Games Worth Replaying

[LTK]

Tell me, what games that you've played recently, or a long, long time ago, would be worth playing again shortly, or some time in the distant future? It might be for old time's sake, or to try out a radically different build, go down the evil/neutral/good path, whichever you missed before, or to reminisce on the backstory of the sequel that just came out, or to simply relive the memorable experience. Tell me about it!

[Inlander]

I don't think I'll ever get tired of playing Dune II. It's so simple and so perfect: get all the resources you can, build the biggest, toughest base, build up an unstoppable army of the toughest tanks you have available, destroy the enemy with overwhelming force. There's nothing subtle about the game. It doesn't bog you down in resource allocation or balancing your force or even giving you something as trifling as variable mission objectives from level to level like every real-time strategy game that came after it does. It's brilliant.

[KvP]

With a large amount of cut content restored via a mod, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 is certainly worth another shot - or a first shot.

Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2 are very much replayable even vanilla, because of the considerable class and party choice. There is a pretty vast pool of original content mods out there for them, although only a minority of them are good. The ones that are really spruce up the games, though.

Fallout 2 allows for a number of character types that can allow different playthrough experiences, and there are some cut content / original content mods that are pretty good as well. Fallout 3 is fun to play through multiple times but the difference in playstyles is much less pronounced. Specifically, your combat abilities with any given weapon are not as drastically different from build to build, which is more a function of the real time combat than anything.

It took me at least 5 years to find all the variant paths and outcomes in Deus Ex, mostly because I underestimated how robust the game was.

[Zombiedude]

Half Life 2

It's a shame SWKOTOR 2 doesn't work for me anymore, that mod looks cool.

[snalin]

Heard of Spiderweb Software?

[scarred]

I played the fuck out of both Fable games multiple times.

[Bastardous Bassist]

With a large amount of cut content restored via a mod, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 is certainly worth another shot - or a first shot.

Even without that, I went through KotOR 2 I think about four times.  Once light, once dark, once again light but making all of my party jedi, once again dark but making all of my party jedi (except the wookie) and I was working through it a fifth time making a character based on strength instead of dexterity as I always did.

Fallout 3 is fun to play through multiple times but the difference in playstyles is much less pronounced. Specifically, your combat abilities with any given weapon are not as drastically different from build to build, which is more a function of the real time combat than anything.

Man, I couldn't even make it through that game once, and I wanted to so badly.  Some day I will not post about how bad Fallout 3 was every time someone mentions it, but that day is not today.

[Spluff]

Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2 are very much replayable even vanilla, because of the considerable class and party choice. There is a pretty vast pool of original content mods out there for them, although only a minority of them are good. The ones that are really spruce up the games, though.

I agree, I don't even remember what the game is like without my Imoen Romance mod.

[Surgoshan]

With a large amount of cut content restored via a mod, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 is certainly worth another shot - or a first shot.

About a year ago I found out about Team Gizka and put their front page on my daily comic trawl.  Then I noticed that nothing ever happened.  They're the Duke Nukem of mods.

This gives me hope.

And the site is DOWN.

Still.  They're going on my daily comic trawl.

[Jimmy the Squid]

I play through Assassin's Creed every few months. I've played through Arkham Asylum twice since I got it and I think I might go through it again on the weekend.

I play Oblivion every now and again. I never do the main quest as I'm not super interested in it but I might go through the Shivering Isle expansion which I haven't done yet.

[TheFuriousWombat]

Arcanum! I do love me some Arcanum. I've probably played through more than any other game besides Diablo II which I think I've beaten close to a dozen times at this point. Arcanum is much more open and sprawling than DII however so I don't always "beat it" per se but I've started new characters tons of times and played each for god knows how many hours. Truly, bugs aside, it's probably one of the 15 or 20 best RPGs ever made.

[Bastardous Bassist]

I've played through Arkham Asylum twice since I got it and I think I might go through it again on the weekend.

As much as I loved this game, is there really much extra upon more playthroughs, or is it just that much fun to do it every time?

[Jimmy the Squid]

No, it's just a fun game to play.

[Blue Kitty]

Also all the riddles

[maxusy3k]

Playing through Arkham Asylum on Hard after initially completing it on Normal was a lot of fun (in an almost controller breaking way at times). I played through Fable 2 more times than I can remember, mainly to try different character concepts / alignments and clothing styles.

I only played through Mass Effect twice, though did start second playthroughs with both of those characters. I keep meaning to go back to it and finish up those playthroughs, then try some other classes, but never feel like I have time.

