When I get my 360 back, the first thing I'm going to do is wipe my Bully file from the hard drive and start over. And I guarantee you when I replay it, I'll watch all of the cutscenes straight through, and almost try to forget that I ever started it. It won't be the first time.
It's one of the weird gaming neuroses I have, and I'm wondering if I'm alone. So, just to start a conversation: What are your gaming hangups or compulsions?
Like, a few years back I told friends that I feel a weird obligation to a well written game character to not get him killed for stupid reasons. Or run out his ammo blowing up a pawn-class enemy. Or even jumping when I mean to kick someone. And when it happens repeatedly, I just start over. I 100 percented GTA:SA with zero wastes, and Vice City with just one, even though a million wouldn't have counted toward my score.
Earlier this week, Bashcraft talked about the inability to finish a game, but I think this plumbs a lot deeper. Do you take pictures of your face to work from when you create yourself in a sports title? Are you OCD about keeping your hard drives clean of game data for titles you haven't played in 3 months? Do you have one gamesave, and one gamesave only? Have you actually obeyed traffic lights in any driving game? Do you walk your character around a world or city and talk to people, even if you've heard the conversations a thousand times and just want to get to the next mission, because it seems, well ... right?
For the record, I do all of the above.
Games you'd like to forget so you could discover them fresh all over again [reddit]
















Follow gamertherapy on Kotaku