I think we've all been at that one point where we've been pressured by ourselves to sell a game or to just leave it in that one secluded place in your house for it to dust. I've been there several times and I've had to go through both situations. I remember selling Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 and regretting it, reminiscing about all of the good times I had with that game. You never know how much you'll miss something until you find out it's gone.

That's why I've dedicated this blog to those of you who have been through this and/or are about to go through this situation in particular. It's how to get the most out of your video games.

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First off, when some people go through a first playthrough of a game (or if one happens to unravel all of the endings within a certain game), they sometimes just lose interest in the game itself. They think that they'll never get a fresh new feeling that they felt when they first popped in the disc, cartridge, etc. - and so the game is left to dust. The gamer then buys a new game, and then plays the living heck out of the thing, before reaching a point again where the game seems to lose its luster.

The cycle repeats again and again, probably what you'd expect, right?

Well, you could be wrong. Surprisingly, there are probably dozens of ways to increase the mileage out of your favorite games, and the games that you don't really seem to be interested in. One way is by trying to challenge yourself constantly, thinking of creative new ways to experience the game from a completely different perspective. I usually challenge my skills at a game by forcing myself to limit my own strengths to discover my own weaknesses, or to just have fun.

One example is what I'd like to call "rampages" - and this term can apply to many games that you may own. I first experienced going through rampages in Metal Gear Solid 3, when I got bored during the game once after I beat it several times. I challenged myself on how many people I could kill in a single room, which was a pretty simple concept at the time. Once I got the most mileage out of that idea, I decided to add in a few challenges to the mix to spice things up. One was using only grenades to kill people, and others involved only using the knife in an alert phase and another involved achieving kills only through crotch-shots. It provided loads of fun - and hilarity.

The concept of rampages carried on to Metal Gear Solid 2, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, andMetal Gear Solid 4 as well. Eventually, I decided to expand the concept to other video games I owned, such as Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves. This then evolved into another concept, which involved having to eliminate enemies a certain way, such as using only melee attacks in First-Person Shooters such as Medal of Honor: Frontline and Medal of Honor: European Assault, or not using the Charge Beam to eliminate enemies in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes.

This even worked for split-screen multiplayer and online multiplayer games. I tried to incorporate the "Mexican Standoff" concept from Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption into Medal of Honor: European Assault, which was pretty much having four players face each other armed with only pistols, waiting for a certain point of time to pass, and shooting when that moment passed, we'd all shoot the crap out of each other until there was one man standing. It was awesome. Even in Metal Gear Solid 4 I was able to find ways to make the game more enjoyable, such as using the Altair costume in the game from Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed and playing through the game using only a Stun Knife to assassinate people.

By striving to find different ways to play your favorite video games different ways, you can really never get bored of them.

If that doesn't work, you can try glitches to reveal programming errors and goofs in your favorite video games - as long as they're not game-breaking. For example, in Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut, I try to expose glitches in the game, such as getting characters into levels where they don't belong, just for the fun of it. I also try to find glitches in Sly 3 as well, which ends up with endless hilarity and fun. Glitches are one of the best ways to find undiscovered fun in a game you thought you could never enjoy again.

If you can find ways - or something, anything - to enjoy your video games in a different manner than what you would normally play, then you can get the most replay value out of your video games. So think twice before selling a game you once found amazing but now boring, and try to find and create different concepts to get the most fun out of it. You just might find yourself playing it and enjoying it all over again.

It all starts with how you use your imagination.