Aside from that the only games I can really remember replaying the hell out of have been Zelda titles, with the exception of Twilight Princess since I got sick of using the Wii.

[Bastardous Bassist]

I can see how it would just be entertaining/more challenging (on higher difficulties) the second time.  I was just wondering if there was any content I missed.

Also all the riddles

Yeah, but I did those the first time (admittedly, I rented it so I wanted to get through as much as possible my first time).

[Jimmy the Squid]

The second time I played it through it was because I didn't realise that after you finish the game you can still go through and find everything. I assumed the  Titan'd Poison Ivy thing had cut off whole portions of the island.

[Ikrik]

I try to play through a lot of my games again.  Although only recently have I started playing them on harder difficulties.

I just beat Borderlands tonight and I'm going to play through it again when I have the time (Dragon Age and Assassins Creed 2).  I'm hoping that playing with different characters is going to change how I play the game, I plan to switch up my tactics too.

I'm going to give Brutal Legend another try, my first playthrough I did maybe 1/4 or less of the side missions so for me the game was way, way too short.  I've been itching to get back into the world and see how much I enjoy it again.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is definitely a game I can play over and over, beaten it three times now, once on normal and twice on hard, and I'm also watching my girlfriend beat it.  The game just rocks on pretty much every level. 

I tend to find myself playing tower defense games over and over, I love them quite a bit.  on the PSN there's a totally wicked one called Pixeljunk Monsters.  Totally amazing.

[LTK]

It took me at least 5 years to find all the variant paths and outcomes in Deus Ex, mostly because I underestimated how robust the game was.

Oh yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. I played the game when I was young, and when I replayed it a few months ago I found out (spoiler) for the first time ever that you can kill Anna Navarre on the jet. I had no idea! (end spoiler) I should play it again just to be the loose cannon that kills everything humanly possible. Deus Ex is almost infinitely replayable, considering I played the crap out of it back then and still didn't get all the possible outcomes, not even now. (More games TBE)

[Emaline]

Zelda: Link To The Past. I've played through this game this game more times than I can count.

Earthbound. Uh....It's Earthbound.

Fable 1 and 2. They are genuinely fun games.

Fallout 3. There are lots of different ways you can go with you character, so many different ways to play. It's a blast.

Bioshock. I just had a lot of fun with this game. Plus I love that kind of music they play, and the deep sea.

[LTK]

Fallout 3 is definitely on my list to replay some time, not because there's a lot of choice and opportunity - even though I'm pretty sure I haven't seen at least 20% of the game world - but especially because of all the mods that I haven't tried out yet. As a FPS, Fallout 3 was pretty weak, but there's a lot of mods that can fix that, to the point of having a good chance to get your character stuck in a situation where he has no chance of getting out alive. That's post-apocalyptic survival done right.

Bioshock, though... It'll be a long while before I play that again. Don't get me wrong, the game was brilliant, but much of the quality came from the story and the ambience. When you've already been through both endings, the experience is just much less satisfying for me. It's suddenly painfully obvious how often Atlas says 'Would you kindly'.

I definitely have to replay Mass Effect too, at least once before ME2 comes out. There are all those medals I still need to get, and you need at least 3 playthroughs for that. But the thing is, I'm a whore for 100% game completion so I just can't let most of those side-quests go unfinished. That makes the following playthroughs kind of a chore.

And then there are those games I just have to replay for pure nostalgia. I grew up with playing Quake 2, Unreal and Half-Life, so those are a must to replay once in a few years.

[Emaline]

Well, I am pretty sure I am one of the few people who put Bioshock so high up on their replay list. And thats because, like I said, I really like the music, and omg the setting. I mean, if I could live in the sea, I would. Plus I used to annoy the hell out of my boyfriend by playing the ink spots nonstop.

[Ikrik]

I can play Bioshock again and again because of the setting.  After beating it a couple times I simply don't pay as much attention to the story as much as I pay attention to the environment, the music, everything else about the game. 

I have a feeling that Dragon Age is going to be a game I'll be playing for the next year and half.

[Surgoshan]

How did we go this far without mentioning Torment?  For shame!

[Blue Kitty]

Most of my games I love to replay, then again I have a really small, ever changing collection of video games.  To not replay them would be a shame.

I've been antsy to replay Mass Effect in preparation of the second one coming out, also cause I didn't get all the character achievements/had lesbian sex with an alien.

