During my time with video games, I have found that even the most enjoyable game can loose its luster after playing it consistently for an hour or more every day for two years. However, you can generally alleviate said boredom by simply stepping away from the game for a while and doing something else.

For example, a couple years ago I began to grow tired of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, so I stopped playing it and swapped to Fallout: New Vegas for a few months. Once I started to feel slightly bored with that, I would spend some time with Minecraft before repeating the whole cycle again. I continued this cycle of game swapping for about a year and a half, and during that time I was never truly bored with any of my games and enjoyed my time with all of them.

This cycle was ended when I traded in my Xbox 360 for an Xbox One. While I probably could have continued to maintain a similar system with Fallout 4 and Dark Souls 3, I did not, and things fell apart shortly afterwards.

Over the Summer, I completely burned out my enthusiasm of most of the games I owned. So, when I came to college, I left behind my Xbox and all its games in favor of a portable 2DS and a pile of Pokémon games that I hadn’t finished. However, as time passed, I eventually grew tired them and started to think back on my Xbox back home. Now I’m almost as hyped to play Fallout 4 as when it was first announced last year.

In the end, I’ve found that taking a break from a video game can really rekindle your enjoyment of it. So if you ever start to get bored or frustrated with your favorite game and don’t want to, I’d recommend stopping for a time and then going back to it later.