There are a few games that I will play over and over again (I play all my games on PC-- I don’t own a platform), the number one game being The Sims. Also played repeatedly by me over the years- Sid Meier’s Railroads!, Age of Empires: Mythology (only because I cannot find my copy of regular Age of Empires), Civ III and, for something a little different, Lord of the Rings.
Also still fired up occasionally Sim City 2000 and Rise of Nations. Recently added to my play-at-whim game collection: Minecraft.
I am not a fan of first person shooters.
What games do you find yourself playing over and over, year after year?
The #1 selling point for me is their replayability. I dislike buying a $60 game, burning through it in a week or two, and then it sits on a shelf forevermore (hence I usually steer clear of RPGs or anything else with a linear plot). rFactor 1, Unreal Tournament 1, Heroes of Might and Magic 3 & 5, and Civ IV have all gotten use out of me for several years at least.
How do you know you’ll replay a game for years before you buy it? Me, I like sim games and world building games so I tend to buy those but sometimes they don’t click with me-- Black and White being one such game. Another was Spore. I’m still holding out hope that they’ll make a Spore spin-off that builds on the first two parts.
Sports games, if you’re into them, are endlessly replayable, even old ones. Sometimes I’ll hook up my PS1 just so I can play Madden 97.
I tend to favor college sports games, as it’s not as important who the players are, and eliminates the “need” to buy the game every year just for minor improvements and a roster update.
Pedantic nitpick: the PC is a platform. What you don’t own is a console.
For me, the winner is probably Master of Orion 2. I’ve played a lot of space empire games over the years, but none of them ever quite measure up to this one.
Any sort of game with a random scenario setup - the ones that leap to mind for me are Sword of the Stars and Kohan: Ahriman’s Gift. Neither are remotely new, but I keep going back anyway.
Also, fighting games, though I guess in this case it’s not “replayability” since I never really -finish- in the first place.
Any sort of game with a steep difficulty curve and multiple approaches to solving the problem. Especially games that I can perfect an approach to and still lose occasionally.
X-Com. Sword of the Stars. Nearly any game with real-world opponents and a matchmaking system that pairs me with opponents of similar skill.
Games with random scenarios, Strategy games and RPG’s with replay ability are big on my list.
I still installed and played my Oblivion character from time to time, at least until SKyrim, and I’ll be doing that with SKyrim until the next Elder Scrolls game.
The Sims 3, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Sins of a solar empire, civilization, The total war games, Star craft, Draogn Age: Origins are some examples.
This. I played Diablo 2 for 5 years. I also put a lot of time into the original Diablo, Sims 2, Sim City up through 4, Civilization II and IV, Alpha Centauri, Age of Empires and AOE 2, Railroad Tycoon, Rollercoaster Tycoon, TES: Morrowind and Oblivion (Skyrim not so much), and Guild Wars. That’s just the PC stuff; I’ve sunk quite a bit of time into older console games, too.
What does one do in FNV for 250 hours? I get that it can last a long time, but after about 100 hours, I think one would have accomplished all the quests and maxed out the levels.
In all your time, did you venture on the Eastern shore with the deathclaws and clear it?
Do you mean the cave with the Legendary Deathclaw? Yes. That was a triumphant moment.
As for how I spent that much time in it, I played through the first time and went for the independent ending. Then I did a second run-through on hardcore mode and did the NCR ending. Then I did an abortive third run-through that I ended early because I was playing for the Legion and realized pretty early on that playing for the Legion sucks. I’m currently in the middle of what may well be my final go (I actually haven’t played for a couple of months, but I’ll get back to it later on this summer), in which I am attempting to visit all areas and complete all available quests. I also got the DLC add-ons.
Age of Empires II and III along with Age of Mythology. If those were the only games left I’d be OK with that, for the same reason that people like the Civilization games: each game is different.
I really enjoyed CivIII and IV. When I had the time I used to really enjoy the GOTM over at civfanatics.com. I won a few medals but by and large those guys were just too good to beat most of the time. I kept trying until girls and work intervened.
If Colonization had been a better thought-out game I might have really got into that one, but as it is it left me feeling like something that might have been. I never tried Railroads! or Sid Meier’s Civil War. Always meant to, but we have only one life and it ain’t all fun and games, alas.
Maybe I should have given AOE more of a chance, but just never really got into it.
When I was a kid I was agog at Ultima III and especially IV (on the Commodore 64). If it hadn’t been for those I might have never played any further games. I didn’t keep up with the rest of the series until about 15 years later when I checked out the finale. It didn’t seem like the programmers bothered to quite finish that one though.
Nowadays I like Napoleon: Total War. Apparently I won’t be able to go on with the rest of my life until I have conquered Europe on Hard, including razing the British Isles. The game is rather a brilliant accomplishment, especially in light of the above list. How could games get better than that one? I may be at the end of my gaming career and will have to switch to conquering the real world…
Surprisingly, I replay linear adventure games more than anything else. I think it’s because most adventure games don’t take long at all to beat, so replaying them seems like less of a chore. With a long RPG with multiple choices it feels like “do I really want to spend 50 hours playing the same game again?” With a 4 hour episodic adventure game, it feels more like “Well fuck, I have four hours and that game was fun!” That said, I replay old platform games a lot, like recently I’ve been replaying Sonic III and Knuckles over again.
That said, my all-time nominee for most replayed game is Warcraft III because of the custom map community (not DOTA, I mean all the OTHER great maps, though AOS-type maps like DOTA could be fun sometimes). Sadly, Starcraft II’s custom game lobby is completely fucked, so I’m not getting the replay value I expected (or I won’t until they fix it)
