Revisiting Favorite Games

Games
21

I never go back.

My backlog of uncomleted games go all the way back to Throne of Baal and the original Fallout… and I’m not that much of a retrogamer. I’ll replay some simple arcade games (like in XBLA or MAME), but anything more complex I don’t have the time for (and in the case of Fallout my patience with the graphics and UI is limited).

I envy your time, but there’s so many newer games I haven’t even tried, that going back to replay one of the few I managed to complete is out of the question.
I’ll re watch a few favourite movies - but there’s no technological advance making them obsolete and it’s only about a 2 hour time investment.

22

I replay a lof of my old favorites like MoO 2, MoM, Civ 2, Colonisation and most recently the original Jagged Alliance. Last year I played through Betrayal at Krondor again and had a blast. Didn’t finish Betrayal in Antara though.

23

Loving all the responses here so far folks. :-)

24

I replay Half-Life 2 at least once every year. It is a brilliant game and the scenario and gameplay just keeps me coming back. :)

25

The games I most often return to are Master of Orion 1, Sid Miers Alpha Centauri, and Fallout: Tactics.

Yeah I know, why Fallout: Tactics? Why not Fallout 1 or 2 for a “purer” Fallout, or XCOM for a purer squad based experience? I don’t know the answer, I return to those games occasionally but they never hold my attention long enough the 3rd/4th time around. But I never tire of Fallout: Tactics.

The interesting thing is that while MOO1 and SMAC are ranked 1 and 2 on my all time best games list, Fallout: Tactics doesn’t even make my top 10. Is that just snobbery? Somehow MOO1 and SMAC feel like literature, while Fallout:Tactics feels like a favourite pulp novel thats comfortable to return to.

Tony

EDIT: 36, Married, 1 kid, full time employment. I have to sacrifice playing some new games in order to replay an old game. I probably play about 6 games a year in depth, and quickly sample twice that number.

26

Now we just need people to go back and edit in the following info:

How old are you.
Single or married/in relationship.
Number of children.
Working full time or…

As I said, I don’t have the time (I can’t even finish the new games I want to):
40 years old, married, 2 kids, full time job and freelancing on the side…
(also hobbies besides gaming)

I wonder if there’s a connection?

27

Same, but 42 in a couple of weeks. I get 2 hours of free time a night and that’s if I push it and wind up tired the next day. One hour is more usual.

That being the case the replaying of old games, or the playing of new ones goes on over long periods. Last night I installed Freespace 2, and started installing the Open part. Tonight I’ll finish and tweak. Hopefully tomorrow night I’ll finally get to play.

This is part of the reason I like replaying things like Mafia, and in rewatching old movies as well. I know I like it and I know what I’m spending my limited free time on without worrying about wasting it on a new title that might not do it for me.

I miss having complete evenings free.

28

I do that whenever a new episode is about to be released, so not often.

29

I go back to old games for the same reason I’ll return to old novels, movies or albums: New is better as long as the new thing is of equal quality to the old thing. But over time you’ll accumulate a small collection of things so great, that even revisiting them the 4th or 5th time they’ll still be better than the average random new thing you take a chance on.

Tony

30

Some games I never stopped playing, due to a constant stream of user created stuff, notably HoMM 3 and NWN 1. As a victim of the recession and not able to afford much new stuff, I find myself going back to old favourites more often, most recently I dug out Patrician 2 for a bit of Medieval trading.

Dosbox also gave a new lease of life to some really old favourites, lie Age of Rifles, MOO 2 and Carriers at War.

31

I go back to games that are still playable, as in Fallout 3 I’ve just gone back, even though the story is finished. There are lots of things still to be done.

Aside from that I go back to games I missed the first time around. So last May when I got some time I sat down with Halo 2. I whipped through all of Half Life 1 and 2 one summer years after they came out. A lot of my backlog is made up of these older games (thanks Steam!) that I missed the first time around but I intend to get to.

And as for statistics:
Age: 47
Married.
No kids.
Full time employment (but I get summers off).

32

I replay games fairly often. I’ve played Final Fantasy XII about once every 18 months since it came out. My wife and I play Skies of Arcadia every other year in the summer. I play Torment about every three years so I never get to a point where I’m saying “Oh, okay, Silent King stuff now.” I want it to be fresh each time. My wife will blast through ActRaiser once every nine months or so, just 'cause she can.

Stats!

Age: 28.
Married: Yes, though she plays too.
Kids: Nope.
Work: 40 hours/week.

33

I seldom replay old games that I have finished. Mostly my issue it that it takes me a long time to finish a game. I recently finished Fallout 3 GOTY, but it took 296 hours. I’m currently trying to finish up my first playthrough of Oblivion, which is already over 450 hours.

