Your observation has not gone unnoticed by Neuroscience. The Brain is terribly efficient at storing, and in the end preserving learned behaviors. While other memories are far more malleable, and subject to alteration, or even total elimination. Learned behaviors will persist for a life time, and will still be created even in a Brain that has had the bad fortune to be severely damaged. Such as a person that has lost the ability to store long term memory. They may no longer be able to recall what they ate for dinner yesterday, but they can still learn to do complex tasks. Even if they have no knowledge of ever having learned to do them.

This form of memory is very primordial and highly redundant. The Brain wants to convert behaviors that it learned into something that mimics instinct, or even second nature. Once that happens the task will become easier due in large part to your not having to think about the minutia. Like learning to ride a bike initially it is daunting, but once the Brain files the needed information away you can access it without thinking. I would suspect that in your case since you stopped actively modifying the behavior. Your Brain decided to finalize the pathways.

This might seem like a good thing, but where there is a upside there is a downside. While becoming a old hand is a benefit it is also a curse. Effectively you can become too good for your own good. You run the very real risk of zoning out. Which is basically a meditative state. The player can lose all sense of their environment, and even go so far as to just stop thinking altogether. You should play the game. The game shouldn't play you. The goal after all is not to get good at the game. The goal is to have fun getting good at the game.

I highly advise you not to play games like this. Your cheating yourself of a more rewarding experience. Get good with effort rather then exploiting habit. Gaming is a journey, and not a destination.

Thanks for the advice. I really appreciate it. I'll make sure to follow that.

I read your analysis, but Im not quite sure I understand what about his playing you think he is doing wrong. I mean don't many of us do that? we play a game and have fun getting really good at it. Then there is a point where we get in a rut of bad habits. So we stop for a while, and then come back to it feeling better than we were before. Its sounds like thats what he did. What is wrong with playing that way?

Yeah, I wanted to give an example how I was learning to play an instrument but when I tried to play a song it just didn't want to work...Then I gave up for a few days;..Came back and could almost immediately play the song I wanted to play....but their are already people coming up with good posts..

Doesn't work for me in starcraft 2 I need some like 2 matches before I get in rhythm, but I understand for other games like uncharted I was still pretty good at.

I especially find this is true when I am stuck on a puzzle in a game, a fresh mind can often make the solution very clear

I just came back to Guitar Hero 3 after not playing it (or a similar game) for 3 years.

I absolutely blitzed Cliffs of Dover on Hard and Impulse on Expert first time, it's the best I have ever played.

It doesn't make sense.