“We can often miss the forest for the trees.”

May 28, 2018 7:57 PM

The Rewarding Benefits Of Replaying Video Games [Game Informer] “I have a hard time keeping up with games as it is without replaying them, which often results in a tempting cycle of moving on to other games before completing others. Our fast-paced age encourages this behavior, and even if our attention spans aren't decreasing, our overall ability to invest in one thing is tough with so much to do. Despite these excuses and challenges, replaying games is more beneficial than you think. Just as Black Ops III or Braid's stories feel like different, fuller narratives a second time through with their revelatory conclusions in mind, the same effect applies in a broader sense to games' other elements. I've put together a list of reasons why, which includes the joys of discovering missed content, remembering encounters and story beats you might have forgotten, and more.”

• The psychology of replaying games [Metro]

“Everyone reading this must surely have been sat on the sofa on a lazy Sunday when Back to the Future or one of the Jurassic Park films come on the TV (God bless ITV2!) and you end up watching them for the full two-hour duration. They are effortless films to watch again. You don’t really have to concentrate on them, certainly not to the extent you did the first time you saw them, and they just seem comforting and familiar. Well, it’s exactly the same feeling with replaying old games.” [...] My submission is that video games, more than any other medium, have the power to trigger increased feelings of nostalgia. As by definition they are interactive and require active participation as opposed to the passivity of watching a movie. As an example, one of the games I did replay recently was the HD remake of Zelda: The Wind Waker. I first played it at the time of its original Gamecube release, some 13 years previously. I immediately experienced the usual nostalgia rush, remembering where I was when I played it for the first time, what I was doing with my life at that time, my ambitions and how I thought my future would pan out.

• The Dying Art of Replaying Games [Gameranx]

“Whenever I found myself at a loose end, on a public holiday, off sick, or stuck indoors on a weekend, chances are I would replay Resident Evil. Hell, I’d gotten it down to a fine art by this point; I was able to complete it in a matter of hours, usually without even bothering to save. This was the start of a recurring practice with other games. As the years went on and games became more sophisticated (especially in storytelling), more titles were added to a pile reserved for regular loose-end revisiting: Chase the Express, Silent Hill, Final Fantasy VII, Ocarina of Time, Grand Theft Auto III, Mafia, and Brothers in Arms. There were many more, and although not all were as conducive to a single sitting as Resident Evil, I would often return to them again and again at times when current releases just weren’t doing it for me. To me, this was no different to a movie buff dusting off his favourite cult classics to relive their magic, no matter how well or badly they had aged.”

• Video Games Are Better The Second Time You Play Them [Kotaku]

“Everyone remembers the first time they played a really good video game. The constant surprises of Half-Life, or the drama of Final Fantasy VI, or the stress and catharsis of Far Cry 2. As good as those games were the first time around, they’d almost certainly be better the second. Or the third. Or the fourth. I love to replay games. It’s something my colleagues occasionally give me crap for. They worry I’m sacrificing time I could otherwise spend on new games re-experiencing old ones. I do play games for a living, so I always try to maintain a healthy mix of new ones in my rotation. But I’m almost always replaying something. In fact, I generally enjoy replying the older games more than breaking in the new ones.”

posted by Fizz (56 comments total)

I think revisiting any story can be rewarding, but it's sometimes wonderful to come back to a game after playing through it and taking the time to reflect on it, to maybe realize that the game you were playing was not at all the game you'd first thought it was.

