Gamer’s OCD is a thing that exists. That’s my story and I’m continuing to stand by it. There’s a part of my brain that lies dormant in every other aspect of my life, but turns on in a ragingly obsessive-compulsive desire for a relatively mild sense of useless accomplishment, every time there’s a list of tasks to be completed.
If that sentence didn’t make sense, that’s good. Because my obsession over checklists doesn’t make sense either. I hate checklists in real life. I avoid hassles and complications if I can. I’m overall kind of a lazy guy. But when I play a video game, it’s a slightly different story. When I play a video game with a checklist in it, it’s time to brew some coffee, because holy shit it’s gonna be a long night.
I’ve already mentioned my Gamer’s OCD in past stories, it keeps me from moving on from a map until I’ve done everything that could possibly be done, and bugs me until I complete most things. Thank God it has its limits, otherwise I’d probably have cracked long ago.
Even so, Forza Horizon 4 is probably going to fry my brain. Literally everything in the game is categorized into one column or another, and everything can be leveled up. Add to that timed events and seasonal challenges that only happen every few weeks and there’s an internal conflict that goes on my head over which tasks get priority. I have to complete the static tasks, but how can I do that when there are timed events that need to be done? How do I do that when there’s a Forza Live event that happens every hour? How can I do that when <BOOM!>.
That was my head exploding.
The first hint that I got of this was in the setup of the game proper. The game starts out like every other Forza Horizon game has. Nothing special, at first. But then the autumn rolled around, and I started to realize it was going to take a while to get to winter. Then I reached winter, and again, there was a lot of game to get through to reach spring. In general, this wouldn’t be an issue, I’d get there when I got there. But this time around, Playground Games decided to open up the true Forza Horizon experience once I had played through the four seasons as a “Year One” introduction. The live events and such were locked until then. HOW THE **** AM I SUPPOSED TO ENJOY THE INTRO when I know there is timed content that could be gone at any moment?
It pressured me and all my mental instabilities to push through the intro as quickly as possible. This wouldn’t have been a big deal if the intro itself wasn’t a good four or five hours worth of gameplay. It turned a game I usually enjoy immensely into a bit of a grind, and that’s a hard thing for me to admit because I love the series so much. I didn’t enjoy that intro as much as I should have. My OCD didn’t let me.
Now that I’m out in the wide open expanses of the game, that pressure is mostly gone, but I’m still a bit overwhelmed with the amount of lists there are. Even the weekly challenges are checklists. To sit down and play this game in a casual capacity is almost unthinkable for me. I have to pick something and focus on it.
Right now I’m working the road races. After those are complete, I’ll pick another discipline and focus on that. This will help in a big way for me, but with Forzathon Live constantly pulling me away with other timed checklists, it’s going to be a constant battle to decide what to focus on.
I hope that after a while I will be able to relax and just enjoy the game, because so far it’s pretty damn amazing.
Am I the only person that’s affected by things like this?