[Chesire Cat]

Arkham Asylum is pretty much the peak of what my lappy can handle. I just started it after seeing my friend with an Xbox play a bunch of it and it's rad. Kind of like a cross between Chronicles of Riddick and Metroid Prime. But I dont really see myself playing it over again.

A game I have played and beat a couple was Half-Life 1/2. I played an absolute tonne of Quake I to the point I could roll through the first chapter while still getting all notable loot/secrets in about 13 mins.

[Jeans]

de_Dust 2

[Alex C]

I like to replay X-COM and swear at rookies every once in a while. Also, I firmly believe that silly base names are the only way to ensure victory against the alien menace.

[Stryc9Fuego]

I like to play Dawn of War: Dark Crusade to vent some frustration, namely with the Lights of the Warp mod... so very good. Unit caps up to 200 with a TON of new units and upgrades you don't see in default DoW.

[Shaolin]

Nice thread.

Deus Ex and Baldur's Gate 2 have already been mentioned. Those two are probably my most favorite games of all time. Just amazing how awesome they are. You can replay both countless times and discover new stuff. And even though I know the location of every item in both and know every dialog option by heart, it's still fun to play! I recently played through Deus Ex only using melee combat - with the nano-sword and the run-really-fast aug, just plain brilliant.

But I can't believe this hasn't been mentioned yet: Jagged Alliance 2. It's one of those famous games that I never got around to playing (shame on me) until very recently. And it's absolutely awesome. And even though I am not even all the way through it yet, I am already planning how I am gonna do some stuff differently the second time.

Uh, and one other gem that gives you weeks of playing time: Morrowind. Yeh, Oblivion is newer and shinier, but just plain inferior. Morrowind has such a huge world with vast amounts of stuff to discover and so many ways of playing it, I always come back to this, especially with the loads of great plugins that exist for it.

[glyphic]

I may be alone here, but I have played through Dead Space six times. I love every single thing about that game. I honestly can't say anything bad about it.

Also, Mirror's Edge. I have played through that game so many times. Most recently, I did a pllaythrough without firing a weapon to get an achievement. The last level where you have to shoot the servers to advance was pretty tough when you had to rely on stray shots from the enemies to do all the work. God that was awesome.

[Bastardous Bassist]

Morrowind has such a huge world with vast amounts of stuff to discover and so many ways of playing it

Too bad none of it is at all interesting.

[Chesire Cat]

Morrowind has such a huge world with vast amounts of stuff to discover and so many ways of playing it

Too bad none of it is at all interesting.

Daggerfall had the most content of any of em to date. Morrowind was the kid brother to Oblivion at best.

[snalin]

Morrowind was friggin delicious, and I'm buying a new graphics card and CPU, so I'm going to load up on some of the graphics mods and play that fucker to death. The different houses, the different regions, the different guilds, they all had something different and interesting, and the gameplay was good enough to not kill the fun of exploring and questing. Of course, I'm guessing that console must've made it at best worse and at worst unplayable.

My only go at Daggerfall was probably ruined by the fact that I didn't know about DOSbox, and used a terrible XP conversion.


If you guys are replaying anything, I wonder why some of the older ones that lived through it the first time hasn't mentioned System Shock. I'm playing it for the first time now, and it's great!

[Ikrik]

I may be alone here, but I have played through Dead Space six times. I love every single thing about that game. I honestly can't say anything bad about it.

Also, Mirror's Edge. I have played through that game so many times. Most recently, I did a pllaythrough without firing a weapon to get an achievement. The last level where you have to shoot the servers to advance was pretty tough when you had to rely on stray shots from the enemies to do all the work. God that was awesome.

That's funny, because those are two games that I don't think I could ever play again.  For Dead Space it was the repetitive nature of it, the story and characters are boring, you know that pretty much every enemy on the ground is going to jump at you.  I could understand playing the game again if it was twice as long but I've tried replaying it a few times and I get so bored because I remember basically everything.

Same thing with Mirror's Edge.  But it has to do more with the fact that there's basically no freedom.  The game is intensely linear and that lack of alternative paths makes it very hard to stay engaging.  The very short length of the game also makes it difficult to go back to.

[glyphic]

I guess I'm just a glutton for punishment. I also played through Resident Evil 4 countless times. That is the main reason I enjoyed Dead Space so much, I think. The games play very similarly.

To add content:

Secret of Evermore. A game that I spent a lot of my childhood on. Just last year I sat down and beat it in a day. I didn't remember it being so short, but it is still majorly fun.