I've started wondering if the notion of achievements are somehow undermining replayability; does a 100% run mean you've extracted all the experiences the game has to offer? What does that even mean?
posted by mhoye at 8:10 PM on May 28, 2018 [7 favorites]

Some games have replayability baked right into the gameplay. When you finish diablo you're challenged to the same again at a higher difficulty level. In The Binding of Isaac, as soon as you die the next button you press will start a new game, which can be the fast train to dawn for a quick after dinner game.
posted by adept256 at 8:28 PM on May 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

I spent over 1000 hours on my OG Skyrim game. And then downloaded the special edition and logged about 100 hours+ on that. I... understand this FPP very well is what I'm saying.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 8:34 PM on May 28, 2018 [7 favorites]

lol i'm on inquisitor #11 and i'm gonna punch solas
posted by poffin boffin at 8:40 PM on May 28, 2018 [15 favorites]

Then there's what I call FPS deja vu. The core mechanic hasn't changed much since wolfenstein, and was locked in with mouselook in quake. You move your mouse over a blob of pixels (alien, nazi, zombie, robot, whatever), and you click the button. Which is why Call of Duty WW2 feels a whole lot like Medal of Honor 2 from 15 years ago.

Which is why when you plug a fresh cartridge of FPS 2018 into your gamebox it feels like you've played this game a dozen times before.
posted by adept256 at 8:55 PM on May 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

This is why RPGs are my favourite and also the best kind of computer game. Because, yes, they are specifically designed for replayability by giving you different character classes and different paths and skill trees, and so actively reward trying different things. I would instantly play the Baldur's Gate games again for like the fiftieth time if you set them down in front of me right now.

There are other similar games, however, like Horizon Zero Dawn, that are comprehensively excellent and certainly seem like they intend to be replayable, but I honestly don't think I could ever touch them again. And I'll also admit to not personally understanding folks who grind something like Diablo III for thousands of hours just to get differently-coloured spiked maces from differently-coloured demonspawn (after completing the core "journey").
posted by turbid dahlia at 8:56 PM on May 28, 2018 [3 favorites]

I gave Last of Us to a friend after beating it. And he was so very grateful when I explained that you could not fill out the entire skill tree without two playthroughs, because it freed him to be selective instead of completionist.
posted by crysflame at 9:04 PM on May 28, 2018

There are people who don't replay games??

I enjoy a lot of games better the second time, because I know how the puzzles go and don't need to stress out about finding all the sidequests and/or collectibles. Or in the case of the Arkham games, because it's a lot of fun to master the mechanics.

That reminds me, I should really reinstall Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines and play as a Malkavian.
posted by zompist at 9:06 PM on May 28, 2018 [3 favorites]

As I've grown older, I've found myself gravitating almost exclusively to games designed to be played many times (mainly single-session roguelites like Spelunky or Enter the Gungeon) or against other players (particularly fighting games — I'm super pumped for Pocket Rumble and Fantasy Strike). The last time I played through an RPG other than Undertale (which takes, like, a weekend) was Xenoblade, on the Wii, and that was doable mostly just because it was a snowy winter and my wife and I spent an hour or two of every evening on a shared save file.

As I've described it to friends, I've largely lost the patience and/or free time for games that are designed to eventually be beaten by the player. I much prefer games that don't really care whether you win or lose, especially multiplayer ones.

On the other hand… I will admit to occasionally spending a rainy day replaying through Super Metroid in a single session. I'm no expert speedrunner, though, so it usually takes about three hours. Still, though.
posted by DoctorFedora at 9:18 PM on May 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

I rarely replay games. The fun, for me, is discovering something new and novel, and I can basically remember everything I've done in a game so I strongly resent repeating content. I prefer to squeeze every last drop out of a game so I don't have to repeat anything. I've found Western RPGs (Elder Scrolls excepted) generally difficult to play for that reason; because they expect you to replay it and try something different, but they also expect you to go through all the areas again and pretend you haven't been there before, find the same treasures, have the same conversations, to get to the bits that vary. I don't want to do that, so I want to have the best experience the first time, but the choice paralysis gets to me.
posted by Merus at 10:26 PM on May 28, 2018 [3 favorites]

All that, and Dark Souls.
posted by Captain Fetid at 11:03 PM on May 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

There are people who don't replay games??

I guess that's me.

