Them Feels
The credits finish, controller still lay down next to you, glass empty after the length of said credits. You feel a sense of disappointment among all the euphoria. The disappointment that you’ve completed the experience, and probably won’t be sitting down to carry on your lengthy quest curious to find out what’s going to happen next any time soon. You’ll sit there and contemplate what you’re going to do with all the free time you have in your life that you previously filled with said game. Go outside? Nah! You debate popping in another game from your library into your console, but it just isn’t the same. That’s the double-edged sword of completing your first game.
Whilst you’ll always look back on it with fondness, remembering the first time you beat Bowser in a Mario game or just edging your way to poll position in the final race of a racer, it’ll resonate with you at an emotional level that makes every other game look sub-par and uninteresting, at least for a little while. My experience of completing Lylat Wars on the N64 led to just this feeling, not even Goldeneye or seeing my Pokémon glorified on the TV via Pokémon Stadium would do the trick.
Give it a couple hours and you come round, settling into the grind of another RPG or shooting the hell out of some bad guys in an FPS. But every time you go back and play that first game long down the line in the future, you’ll get that familiar feeling of content, even if it does seem somewhat outdated now.
