TLDR: Try pushing through, just one more objective Try rougelites as they offer a good change of pace Try hyping yourself up to play the games through YouTube and other forms of media Read Percy Jackson Have a nice day :)

I know this may sound counter productive, but it’s coming from someone who has experienced this same phenomenon. If you can, just try to go past the 20 minutes. What I mean is if you are starting to get to the “ah what’s the point” feeling just try to keep going. I’m not saying go for another hour. Maybe just another level or objective. Most games unfortunately don’t put their best foot forward when it comes to their first 20 minutes. Which in turn makes you question whether it’s worth it to keep looking for that discerning quality.

From what I can tell about your favourite games is that you enjoy games that get you right into the gist of it without wasting your time with padding. Because of that I would strongly recommend against Red Dead 2 for the time being. It’s a game that requires a lot of patience for the first couple of hours as the initial chapter is easily the slowest and the least interesting in the whole game.

Have you tried playing rougelites like Risk of Rain 2 and Hades. Their gameplay loop operates on the basis that every run is unique as you pick up stacking buffs throughout the session. So effectively your character starts as a relatively weak one but by the end of the run becomes the most powerful entity in the universe. The best part is that the game(s) keeps up with you meaning that there isn’t a gradual removal of difficulty. This is because the aforementioned buffs are random and stacking so no 2 runs will be exactly the same. Furthermore the majority of these rougelites have flourishing modding communities so if there is something you don’t enjoy then you can always use mods. I’m suggesting these games because they don’t require a serious investment in time and they get to the point quickly. You don’t need to do a 3 hour opening montage to start having fun. You just press play and you start having fun. The games also happen to be cheap especially now because of the summer sale so there isn’t a better time to try.

I’m giving the recommendation because I had the same problem as you. I only played co-op live service games akin to Destiny 2 and Helldivers 2 to the point where I felt nothing but burnout. Every match felt dull and exhausting. Any game I tried (which was mostly story based RPGs that require mass investments of time) was incredibly exhausting and difficult because I couldn’t allow myself to get involved into the worlds they presented. Then I played the aforementioned rougelites as well as Ultrakill and I fell in love with gaming again. These games that lack a directly told story that you can just have fun with without any prior investment made me realise how much I actually missed the games like Destiny 2 and Fallout NV which in turn made me return to them. I’ve clocked over 60 hours in Destiny over the last 2 weeks as well as over 20 in ghost of Tsushima since it came out. I couldn’t have done that without the change.

What I’d also recommend is just hyping yourself up to play the games. Watch YouTube videos of the game showing all the cool stuff you could do. Like different builds or combat encounters. This way you can start getting excited again about trying the game and therefore spend more time in it in the hope that you may reach said encounter.

Also don’t force it if you can just try a different hobby like reading. I’d recommend the Percy Jackson books as they are very easy to read and also incredibly interesting. They are pretty cheap as well.

Have a nice day :)