I don't know why I'd rather play a new game than replay a favorite one, when I definitely enjoy re-reading favorite books.

If I had to hazard a guess, I would say it's because most games that I've played have parts that just aren't that interesting a second time around. For example, gathering resources can be fun when you're still exploring the world and it leads you to discovering things, but when you know the map well it can be tedious. In a book I know well, I can just skip ahead to my favorite parts.

And there are just so many games and so little time. I feel a little thrill at the idea of discovering a new world and I can't do that if I'm bouncing around an old one.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 11:20 PM on May 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

I replay games a lot, the best ones can be just as entertaining the 4th of 5th time around. Like rereading a book to appreciate it's depth and structure, replaying lets you see a lot more of the details of the way it as designed. Though, I am kinda crappy at anything that is very fast-paced, and I don't like shooty or killy games, so the number of games out there I can enjoy is pretty limited. Some I have played through so many times it's almost like a meditation, like Journey.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 11:36 PM on May 28, 2018

That reminds me, I should really reinstall Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines and play as a Malkavian.

"No, you stop!"
posted by invitapriore at 12:41 AM on May 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

I don't replay games but stop halfway through and restart sometime later. I still have to finish the Witcher 3 but have started a new game 8 or 9 times....
posted by Pendragon at 1:04 AM on May 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

I can't finish games. My favourite part of games is exploring. I love seeing what other people's imaginations come up with. But I get a little TOO explory in the games I like and break some of them.
Elder Scrolls

Or I hack them up and have WAY more fun with the hex editor then I do with playing the games.
Elite: Frontier
Ultima 6 (spam spam spam humbug was like Gary's Mod for the early 90's)
posted by Homemade Interossiter at 2:43 AM on May 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure that I've ever played a game all the through more than once; I have trouble even getting through them all the way the first time. The list of games that I've bailed on halfway through is way longer than the ones that I've completed.
posted by octothorpe at 2:58 AM on May 29, 2018

Red Dead Redemption is the only game I've completed and replayed. Part of it is that once you've learnt the controls, it doesn't ratchet up the difficulty too much, and you can skip the game play if you can't do it. So many games start off great and then become completely impossible for me.

Tbh riding round, hunting and flower picking is like, 90% of what I do in RDR.
posted by threetwentytwo at 4:50 AM on May 29, 2018

I fire up a big map single player skirmish in Supreme Commander 1 when I am out of sorts.
posted by srboisvert at 5:00 AM on May 29, 2018

I loved Cave Story the first time I played it, but loved it even more after a couple more plays with a walkthrough guide. The subtle ways the story branches, and how those changes expose more about the game's world, is absolutely brilliant and not something I could have appreciated if I had completed all the hidden objectives on the first attempt and worked backwards.
posted by ardgedee at 5:20 AM on May 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

There are other similar games, however, like Horizon Zero Dawn, that are comprehensively excellent and certainly seem like they intend to be replayable, but I honestly don't think I could ever touch them again.

Yes, I feel the same way about a lot of these. I have so many aborted replays of big, sprawling RPGs. Like, I've always wanted to do a second run of the Mass Effect series just to try out some different options... but I always run aground on the part where it's a big, sprawling game and abandon each attempt a couple of hours in.

I got much further in a recent replay of Half-Life 2, though, and basically only stopped (midway through Nova Prospekt) when I got some new games I really wanted to play.

More recently, I finished Bayonetta for the first time and then immediately used the chapter select feature to start replaying and going for higher scores. A combination of each chapter taking a very digestible amount of time to complete, the ability to redo them with new techniques and such that I've unlocked, and the whole score/rating aspect of the game makes replaying that game a lot of fun, where replaying others is just a drag.
posted by tobascodagama at 5:24 AM on May 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

I'm playing Xenoblade II right now and I can't imagine replaying it.

The gameplay itself is not that interesting, and dear god who could stomach sitting through the cutscenes a second time?

