I stopped calling myself a gamer years ago after I found myself playing less than 2 new games a year. I realized it was like calling myself a movie buff and onl

I stopped calling myself a gamer years ago after I found myself playing less than 2 new games a year. I realized it was like calling myself a movie buff and only watching a handful a year. Part of it is that games no longer challenge me like they once did. I played through Breath of the Wild and of the 100 or so puzzle shrines, only a few took more than 5 seconds to figure out their gimmick. However my girlfriend played it and would routinely get stuck for multiple hours. She is smart, but did not grow up playing games like I did. Her play style reminds me of how I played through them as a child. I have just learned all the tricks, the little hints that game developers put in to guide the player. BOTW is a well designed game, but that means it uses standard patterns to teach the player, and I am more attuned to those patterns than she is. The other side of challenge in games is just grinding skill. Like learning all the characters in Smash Brothers and how to counter them, or improving my aim in Counter Strike. At the end of the day that is a more muscle memory based skill, and I am just not interested in sinking the time into it. Rogue likes are the closest to the challenge I’m looking for. But even those eventually reduce to memorizing all the random events and forming a plan based on possible future events.