Revisiting Favorite Games

So once a year or so I replay my all-time favorite game, Freespace 2. Even though I know the story and the ins and outs, I never get tired of playing it. I also revisit some other favorites like Tie Fighter, Starflight, Missionforce Cyberstorm and others on a fairly regular basis.

This got me wondering…with all of our backlogs and new games coming out, how often do y’all go back to revisit favorite games? Do you not go back at all and just never play your favorites again?

Just curious, hope y’all don’t mind me asking. Thanks! :)

Edit: For more curiosity satisfaction, please provide the following info (Great idea, Hans):

How old are you? (37)
Single or married/in relationship? (Relationship)
Number of children? (0)
Working full time, part-time, freelance or unemployed? (currently unemployed)
Hobbies? (Movies, TV shows, technology, karaoke, reading)

Which version of Freespace do you use? Do you use the GoG? Does it have the texture updates and such? I know it went free and all that, but did anyone ever put together a simple way to have all the important mods?

As for my game, I play MoM again every other year. Sometimes more, sometimes less. But on average, every other year or so I’ll have a MoM kick.

I do fire up Gothic 3 more or less yearly and go for a cruise round the country. I also just shot through Bad Company again…

For simplicity’s sake I use the GoG version of Freespace 2 with the latest versions of the SCP mods. The folks at Hard Light made it fairly easy to install all of the needed graphical mods with just a couple of installers. There’s also a separate SCP installer that installs everything. I’ll look for that when I get back to my PC.

I play DX every now and then. I played it again this summer for the 10th anniversary, but petered out once I got to Paris. Still, I’ll have it forever an pick it up now and then. I also got GTA3 and VC off of steam for occasional plays.

As it happens, I am in the process of installing Freespace 2 right now. The Evochron Mercenary thread got me in the mood for something spacey earlier this evening and having never really given Freespace a fair shake, I intend to shake it.

Beyond that I tend to revisit the original Mafia ever couple of years, and no I haven’t finished it’s sequel and have no real urge to do so. I aslo have Falcon 4 installed on my system permanently as I get an itch to fire it up about every 6 months and absolutely hate having to go through it’s rather painful install process.

oh and I still play X-com now and again as well.

Here we go. You can try to use the Freespace Open Installer to do an all-in-one installation/upgrade of Freespace 2. However, according to its site, it only has the 3.6.10 versions of the SCP. For the latest version, head over the Hard Light Productions for the latest FSOpen and MediaVP to install 3.6.12 for the latest and greatest. Hope this helps!

While I’ve yet to play Mafia, those are all awesome choices.

You really can’t go wrong with any of them. Give Mafia a try someday, once you get the controls configured as you like (they are a bit wonky in some ways by default) I would be surprised if you didn’t love it. I actually applauded on completing my very first play through.

On a Freespace2 note, the installer is downloading/installing in the background now. While it’s doing so I came across this ([b]here[/b])…

The main FreeSpace 2 campaign is the one enabled by default. If you want to start from the very beginning of the FreeSpace 1 campaign (and I see no reason why you wouldn’t) then you need to use the “MOD” tab on the launcher and select the original campaign using the instructions below:

Would you recommend starting from the beginning with the FS1 campaign, or just start with the default (fs2) campaign? As it says, I can’t see why not but I digress to those with actual experience playing the thing.

EDIT:

For the record, I’m using the Freespace Open Installer and it appears to be installing 3.6.12

Oh, that’s excellent. And if you’ve not played Freespace 1, it’s kinda optional. The story hits a bit harder in 2, but they revisit enough info to get you going. I only played through FS1 once, and remember little of the story, but I’ve played FS2 many times without issue.

Often. AI War, Armageddon Empires, Disciples, Descent, Dungeon Crawl SS and FreeSpace Open never leave my drive. Though that doesn’t mean I replay the campaigns all the time. It’s mostly just the odd match. And yes, dear Santa, I do want FSOpen, Descent & Desciples random mission generators for Christmas. Well, maybe not for FSOpen, or I’d never check Hardlight and miss out on all the updates & stuff.

I’ve replayed a handful other games multiple times (IWD, BG1+2, JA2, Wiz8, X-Com TFTD), and have fully or partially replayed lots more. Basically, if I liked the game the first time through, I’ll probably revisit it at some point. But it’s not an annual thing for me.

I’m actually just about to start replaying the first two Gothics, for a series replay (I never got around to playing the last two… Though I did buy them, because apparently I like paying 5-10 times more for games than I have to. Weird me). Unfortunately the most critically needed fix doesn’t exist, so though it’s now possible to play G1 at tolerable framerates (incidentally, if anyone knows why devs locked framerates back in the old days, I would really like to hear the explanation), virtually without crashes & other bugs, and with lots of purdy new textures (from G2 mostly, I gather, so not that new or pretty), it remains impossible play with proper WASD controls (or really, any kind of controls that won’t make you want to hurt little fluffy things with big, wet eyes after 5 minutes)

The oldest games I find myself going back to are Master of Magic and Panzer General II. More recently, Fantasy Wars and Civ IV are two games that keep on giving.

I play a full game of these two at least once a year.

They’re the only SNES cartridges I still own.

I still go back and play through Arcanum, Mafia, and The Last Express every year or so, and occasionally run through the Gabriel Knight series as well.

Edited to add: 28, single, and working full time.

Over the last few years I’ve found myself simply looking up youtube clips and going “Oh yeah, that’s what it was like”.

My backlog (of actual retail purchases in hand) goes back to the mid nineties (I’m sure someone can beat that by at least a decade) - so I really never revisit a played/completed game.

The last I can recall is Half-Life, when the source version was released.

Edit:

I find it interesting that many people do this, my friends talk about reinstalling all the time. I’ve never felt the urge to revisit a game, even if I enjoyed it all the way through. The only exception for me are multiplayer games that are still active (Earlier Battlefields, CS, DoD). I can understand going back to non-linear games such as Civ 1. But playing Mafia over and over, I suppose it’s like re-watching a decent/good movie? I rarely re-watch movies anymore. Sigh, the married life. Or maybe it’s that we live in a Netflix/Steam world where there’s always something new at our fingertips.

I replay older games all of the time. Partly this is because my aging hardware can’t keep pace with the latest game releases. Partly, they just don’t make modern versions of some games I want to play (e.g. Freespace 2).

  • Alan

I just referred to Doom in this thread, and it just so happens to be one of several games that I revisit every year or so. May as well throw in its brother Doom 2 and its cousins Quake and Quake 3. I tend not to replay old strategy games due to interface issues and such, but I do like the occasional action game (like the aforementioned ones) as well as a select few RPGs and adventure games. I replayed Planescape: Torment a few months back and I’ve got BG2 and Ultima 7, among a few others, on my replay plate. I’ll get to 'em one of these days, I swear!

I’m playing through Diablo 2 LoD right now :P

I’ve gone back and played through Killer 7, Ico and Shadow of Colossus usually once every 6 or so months.

Once a year I got back to SimCity4, what a wonderful time sink it is.