Maybe this means I should just stop playing it right now. hm.
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 5:51 AM on May 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

I am in my second decade of replaying Civ 4, and I regret nothing.
posted by the phlegmatic king at 7:08 AM on May 29, 2018 [7 favorites]

There are other similar games, however, like Horizon Zero Dawn, that are comprehensively excellent and certainly seem like they intend to be replayable, but I honestly don't think I could ever touch them again.

i'm on i think my 3rd? 4th og+ with hzd and it's 100% only to hack/poison the hugest machines so they attack each other while i watch from afar and cackle
posted by poffin boffin at 7:32 AM on May 29, 2018

I used to replay Final Fantasy Tactics once a year or so, but I haven't in a while. I think about going back, but then I remember the fight with Velius.
posted by Ms. Moonlight at 7:53 AM on May 29, 2018

There are people who don't replay games??

Generally speaking, I rarely return to my leisure consumed media. I almost never reread books, I only return to movies and television after years of distance (and even then I need to approach it in a novel or completist way - as a project). If I consume media for enjoyment I prefer that first memory to be unsullied by over-familiarity. Repetition kills a thing for me. I don't mind foreknowledge (you know spoilers) but because my brain rarely rests knowing a thing well and returning to it is often too tedious for me and I begin to dislike the thing I formerly loved.

But video games occupy an unusual space in my brain. While I don't do it often, some games seem to be able to transcend that avoidance of repeating for me. Aside from the odd platformer or emulated arcade game of my youth, Bioshock (the modern video game that got me back into video games after a decades-long abstinence) I played through on the Xbox, PS3 and the PC - if it were to come out on the Switch I'd play it on that. I never tired of that game despite it being an FPS (I generally prefer RPGs). I even read the prequel novel to the game!

There are few others though. Minecraft which I only have played as a sandbox building game. I replayed Mass Effect 2 (within the context of playing the other games for the first time) recently. I suspect I'll likely play through Breath of the Wild again at some point. I liked the mechanics in Dishonored enough that I think I'd enjoy trying it again. I'm working on Dragon Age Inquisition currently for the first time which I could imagine playing again as a different character (playing as an elf mage at the moment) and have a different experience with the game. It also has me interested in at least playing the first game again (I found the second one to be a bit too repetitive). The issue that keeps me from replaying any game is usually that I recall all the grindy bits and that keeps me from coming back.

So like Merus I generally prefer to have the best possible experience with the game on the first go - I had to play Mass Effect with one eye on the detailed wiki in order to make sure I do everything I could in order to get the best game experience possible (and to avoid that choice paralysis). The third Mass Effect I found particularly sneaky in this respect and I had to really stay on top of it in order to get the outcome I wanted. One thing that I don't connect with is the idea of playing the same game but at a harder level. To me, that would kill the game as I'm not there as much for the leveling up and killing as I am for the story or some fun game mechanics.
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:55 AM on May 29, 2018 [2 favorites]

I don't replay games either. If I go back to an old game I'm invariably disappointed by awkward things in the UI or game design. Video games are consistently better now than they used to be, particularly in games with complicated interfaces like RPGs. Going back to an old game with shitty inventory managment and awkward menus is really frustrating.

To all you folks who've played Skyrim several times over; have you tried Elder Scrolls Online? I don't like it as much as I liked Skyrim but it is awfully good and a very similar gameplay experience. Right now is a good time to play, with the new Summerset expansion just released. The game is a one time purchase although if you play a lot you'll end up wanting a subscription just for crafting inventory space.
posted by Nelson at 7:59 AM on May 29, 2018 [3 favorites]

Is this where I confess that I've never finished Dragon Age: Origins? (Or any computer RPG, basically?) Not because I don't enjoy the game, but because ever time I played it for a bit, I inevitably wanted to restart and see what a different character background was like, and what happened if I made some different choices, and so forth, and in the end - I peter out somewhere early to mid-game, leave it for a few months, and then want to restart. Again.

