So I was sitting on my couch the other night, playing through my 100th hour of the hugely underrated Mad Max game (about a 30 hour game so that should give you a feel of how much I’ve enjoyed it and tried stretching it out) and I realized, I had pretty much 100%’ed the game, with me just floundering, doing anything I can to avoid the final mission and end the game. That is when it finally hit me:

Finishing a great game is kind of like someone you adore dumping you.

It is the end of a relationship that you felt was perfect, and you have little-to-no say in it. It’s funny, I felt like pointing it out to fellow gamer geeks because growing up, beating a game always gave me  serious sense of satisfaction. I used to rush to feel that. And though that feeling still comes, it is outlived now by a sadness that I can no longer escape into that virtual world I adored so much. Granted, a lot of games give you a new game PLUS features for those who still want to dabble, but it just isn’t the same once you actually finished it, even if certain open-world titles never run out of fetch quests.

But (and there is always a but) there is a real joy to beating them, too, because suddenly you get faced with the greatest dilemma a gamer can face:

What to play next?

And in the end, that makes it all worth it (and you just repeat the cycle again and again).

Tags: beating a game, finishing a game, game over, gaming