![\"Elden](\"https:\/\/www.gameinformer.com\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/body_default\/public\/2022\/01\/28\/59e36c83\/er_gamescom_4k_screenshots_21.jpg\")
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It\u2019s the end of May, and I\u2019m watching the credits roll in Elden Ring. After more than 150 hours roaming the Lands Between, I feel the familiar bittersweetness that occurs anytime I finish a game I love. I\u2019d conquered unimaginable horrors and become Elden Lord in my own personalized adventure, all while cruising atop a cool double-jumping steed; now what? Recovering from this high would become a personal struggle for the remainder of the year.<\/p>\n
Elden Ring dominated my life. When I wasn\u2019t playing it, it was the only thing I wanted to do. When I chipped away at other games for work or pleasure, tasks like gaining access to Raya Lucaria Academy or conquering Malenia were in the back of my mind. I stopped eating Red Lobster because it caused me to suffer terrible flashbacks of getting relentlessly spat on by the giant crustaceans in Liurnia of the Lakes. Elden Ring joins the ranks of Grand Theft Auto III, Skyrim, and Breath of the Wild as games that became borderline obsessions for me, and the lull that followed was rough.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Elden Ring<\/p>\n
I played games out of obligation to my job, but nothing sustained my attention. That\u2019s no slight on the games themselves, but they had one hell of an act to follow. I also wasn\u2019t sure what kind of experience I wanted since Elden Ring checked so many boxes. Should I continue chipping away at another massive title like, say, Dying Light 2, or enjoy something much smaller and more experimental? Worst of all, the answer couldn\u2019t be \u201cjust keep playing Elden Ring.\u201d As much as I loved it, I didn\u2019t want it to be an anchor that prevented me from enjoying everything else the year had to offer. I had to move on.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thankfully, the first game to get me back on the rails was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder\u2019s Revenge. As an old-school TMNT fan, I\u2019d been looking forward to Tribute Games\u2019 arcade throwback for a long time, and it successfully delivered<\/a> what I wanted by providing a lovingly modern take on a beloved formula. The mindless-but-satisfying beat \u2018em up action was a refreshing break from Elden Ring\u2019s more calculated, stressful battles. Then you tack on a killer retro soundtrack and oodles of nostalgia. It may not have offered much by comparison, but this comforting familiarity revealed to me that playing Elden Ring left me too mentally fatigued to tackle a more mechanically dense title. By the time I kicked Shredder to the curb, I was hungry for something a little bigger, a lot bolder, and substantially tougher.\u00a0<\/p>\n Enter Neon White. While Shredder\u2019s Revenge gave me something familiar, Neon White won me over by delivering something refreshingly original. I adore platformers, and the game\u2019s ingenious implementation of card-based gunplay and an emphasis on speedrunning gave me something new to obsess over: leaderboards. How many more seconds can I shave off a platinum-ranked run? Can I continue to assert my leaderboard dominance over my friends list? My competitive side found a new challenge to sink its teeth into. Like Elden Ring, Neon White offered a rewarding sense of \u201cMe vs. The Game,\u201d a challenge that forced me to sharpen my dexterity and timing to overcome its obstacles. Or, in more jerk-flavored layman\u2019s terms, I needed to \u201cgit good\u201d again.<\/p>\n The Looker<\/p>\n After leaving my mark on Heaven, I\u2019d just about gotten my groove back and felt ready to tackle something a little more off-kilter. From seemingly out of nowhere, a small indie game called The Looker had been attracting positive buzz online as an entertaining parody of Jonathan Blow\u2019s enigmatic puzzle game, The Witness. I liked The Witness enough to want to give The Looker a shot. I\u2019m glad I did because, within minutes, it won me over as the best comedic title I\u2019d played in some time. The game is a humorous deconstruction of Blow\u2019s 2016 mystery that makes sharp jabs at its pretentiousness and the befuddling nature of puzzle games as a whole. The gags are not only funny, but The Looker\u2019s puzzles, which are mockeries of The Witness\u2019, are genuinely clever in their own right. As a totally free game<\/a>, I highly recommend anyone that\u2019s played enough of The Witness to give The Looker a shot. Its playful inventiveness replenished my excitement to see what other strange experiences were out there, and Elden Ring\u2019s fog gate hindering my enthusiasm for other games dissipated entirely.\u00a0<\/p>\n Elden Ring treated me so well that I\u2019d convinced myself I wouldn\u2019t find a game that did the same. I suppose that\u2019s still true to some degree; it\u2019s my Game of the Year with a bullet. Sometimes a game is so exceptional you forget everything else that\u2019s out there or are unwilling to seek it out. In hindsight, I was also afraid of enjoying something less simply because it wasn\u2019t Elden Ring. To that end, it\u2019s beneficial to walk away and not try to immediately fill that void with something else, which is probably what I should have done first. There\u2019s probably some break-up advice in here somewhere, and I\u2019m grateful I found that there was indeed plenty of other fish in the sea.<\/p>\n\n It\u2019s the end of May, and I\u2019m watching the credits roll in Elden Ring. After more than 150 hours roaming the Lands Between, I feel the familiar bittersweetness that occurs anytime I finish a game I…<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":983,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"slim_seo":{"title":"The Games That Rescued Me From My Post-Elden Ring Slump - ITTeacherITFreelance.hk","description":"It\u2019s the end of May, and I\u2019m watching the credits roll in Elden Ring. After more than 150 hours roaming the Lands Between, I feel the familiar bittersweetness t"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326265"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/983"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326265"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":326266,"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326265\/revisions\/326266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.gameinformer.com\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/body_default\/public\/2022\/12\/22\/23ea526c\/the_looker_screen_1.jpg\")
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