I guess it's not so much that I don't finish the game, it's that I get started on replaying early.
posted by nubs at 8:09 AM on May 29, 2018 [3 favorites]

For me the replaying of video-games has been tied to my aging into my late 30s. I just do not have the time to play long narrative driven games (which is a problem because I love these types of games).

Looking at my recent game buying history, I've been picking up a lot of dungeon-crawling rogue-likes. And I'm certain I know why: 1) these games allow for jumping in for quick runs at the end of a long day 2) nostalgia, taking me back to my early days of gaming when everything had this 8 to 32 bit aesthetic.

Games I'm Currently Replaying Over and Over Again:

• Stardew Valley
• Darkest Dungeon
• Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+
• Crypt of the NecroDancer
• CaveStory+
• Dead Cells

I'm also mostly playing on my Vita or my Switch. The portability of these systems also allows me to crawl into bed or on my couch so that I'm most comfortable.

I guess it all comes back to that. I'm seeking comfort and familiarity in my gaming. It's become a way for me to unplug from the constant barrage of negative news/media/misery porn that plagues so much of social media.
posted by Fizz at 8:16 AM on May 29, 2018 [3 favorites]

Looking at my recent game buying history, I've been picking up a lot of dungeon-crawling rogue-likes. And I'm certain I know why: 1) these games allow for jumping in for quick runs at the end of a long day 2) nostalgia, taking me back to my early days of gaming when everything had this 8 to 32 bit aesthetic.

This may explain why I'm playing Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup an awful lot right now.
posted by nubs at 8:27 AM on May 29, 2018 [2 favorites]

I liked the mechanics in Dishonored enough that I think I'd enjoy trying it again.

Not to completely derail: but consider going full stealth/pacifist. Clean Hands is an achievement that might make your replay challenging and interesting. Just a thought.
posted by Fizz at 8:33 AM on May 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

Oh and let me be clear, it's not really the achievement that is the focus or the cool part of this, it's the challenge and fun that comes along with this kind of replay.
posted by Fizz at 8:47 AM on May 29, 2018

Clean Hands is an achievement

Yes, I heard of people playing Dishonored that way which would be quite a challenge (mind you I did play it with as little killing as possible). I liked that the game had enough nuance, like its chaos mechanism where there would be more rats if choose to be more brazen in your actions, to change the game in interesting ways. I also enjoy that the game generally allowed me to solve or complete a task in multiple ways (like in BOTW). In terms of replayability that is a winning design for a game player like me. My only complaint is that I felt the ending was a bit underwhelming and the main character is too much of a cipher - but the steampunk vibe won me over.
posted by Ashwagandha at 9:11 AM on May 29, 2018 [2 favorites]

My ability to potentially cope with Clean Hands has been improved by the quick save option in the pause menu but honestly it's not an achievement that will ever be more interesting to me than the one where you teleport inside a target and explode them.

the real villain of dishonored achievements is the no powers one, why even bother.
posted by poffin boffin at 9:41 AM on May 29, 2018 [2 favorites]

There are other similar games, however, like Horizon Zero Dawn, that are comprehensively excellent and certainly seem like they intend to be replayable, but I honestly don't think I could ever touch them again.

I've long meant to go back and replay HZD on ultra-hard, but I haven't actually beaten the game yet because I'm having too much fun just wandering around fighting things. Red Dead Redemption is the same way--the plots are interesting, but so much of the fun is just wandering around the open world. You don't need to restart the game from the beginning to revisit anything--and if you did, you'd be significantly under-powered. Red Dead let you replay missions from the menu, anyway.

I've replayed a bunch of Super Nintendo games--Super Metroid gets a replay every couple of years, and Link to the Past, Yoshi's Island and Super Mario World get full playthroughs at least once a decade--and part of it is those games are relatively short and available. I don't have a PS2 or Xbox 360 anymore, so I can't go back and replay games that easily.

