjoy - don't feel any pressure to complete or even play a game simply because you own it. In my experience, if a game properly clicks, you will want to finish it anyway. You may even manage to squeeze more time out of your schedule to play more than once or twice a week. But if that's all you really have time for, then that's fine too.

My other piece of advice would be to buy fewer games (bit late if you already have about 20 on the Switch, but I'm in a similar situation!). I'm currently trying to operate a "complete two, buy one" policy (not 100% successful...). It's a good motivational tool, and tackles the problem from two angles.
a) I focus harder on completing the games I already own;
b) it means I really need to make the right choices when buying new ones, which means they are more likely to be games I want to complete.

This is more about the guides but I wouldn't judge somebody for using one. I tend to look something up online if I begin to lose patience and either I've spent too much time on it or the game itself isn't worth the time. Sometimes I look up select things, like in Breath of the Wild, I printed off a Korok map post game (but pre DLC Korok mask) and felt like a genuine adventurer opening my physical map to find them and cross them off! I didn't look up how to do the puzzles in this instance but there have definitely been some games where I just need to check I'm going in the right direction with a puzzle so I don't lose interest. My time/backlog ratio is vast. Another thing about BOTW is that the puzzles are either obviously done in one way or they can be solved in any way. One example was moving the Wii u gamepad around on a ball maze game and all of a sudden I was like "why am I bothering", flipped the game pad over and used the flat side of the maze to solve the puzzle!

This thread is over a year old. And we have a Switch recommendations thread for all future game recommendations.