You know, the security blanket game. The old default. Sure, you’ve beaten it a dozen times, and you’ve got new stuff on your list, but Jesus Christ our lord and savior you just pathologically go back to it.
Maybe it’s that MMO you’ve sworn to give up, even going to far as to insulting everyone in your guild so that you’ve burnt bridges behind you.
Or that roguelike that somehow trumps the latest $60 AAA spectacle.
Or…
I’ll start:
State of Decay (Breakdown mode). I reinstalled this thing AGAIN last night and promptly got lost in it. By this time, I could write a complete list as to where all the loot is, where the best places to put outposts is, etc. etc. But something about this game hits the perfect zombie survival key for me that Project Zomboid, 7 Days to Die, Dead State, et.al. just couldn’t. There’s a bunch of games on my plate that I should be rolling through (Watch Dogs 2, Wolfy 2, whatever) but it’s this XBox Live refugee that I just have to fire up.
Well if it’s a game that I keep going back to, that’s easy, it’s Plants vs Zombies. I’ve owned a copy on pretty much every platform available and I play it pretty much every day, even if it’s just a level. This is one game I know completely, inside and out. I have the characters’ relative damage values internalized. And I do have a favorite level, it’s the one in the daytime pool set, where threepeaters and torchwoods are just dumped at you and you can make practically flamethrowers by the end.
Why do I keep playing? Obviously I love the game, but it’s also that it’s playable in such bite size chunks and that I can practically play in my sleep. It helps me relax, I guess. I’ll play it as long as I have a platform on hand that will support it.
Edit: I’ve never played Rimworld because I can’t even look at the word without cracking up.
To me, it’s the original Sid Meier’s Pirates! Amstrad CPC version.
Each time I launch it, I can’t help but get sucked back in, remembering very quickly the currents and winds. Moving your ships by way of left and right cursor keys, trying to catch the wind and actually feeling it progressively in your sails, thanks to some computing magic, is so wonderful. No other game ever captured that sensation to me.
The blank-noise soundscape and blue borders of that 8-bits Amstrad version trigger an ideal mental presentation of the sea life that is incredibly comforting.
Also my favourite historical period, even if it isn’t set in my favored theater.
Kerbal Space Program is also very dangerous to me, although it doesn’t feature space winds (yet).
I completed it more times than I can count too. The one that finally caught me out is the infamous iOS version, whose grind is so rigged to accomodate for IAP (while still being a “premium” game - look no further for a Battlefront 2 forerunner) I just went “fuck it”.
Fallout 4. I keep trying to find the perfect mix of mods so the game is still fun after I hit level 30. I’ve put in an ungodly number of hours on that quest and I keep going back. The Horizon and Sim Settlements mods are great though and playing with them makes it feel like a new-ish game.
I do enjoy it, but I don’t enjoy the fact that I can’t match my old high score in all of these recent hours (which is about half of my total playtime). I’ve nearly gotten 400K. An average game is probably between 100-150K.
What do you get on average roughly? Was that 600K game something you can come close to semi-frequently? Sometimes those time extending gems are just a pain to come by.
I can usually break 400K, but the thing to remember is I play with my wife in Bejeweled Blitz (Facebook) all the time (at least twice a day), and have been playing that for years. Man, so many years. Bejeweled 3 is actually slower and a little easier for me, because of how fast I’m used to things moving in Blitz.