The only exception to this is the first Metroid Prime, which I've replayed four times. For a game which takes around 15 hours on a streamlined (if not speedrun) progression, that's a big chunk of my total video game time. I think it benefits from being relatively linear in play, even if the world is partially open.
posted by thecaddy at 10:02 AM on May 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

Dishonored is made for multiple replays, especially the latest where you can choose to play as either Emily or Corvo. (And they added NG+, which means you can eventually get all the skills and powers!) I like doing my Clean Hands/Ghost/Low Chaos runs all at the same time, so when the trophies pop they're all within seconds of each other. No one will ever notice or care but me, but I feel cool when it happens.

I have yet to do a no powers run on 2, though I had fun when I did it in the first game. This time, you don't even get Blink! How will I climb stuff??!

I replay a lot of games, a lot of times. I kind of feel like if I didn't get a minimum of 100 hours of fun out of a game, I paid too much. I mainly stick to RPGs that have lots of choices, but in actuality I usually revert to playing Paragon in Mass Effect, stealth archer in Skyrim, helpful good guy in Dragon Age... etc.

There's a few games without major path-branching choices that I've replayed because the story or the gameplay was compelling enough. The Last of Us is one. (Though if you choose not to high-five Ellie at the dam, you are a heartless monster and you should think about what you did.)

I did once restart a chapter in AC2 because I missed the prompt to hug Leonardo da Vinci when he wanted a hug. I felt TERRIBLE!
posted by lovecrafty at 10:03 AM on May 29, 2018 [4 favorites]

For example, gathering resources can be fun when you're still exploring the world and it leads you to discovering things, but when you know the map well it can be tedious.

This is what gets me. Experience points are great when there is a unknown battle or area upcoming- but a real drag if you do know what is ahead. I've found with the NES mini that came out that lots of those games included have no replay interest for me whatsoever.

On the other hand, I've been endless replaying Operation FlashPoint, so I'm certainly not adverse to replaying old games.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:10 AM on May 29, 2018

Jeez I can't believe this, but I've been playing Chaos Overlords for four decades now. Lots of other stuff too, including Civ 4, fwiw, but something about the simplicity, balance, challenge, and various possibilities make it pretty much consistently engaging for the 20 minutes or so I spend with it (I rarely finish the game at this point, past a certain point it's tedious grinding away, though that can be fun too. For me the fun challenge is in the early stages).
posted by emmet at 10:50 AM on May 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

At this point it should surprise nobody that I've played the different iterations of Mass Effect literally dozens of times collectively. It's a combination of the depth of the games and it just being that game that scratches a certain itch that nothing else will. I've played through all the classes, almost all of the romances, and Paragon, Renegade, and just about every gradation in between. I've even done The Darkest Timeline Playthrough where the only squaddies who survived the second game were the ones who were bound to die in the third. (Shepard can't survive if there's a TPK in the suicide mission, otherwise it would have been a very lonely trip back to the Omega-4 relay.) It makes for a very small and low-key party in the Citadel DLC.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:07 AM on May 29, 2018 [2 favorites]

I've played through all the classes, almost all of the romances, and Paragon, Renegade, and just about every gradation in between.

This is one thing I love about replaying a game over and over and over again. You learn all of the ins and outs. For me at least, it sort of went in stages.

STAGES OF PLAYING/REPLAYING A GAME:

1. Everything is new, fun, exciting.
2. Learning the ropes, more familiar with things and systems.
3. I kind of hate this game, the bosses are unfair, this is bullshit.
4. Actually, I'm just bad, it's not bullshit, I'm bad.
5. Oooh, I'm actually good at this, I understand things.
6. That's what that does, cool.
7. I think I broke the game.
8. *watches video* WAIT YOU CAN DO THAT!
9. I can now do that.
10. Forever playing this game.

posted by Fizz at 12:06 PM on May 29, 2018 [5 favorites]

Nothing kills replayability more then cut scenes that you can't skip.
posted by hoodrich at 12:29 PM on May 29, 2018 [5 favorites]

Huh I've never heard of Chaos Overlords. It looks neat! Any advice on how to play it on Windows 10? GOG has it for sale for $6, but the comments say the graphics are broken in Windows 8 and Windows 10.

