I beat that game...?

As many others have said, when the credits roll then the game is beaten. The point where I start feeling proud about how I played depends on the genre.

If I get the end I say I've beaten it, but I havent finished with it until it stops being fun.

For me it really depends on the game. Some games I play through to the credits. Others I want to unlock everything I can. Still others I play over and over again... Plus, with different genres there are different notions of beating the game.

It's kind of genre-specific for me. A few examples:

If it's a fighter or shooter, I won't say I've truly bested the game until I've really felt that I mastered it. Anyone can continue over and over and make their way through something eventually, but when you can really kick a game's ass, then that's something.

For action games, I play to receive the best ending. That means anything from beating it on the default level to beating it on 'ultra hard' or even beating it in X amount of hours, just for personal satisfaction, a few more lines of text or a new cinema.

For RPGs and most adventure games, once I'm through, I've pretty much seriously been through the bulk of the game. I'm fairly lucky when it comes to finding easter eggs and cool stuff, so I usually feel quite satisfied with saying I've beaten them.

Puzzle games are 'beat' when I make it through all of the available challenges.

It depends on the game, really. With Devil May Cry, I beat it and put it down. Maybe, one day if I'm really bored I'll go back and do hard mode and unlock everything, but probably not.

But with shooters I feel compelled to do every last thing - I unlocked everything in Mars Matrix, and if you know how that goes, you know how long that took - which is why I don't buy them very often.

But something with multiple endings can usually compel me to see them all. Which reminds me, I've got to go play Silent Hill 2 again...