44
M
No
Full
Music composition, singing, reading

34

I went back and played Return to Zork a few years ago. It was as maddening and baffling as I remembered it, and I still loved it. It is one of my all-time favorite games and I am fully aware of how… awful it is to actually try to play it. I’m not sure what that says about me.

It was sort of a surreal experience because I could see why it was so impressive to me at the time, at the same time as it looked pretty awful. I remembered that I was really impressed with the graphics and I could understand why that was the case, but I did have some sense of remove from it all.

35

I semi-regularly revisit older games. Yes, it means sacrificing some of the time I could spend on a newer game but as pointed out upthread, it’s like re-reading a favorite novel or watching a classic movie again, you still get a lot of enjoyment from the experience of going back.

Sometimes I’ll modernize the experience for older games. I have Ultimate Doom and Doom 2 installed and both of those are using mods that bump up the resolution, sharpen the textures and add mouselook. I’ve added in a new renderer and improved textures on my original Unreal install and apart from some low polys it actually looks pretty good.

I rarely finish replaying any of these older games, mind you, so it’s more like reading a chapter of a favorite book before returning to something new.

One of the benefits of giving into nostalgia is the auto-upgrade in performance. SimCity 4 runs much better on my current rig than the one I first played it on back in 2003. 2003! What the heck, EA? Give us a new SimCity already! (SimCity Societies doesn’t count.)

36

I go back and replay older games semi-regularly, usually in binges. I reinstalled the original Baldur’s Gate and the sequel (plus expansions) over the holidays so that I could have something to do while visiting family. I have been trying for years to find a simple fix to allow Silent Storm to run on a modern PC without having to manually reset things in the BIOS and Control Panel (come on, nerds! Patch this for me!). I’m currently on my first play-through of old games like AC2 and Uncharted, if those count.

34
Single
No kids, one bonsai tree
40+ hours/week employment
Other hobbies: semi-regular creative writing, running a bi-weekly D&D game, photography

37

For me it’s something like this:

I play decent games once.
I play good games twice.
I play excellent games three times.

But i don’t have any game i played eight or nine times, or every year, etc.

38

I often revisit “classics” but mostly just to play through the first hour or two… enough to bring a smile to my face and think, man this game was so awesome.

I’ve done this with Morrowind and Baldur’s Gate II, both immense games which would take me several hundred hours to replay, and with Super Metroid, Castlevania SoTN, and Resident Evil 4.

But with my immense backlog and lack of time it is rare I actually completely replay a game. Though I have done it in the past with:

Icewind Dale (much shorter than BG2, finished 3 times and counting)

Final Fantasy IV (every version twice and on 2nd playthrough of DS remake which is my fave)

Final Fantasy XII (playing it a 3rd time currently)

Wizardry 8 (though it’s one of my favorite RPGs, I’ve never been more than halfway through! But I’ve played it up to that point at least 7 times!!! Somehow end up playing a new game and just forget about it… for a while, then happily start again!).

But definitely going to try a complete playthrough of Morrowind soon because I never did finish either expansion pack and want to get in the mood for Skyrim. And need to replay BG2 so I can finally play the expansion which I bought a year or two ago and still haven’t touched!

39 years old, married, two kids, ex-musician trying to get back into it (play bass, guitar, write songs), love to read as well.

So with all of the above, hard to get to the backlog! (Though the last couple of months after having heart surgery, seems I’ve not done much BUT game, lol). Fortunately, not much of a TV watcher.

39

It’s not a common thing for me but on occasion a bug will bite. Two older games I’ll revisit on occasion are Romance of The Three Kingdoms X (but that game takes control of my brain in a bad way, I have to actually schedule a day or two for it) and Star Wars Galaxies (to open veterans rewards and wave at the remaining veteran survivors and friends over there).

Then there are older games that ride my shoulder like a favorite pet and I’ve never really considered put aside. Mount & Blade probably the best example. If I’m between games and want something meatier than light gaming I’ll dive into a campaign of that. The dynamic style of gameplay means it’s infinitely replayable and the mix of strategic and semi-roleplaying elements means some kind of emergent story is going to arise from all the random bits. The attraction is similar to RoTK X there but it’s less obsessive-compulsive for me. I don’t have any problem remembering to eat or losing track of time! :D

40

I’m constantly revisiting old favorites at the expense of my newer backlog. This is why I still haven’t finished BioShock 2, Assassin’s Creed 1/2, Mass Effect 2, and more.

Old favorites that keep coming up: Diablo 2, Wizard’s Crown, Psychonauts, NHL Hitz, Planescape: Torment, Armed & Dangerous, etc

36
Married
0 kids
Full-time
Hockey, guitar, movies, reading