The videos I've found make it look like a game crying out for a Web or iPad user interface. Maybe there are similar modern games?
posted by Nelson at 12:42 PM on May 29, 2018

My PC is old enough that I can't play most new games on it, so I would kind of be stuck playing the same games over and over again regardless, but it turns out that I can find certain games entertaining more or less indefinitely, as long as I have enough of them to rotate through. Which is lucky, 'cause I don't have the money to get a new computer, or buy new games all the time.

(The main list: Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Far Cry 3, Banished, Dishonored, Civilization IV, Half-Life 2 & Black Mesa. Those last two in particular are the video game equivalent of comfort food for me: it's the rare funk that can't be escaped by killing some headcrabs. Also I still occasionally find things I haven't encountered before in my two Fallout games, even after playing about 600 hours of each.)
posted by Spathe Cadet at 12:46 PM on May 29, 2018

"There are people who don't replay games??"

It's uncommon for me to replay a videogame, rewatch a TV show or movie, reread a book unless they were the sorts of those things that demanded it. I'm struggling to think of any single book I've read more than once that wasn't visual in nature.
posted by GoblinHoney at 1:04 PM on May 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

Half Life 2 for me, and the Portal series. Those games take me to places that are consistently familiar and compelling.

I think that one possibility that draws people back is that there is a subset of older games that do things so well that newer games haven't recaptured the same magic. It isn't just nostalgia or familiarity per se, but coming back to appreciate an art form that not only stands as an exemplar of a genre, but also still contains something so unique that it hasn't been recaptured.
posted by SpacemanStix at 1:36 PM on May 29, 2018 [3 favorites]

Huh I've never heard of Chaos Overlords. It looks neat! Any advice on how to play it on Windows 10? GOG has it for sale for $6, but the comments say the graphics are broken in Windows 8 and Windows 10.

I think I pulled it off of Abandonia years ago - I've fiddled with compatibility settings - it was originally a Windows 98 game, with only limited success. The music is missing (but I still hear it...) and some of the graphics transparencies don't work (which can be a little annoying)... oh and trying to save a game it somehow gets corrupted. But it's got a tiny footprint, so just leaving it run if you need to take a break isn't a big deal.

Periodically, I'll run into some kind of graphics conflict that will keep it from launching, Opera did that for a while, but usually it's fine these days.

It would be outstanding as an app for handheld or tablet or such, imho. I don't think it would be hard to port either... not my skillset though, unfortunately. I don't know of anything really similar... that's a thought though, there may be something out there.

There was a crew talking about redoing the game some time ago, but they're probably all in retirement homes by now.
posted by emmet at 1:52 PM on May 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

The main list: Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas

Whatcha want is the Tale of Two Wastelands that takes Fallout 3 and shoves it into New Vegas and when you're leveled up enough to take on a bunch of (NV-style, tougher) super mutants you can go from the Capital Wasteland to the Mojave and start some shit there and what this means is that when you take Boone with you to the Fort to do what needs doing, you can take care of business with Lincoln's repeater.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 1:55 PM on May 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

All y’all talking about multiple runs of Dishonored 2 and I still haven’t finished it. After slogging through the mad inventor’s home I just ran out of damns to give. Also I think I got seen once on one level somewhere and I really am not gonna replay the whole thing but I also don’t want to finish it one or two incidents short of 100% ghosted pacifist, and if a game that realistic looking gives me the option I am not gonna kill a single virtual human if I can help it.