[Chesire Cat]

If you guys are replaying anything, I wonder why some of the older ones that lived through it the first time hasn't mentioned System Shock. I'm playing it for the first time now, and it's great!

Because I havent been able to get it to run on an XP or Vista system. Oh and Daggerfall too for that matter. And really the main problem with it was the copious number of showstopper bugs like falling through the floor or straight crashes.

[Bastardous Bassist]

If you guys are replaying anything, I wonder why some of the older ones that lived through it the first time hasn't mentioned System Shock. I'm playing it for the first time now, and it's great!

Dude, I sucked so bad at System Shock.  I had no idea what to do.  I think I mentioned it somewhere else.  Maybe it just wasn't running right on my computer and therefore failing to trigger anything, or it could be that I was really, really bad at piecing together what the game designers wanted me to do back in those days.  Sometimes thinking outside the box is not a good thing.

[Spluff]

If you guys are replaying anything, I wonder why some of the older ones that lived through it the first time hasn't mentioned System Shock. I'm playing it for the first time now, and it's great!

You just wait until you start playing System Shock 2, and you'll realize why nobody ever talks about the first one.

[Inlander]

I've never played System Shock 2 but the first one is one of my favourite games of all time.

[snalin]

This was mentioned by someone else on the forums, but: http://www.strangebedfellows.de/index.php/topic,211.0.html

It es made to wørk with xp yay!


There wasn't really that much to get; kill the doods, down the cameras, listen to the tapes, switch the damn cyborg conversion chamber from cyborg mode to heal yourself mode, and go upwards. It'll probably get more complicated.

That said, I just clicked a button somewhere that activated the laser beam and destroyed the world. Ooops.

[Inlander]

Oh shit!

OH, SHIT!!

I've just started playing Fallout 2 for the first time but I might have to put that on hiatus. God, I loved System Shock so much.

Thankyou!!

[snalin]

The difference between cyborg conversion chamber and healing chamber+power station is FREE AMMO AND HP!

Jesus they knew how to make games in the old days. Although Ultima Underworld had a bit too confusing gameplay to be playable.

[Inlander]

I never tried Ultima Underworld; however I grew up playing (or rather, watching my older brother and his friends play) the Ultima series Ultima V is another of my all-time faves. A few years ago I played Ultimas 3 to 7 back-to-back, it was ace. Fortunately the Ultima community is so big and nerdy that all those games are readily available complete with mods and programs to make them work on modern machines.

[BeoPuppy]

Diablo + Hellfire. Love the way you can cheat the hell out of the game. Also: the lower levels have sick and twisted military march music playing at times. Between child's cries and winds blowing and stuff. Really quite disturbing. worth a revisit.
Diablo II. Replayed over and over and over ...
Dune 2000. Build. Kill. Repeat.

[Inlander]

Dune 2000. Build. Kill. Repeat.

Ha, even that game was too tarted up for my tastes! I don't want some silly mission where I have to protect some silly Fremen cave from the Harkonnen. I don't want any objectives in my Dune R.T.S. other than "Kill the enemies! Kill them to death!!" As far force balancing goes, all I want is "Blow up all the quads you get given at the start so you can BUILD MORE TANKS."

Strangely Dune II/2000 is the only real-time strategy game series I feel this way about. I love having to carefully balance forces and think out solutions to problems in games like Starcraft and Dawn of War.

[BeoPuppy]

It must be influence from the book. After all, those are total testosterone fueled kill fests without any sort of plot, intrigue or political thought in there.

Fav. strategy: building concrete slabs all the way to the enemy's base. Then killing them all with turrets and taking over their buildings.

[LTK]

I just realised that I would really like to replay Painkiller after these awful sequels. I remembered how much mindless fun I had killing all those demons with weapons from a tortured fantasy. Only problem is, I sold my disc, thinking I wasn't going to replay it anyway.

[Spluff]

In a similar vein to painkiller, Serious Sam is an excellent game for replaying.

[Inlander]

It must be influence from the book. After all, those are total testosterone fueled kill fests without any sort of plot, intrigue or political thought in there.

I'd played Dune II about a dozen times looooong before I ever read the book.

Fav. strategy: building concrete slabs all the way to the enemy's base. Then killing them all with turrets and taking over their buildings.

I think there was only one map where you could do that - but yeah, it was awesome. As was building a wall of turrets surrounding your base, which was expensive but not prohibitively so - especially if you were playing as Ordos and you used your gas tanks to brainwash the enemy harvesters!