Anyone else playing on a 5-20 year lag?

My lag time depends on how soon the games are put on sale

This is an intruiging subject. I was part of reddit's /r/patientgamers subreddit (lurking, mostly) because it was a good place to get insight into valuable gems that I missed first time through because I didn't have time or didn't want to spend £60 or £70 on a brand new game, and would rather wait for a sale.

Nowadays, I generally wait for Game Pass, Ubi+, PS+ or similar to get the game. Sure, I spend on subscriptions, but the games I play if I count out the costs it's a lot cheaper.

I do also play retro games - 'retro' being an ambivalent term for me, as it somehow is used pejoratively throughout the modern gaming community, which I disagree with: They're good games, just not on modern hardware or systems - quite often. So - yeah, sometimes I lag, sometimes I'm up-to-date, oftentimes I'm on my Steam Deck so I get to play slightly older games at a high fidelity on a handheld device, which is awesome.

I'm playing No Man's Sky for the first time. I consider myself fortunate to have missed the launch debacle.

Currentlt playing Red Dead Redemption 1 so yes I am at the +10years behind

I found out the cake was a lie circa 2020. Also with the GPU price trends the last few years, I suspect more people have become patient gamers but not by choice.

Not intentionally. But I didn't really have a gaming system, so my work laptop was used and of course could only run old stuff.

But now I got a Steam Deck, and a lot of what I'm playing now is still old anyways (just not as old), because I didn't have a chance to play them at the time.

In this year I got a PS3, an Xbox 360 and a Wii. Now I'm playing all the good games on these platforms, that I've never owned when they were current. It's great!

Just finished system shock 1 so like 20+ year old lag, I don't really have a strong urge to play modern AAA games. I mostly just gawk at what's popular and just play indie and old games. I also have a problem of not being able to pick up games in the middle of a series. I need to play a series from the start no matter how mad the earlier iterations are.

Currently I'm playing MDK

I'm about to play the Bioshock trilogy for the first time in over a decade. Never played 2 and 3, only got about halfway through 1 when it came out. I'm also about 75% through Super Metroid, which I never beat as a kid. I know that's outside of the 1-2 year window, but I love older games. Scored the Bioshock trilogy for like 15 bucks too, can't beat that.

Me, Mainly because I was/am poor. Most old games and consoles are already cracked, or easy to do so. For example, my Dad gifted me Xbox 360 hacked. Which allowed me to purchase game copies whenever it was possible, I didn't have internet while growing up. So my Xbox was a godsend for me.

I‘m playing pretty old games all the time that have been sitting in my library. I hardly even buy new ones these days cause… why? I‘m sitting on a ton already lol

Big upside: They run smooth as butter on my modern PC up to 4K even.

I have tons of titles sitting in my steam, epic, gog, origin and game pass accounts. They are waiting for me to spend great time with them. So why to have a hype addiction.

Have there been many cake is a lie moments recently? The only current game I quote frequently is Deep Rock Galactic, and that one is cheap enough and potato-friendly enough even for us PGs.

Oh yeah, DRG is the real deal. Not Alien: Fire Team Elite and not Back 4 Blood (of the 4-player short-mission co-op shooters out there inspired by Left 4 Dead)

Rock and Stone

I'm right there with you. Between work and health issues that directly interfere with physical ability to play games when they flare up, I'm often too mentally exhausted to embark on a new game, so very often end up replaying something familiar or putting time into an MMO like Elder Scrolls Online. The comfy PJs of gaming.

I'm a big fan of RPGs in particular so I want to feel fresh and ready to get immersed in a new world... But I so rarely have that level of mental and physical energy aligning at the same time now, so my backlog is ridiculous. I still need to play Mass Effect Andromeda, Persona 5 Royal (I made it decently far through the original but lost steam/enthusiasm when I kept having like every aspect of the game spoiled for me by shit like algorithmic YouTube thumbnails or comments on an entirely different game's OST etc) Dragon Age 3 and all the Tales Of games from Tales of Xillia 2 on, and those are some of my favorite game franchises...

I just started the Trails RPG games. It's great to be this behind and know there's this giant story waiting for me.

I just started playing Max Payne 3, which released in 2013. The game aged well, still looks great and a ton of fun.

On a related note, the Steam Deck is the perfect platform for Patient Gamers. It runs these older titles really well, and the portability + ability to suspend / resume games at any time is a game-changer (pun intended).

I used to do that as a kid but now I have money I like to stay up to date and buy current games so I can be part of the community

Yup. Started the Witcher 3 end of last year. Finished Kingdom Come Deliverance. Also play a lot of total war Time 2 and Attila.

I'm just now getting around to beating SC: Brood War, granted, as a kid, I sucked at it.

I also play whatever tf I want, so like if I'm in the mood for HL2, I boot it up. Most of the modern games I play are indie.