Mostly I just pick up Polybius when I am in a mood to play something familiar. Someday perhaps I will get to the first music change in YOLO mode. Someday. (YOLO: start with nine shields, never get any more.)
posted by egypturnash at 2:31 PM on May 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

Nothing kills replayability more then cut scenes that you can't skip.

Not just replayability, but playability full stop. People have been ranting and raving about the Yakuza games so I fired up Yakuza 0 last night and ejected the disc within about an hour. For such an efficient people, the Japanese really need to Kanban the fuck out of some of their cultural artefacts.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:36 PM on May 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

The flip-side is just as bad, IMO: cutscenes you can't pause.
posted by tobascodagama at 5:17 PM on May 29, 2018 [3 favorites]

I just started playing MGSV: Phantom Pain. And good lord the cutscene is strong in this one. I'm an hour in and still really haven't been allowed to take control. The game trolls you for the first ten minutes lying in a hospital bed literally unable to do anything but pan and zoom the camera. Then you're trolled for another ten minutes where you can sort of half-drag yourself with the left stick to move around a bit, crawling on the floor, and can do nothing else. Finally you sort of can half-stumble around on your feet.

I suppose it's intended as a way to slowly teach the player the controls while also establishing that you start the game severely wounded. But what I see is yet another Japanese game with a full fucking hour of nonsense before I get to play the game. I'm barely able to play through this once and could not imagine replaying it. (Related: I've never played a single Final Fantasy game because I couldn't get past the first hour of cutscenes. I swear this is a uniquely Japanese game thing.)
posted by Nelson at 6:47 AM on May 30, 2018 [1 favorite]

All y’all talking about multiple runs of Dishonored 2 and I still haven’t finished it. After slogging through the mad inventor’s home I just ran out of damns to give.

You know, I kind of hit the same wall. Not sure what it is, because I adore the first Dishonored and played through Clean Hands and another time MurderDeathKill. Maybe I should go back for another look.
posted by Fleebnork at 7:04 AM on May 30, 2018

Sometimes, I just have to fire up Half Life 2 and start at black mesa east and do a run through Ravenholm again. (the airboat for the canal stuff makes me a bit nauseous, so I sometimes start the game, then stop at the start of the canal stuff, then pick it up again at Black Mesa East.) Portal and Portal 2 are both good for replaying bits and pieces.

I've done a few runs through the Fallout games I have (all of the 3d ones), too. Load an early save and just wander around killing things or just poking around in weird nooks and familiar missions.
posted by rmd1023 at 12:04 AM on May 31, 2018

This thread is extremely relevant because I just now discovered (weeks after the fact) that Saints Row 2 is now backward-compatible on the XBox One. I love the later games, but there's just something about Stilwater and the massive level of customization you can apply to your avatar that keeps me coming back to the second one.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 3:17 AM on May 31, 2018 [1 favorite]

Heh. Currently replaying Final Fantasy X (the HD remake) There's a few tweaks, including the ability to skip some cutscenes. The skip-cutscene button hasn't worked once yet.
posted by quinndexter at 4:32 AM on May 31, 2018

On the one hand, ludus longa, vita brevis. And there are so many good games that I want to play, and not all of them are new. In fact, most of them aren't.

On the other hand, the best [*] games and the best books are indistinguishable for me in how I approach revisits. They're friends. Their feel is right. Of course I'd like to play them again.

There's also the undeniable fact that some games I played in my teens and twenties are going to have an entirely different feel, and I will have an entirely different understanding of them, in my forties. I will replay Planescape: Torment and Portal 2one day, exactly for that reason.

On the gripping hand, I think I've sadly accepted that I'll never be able to finish Baldur's Gate 2 because of the sprawling plot problem. But I've been able to replay Mass Effect, so who knows.

[*] In the most subjective possible meaning of the word, of course.
posted by seyirci at 8:20 AM on May 31, 2018 [1 favorite]