Gaming for mental health

I greatly enjoy gaming. It's probably been my main hobby since childhood, but lately I have not enjoyed it as much because the games are not as good in my experience. I found I have not liked any AAA game for perhaps over a decade and if people ask I don't tell them I'm a gamer because I feel like the industry has changed so much that I don't really know what people are talking about when they discuss modern games. I mainly play older games and I mainly play single player games.

All modern games seem to be hyper-social and feature loot boxes and require you to play extremely regularly to get rewards, or they are open world games with no limits on where you can go and loads of interactions with NPC, which I find stressful because I can't do them perfectly or systematically, and I get overwhelmed and don't want to play it because it's basically too much like real life.

The games I like to play are generally single player linear FPS games which I can 100% (so games from the 90s to early 2000s), retro platformers or metroidvanias, and roguelikes that I can spend a long time mastering, in which every game is slightly different but still basically linear in their progression of an individual playthrough (e.g. The Binding of Isaac, Faster Than Light).

I greatly enjoy gaming. It's probably been my main hobby since childhood, but lately I have not enjoyed it as much because the games are not as good in my experience. I found I have not liked any AAA game for perhaps over a decade and if people ask I don't tell them I'm a gamer because I feel like the industry has changed so much that I don't really know what people are talking about when they discuss modern games. I mainly play older games and I mainly play single player games.

All modern games seem to be hyper-social and feature loot boxes and require you to play extremely regularly to get rewards, or they are open world games with no limits on where you can go and loads of interactions with NPC, which I find stressful because I can't do them perfectly or systematically, and I get overwhelmed and don't want to play it because it's basically too much like real life.

The games I like to play are generally single player linear FPS games which I can 100% (so games from the 90s to early 2000s), retro platformers or metroidvanias, and roguelikes that I can spend a long time mastering, in which every game is slightly different but still basically linear in their progression of an individual playthrough (e.g. The Binding of Isaac, Faster Than Light).

Completely agree. I loved gaming in the PS1 /PS2 era, it was the right balance of challenging and formulaic. Now the games are way too complex with millions of possibilities and its too overwhelming. Bring back Final Fantasy IX on PS1, best game of all time! 

Totally agree about AAA games. I do play them but tend to stick to the single player. They are stressful. I've been looking at more retro type games recently on PlayStation store. Will likely check out Narita Boy and Hyper Light Drifter. Have you tried Journey or Rime? Both single player and pretty chilled.

i have also tried metrovianias i deeply enjoyed ori and the blind forest.... I am in the middle of our in the will-o'-the-wisp at the moment but keep procrastinating on playing i think there's too much complexity for me. next up i think is hollow night we shall see...