Modern games have become too focused on providing a clean, balanced and no-real-obstacles experience. Sometimes I want to play a game that is a cohesive experience without being laser focused on some big idea about how I should play it. As an example, I've recently replayed arx fatalis. It's really fun how you can do everything in that game that you'd want an npc for in any other. It's also fun how each playstyle requires its own big chunk of knowledge about how the game works. Modern games try too hard to be minimalistic and fail to see the fun in a truly open experience. Even when you have options, they have all the fun pre-balanced and pre-optimized out of them. They give you too much info. No sense of discovery

What's fun with indie games and playing on a delay is that when I want to play a new game and grab something in my price range off my wishlist, I often have no idea what the game is or why past me thought I'd want to play it. Time wipes out any spoilers I got reading about it or watching someone play it years ago.

I still play the multiplayer modification of the original Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

For more information visit https://sa-mp.com

I'm going to start this lag anytime now with PS2 games. I didn't have one when it was new and decided to have the real deal instead of emulating it. It's all set with a 500GB HD and loads of games. Now, I only need time...

I also have an extensive collection of classics on my GOG account. Yet to start playing the majority.

I didn't play a ton of video games growing up so I've got a weird mix of modern games and old games that I'm playing for the first time. Last year I binged through the entire Master Chief Collection for the first time

I seem to be on a 3ish year lag, although for big big titles that my friends also play I buy at release so I can be part of the initial hype train (for instance, I bought Zelda:TOTK and played as soon as it was available)

Its just not the same trying to share about my korok torture machine in 2025.

I play mostly ports on switch, so 10 year.

I typically only buy games on discount some years after they've launched. I'll sometimes make an exception for indie games that come out which seem like exactly my kind of game. And I made an exception for Battlebit as well - I bought it immediately after I saw the first person playing it because it seemed like ultra fun, and I've probably already played more of it than all Battlefield games combined over the years.

I'm in the retro era right now. Recently beat deus ex, system shock 2, marathon, and baldurs gate.

Definitely on a 5-6 year lag. Currently the only games I've been playing are Titanfall 2, Persona 5, and Stardew Valley.

Basically covers everything I need, a long jrpg, a multiplayer fps (using the Northstar mod), and an endless chill game

I'm usually playing older games of some sort. There's retro games, like those from the 32-bit era and before, but I also play...old-ish games, ones that were released within the last decade or two. Just last year I began playing Tokyo Xanadu eX+, which was released in 2017 (albeit as the definitive version of a 2015 game).

I think a number of the indie games I play are generally newer. Though, given my tastes, many of them tend to be games designed to evoke some sort of similarity to those older styles of games. So I guess it's an interesting question whether they count as "retro" or not.

That said, given that I pretty much only use store-bought laptops (and not of the "gaming" variety), my hardware means that I'm much better off playing older games anyway. "Newer old" games can probably still run, depending on the game, but some may be choppy and I can probably wait on those.

I'm not entirely sure what qualifies as retro but the oldest game I regularly play is the original Fallout from 1998. I mostly find myself playing games released in the 2000s and occasionally something newer if I think its a worth buying. I think the most recently released game I play is probably Half Life Alyx. I would have been a little too young to have grown up with some of them, but my family pc couldn't handle a lot of the newer games so here we are.

I mean, factorio came out 3 years ago plus another few in early access, so if that counts, yes.

I'm currently playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey, so I guess I'm on about a 5-year lag. I usually wait for games to go on sale for a heavy discount. It's also when my PC is in a good enough state to play those AAA games because I usually upgrade a PC component every 3-4 years.

Just played Portal 2. Amazing game

I'm currently replaying Half Life (actually Black Mesa). I usually replay Half Live 2 every couple of years, and Portal 1 and 2 every year.

I played through Doom and Doom 2 a couple years ago, and I play a web version of the C64 game Impossible Mission at least one a week.

Clearly I'm old and nostalgic.

I stay approximately one console generation behind these days, so I guess that's about 7 years. I finally got a ps4 this year. Anyone have any recommendations?

Mostly interested in single player offline games. Metroidvanias and roguelikes are my most played genres.

Generally I’m on a 3-5 year delay, unless it’s a franchise I like. Then, I buy it when the price drops on Steam. Currently waiting for Horizon Forbidden West to come to PC, but until then it’s Powerwash Simulator and Satisfactory.

I just played through the first Fallout game earlier this year. I guess that puts me on a 25 year lag. I've been playing a bit of Atari 2600 games too, but that's more for work related reasons than for entertainment.

I'm still playing ps2 games, so yeah

I haven't played any nintendo switch game, so 5 or 6 year lag

I only have this lag with single player games. I hate joining MP games late; much better to be there at the start and learn along with everyone else over trying to learn against people who've played for 5 years. Every "new" SP game I currently am playing is old and was given away free (or is on a subscription thing like PS+ and GamePass).

yeah, that's basically when i play most aaa games - when the mood takes me, but mostly ~10 years old. i've just recently finally played wofenstein new order, followed by the tomb raider legend trilogy (they're really short), and i've now started on the tomb raider survivor trilogy

indie games i tend to play a bit sooner; partly because they're cheaper and partly because i feel they're more likely to use (and need) the money to make more games. although the last indie game i played was fez, and the dev of that has quit completely...