At some point in the last year or so my tastes in gaming underwent a sea-change. For a long time I enjoyed quantity of games over depth of play, favoring short, easily mastered games that could be finished and traded in quickly. Creative shooters like Bulletstorm, or action-adventure titles like Tomb Raider fit the bill perfectly-- games I could finish in 10-12 hours, trade in, and move on the next experience. It's not that I shunned difficulty, it was just that I wanted games that gave me relaxation and entertainment over a steep mental challenge. Plus, I had a big backlog of games I wanted to play and I valued the ability to have a multitude of experiences.
Lately, however, I have been drawn to deep, dense, highly complex games that take hours and hours just to learn the base gameplay, let alone experience the fullness of what they have to offer. Games that scoff at words like "accessibility" and "user-friendly," that punish you for your mistakes but reward patience and hard work. Games that test your patience and your skills, but forge you into a better gamer on the cold, hard anvil of their difficulty. Crusader Kings II is such a game and I have sunk many, many hours into plumbing its depths.
