I was going to say replaying but I feel like that limits the question to games like Prey or Fallout New Vegas that have endings and games like The Sims 2 or Cities Skylines where you can play indefinitely end up excluded.
I’m not really referring to games like League of Legends where you’re coming back every month. More so games where you stop playing for an extended period of time.
- Shattered Pixel Dungeon
- Project Zomboid
- Vampire Survivors
- Rimworld
- Metal Gear Solid V (on PC with mods that greatly expand/enhance free roam, and add more side ops)
- Tomba 1 and 2 (Tombi in the EU)
- Chrono Trigger
- Megaman Legends (love the sequel, but haven’t ever completed it, life keeps getting in the way)
- Castlevania Syphony of the Night
- Sonic Adventure (it’s trash, but fun trash, especially with mods)
- Sonic Mania, Sonic 3 and Knuckles
- Minecraft
Some that I haven’t come back to in a while, but I’m overdue:
- Ape Escape
- Crash Bandicoot (1-3)
- Spyro (1-3)
- Digimon World 3
- Any of the GBA or DS Castlevanias
- Actraiser
- Rayman 2
- Megaman Battle Network series(3 and 4 are my favorite entries)
- Dissidia Duodecim
- Zone of the Enders 2
- God Hand
- Wipeout Pulse/Pure
- Pretty much any Kirby game
Most of these games I find just plain fun. Thanks for asking, I was starting to get burned out and not finding stuff as fun, but writing this out has me hankering to revisit some old favorites again.
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You missed like another 40 minutes of cut scenes before briefly getting to control your bare-assed character before more cut scenes. I also gave up.
Paper Mario for the N64 and Super Mario World for the SNES. I think it’s because I found them both at the perfect point in my childhood where they were the first games in their genres I managed to beat.
I had a blast finding every single exit and bonus stage in SMW, and Paper Mario was the first RPG that didn’t make my eyes glaze over (including Super Mario RPG). Plus the characters and aesthetics are still so charming, the whole game gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.
Mirror’s Edge, Jet set radio future (and now bomb rush cyberfunk)
The 3D Mario’s (I haven’t gotten around to playing galaxy 2 yet and it’s eating me up inside lol)
Skyrim, Minecraft, stardew Valley
Ocarina of time and majoras mask.
Animal crossing (usually whatever latest entry, but I liked new leaf the best so far)
Lumines has become an addiction
Forza Horizon (similar to animal crossing, usually the latest entry, but surprisingly I enjoyed 1 and 4 the most. I was surprised about 4 because I didn’t think I really cared too much about the location, but I liked the seasons a lot. It kept everything feeling new)
Kirby and the crystal shards
You’re the first person I’ve seen say Mario, which I find surprising.
For me, it’s Super Mario World, including romhacks. It’s platforming perfection. I particularly like the SMW Central level competition compilation romhacks since you can skip the levels you don’t enjoy.
Spyro is another one I come back to, especially now with the remastered version.
Diablo 2, with mods now, is another. “Stay awhile, and listen.” I sure will, old man.
For a long time, it was Counter Strike and Team Fortress, but I don’t really play FPS games any more so it’s been almost a decade for me at this point.
Super Mario world is a classic! I haven’t tried any romhacks for it, that sounds like fun!
Oh man Diablo 2. I’ve attempted to play it so many times, but I’ve yet to finish it yet. Not because I don’t want to, but it’s like every time I start up a fresh game, something happens to my game or save. I’ve lost a save twice now(this is over the course of 15 years) and the last time I tried to get it to run, it didn’t want to cooperate on my windows 10 install. It’s oddly cursed lol. I’ll finish it one day. I have to haha
Star Wars: The Old Republic. I don’t care about all the MMO stuff, but every time I watch or read something star-wars-related, I want to fire it up, get the one month subscription, and go on with some single-player story I need to finish. This happens twice a year more or less.
Civ V, every few months I decide to completely fuck up my sleep schedule playing later than I should
One more turn…
…and it’s morning.
V?
V = 5, fancy roman numbers
Oh I understand that it is 5. But why you are not playing 6?
Not OP, but I like both for different reasons. V doesn’t have the districts, which changes gameplay pretty significantly. I also prefer the art style of V. That being said, I like the districts and usually play VI, but go back to V almost as often
I actually love Civ IV, myself. I’m sure Leonard Nemoy is a huge part of why.
Oops, my b, misunderstood. I prefer civ V, and seems like a fair number of people do too. I like the art style, and game mechanics better in V. Admittedly though I could never really get into VI, but it seems like a lot of people prefer it too.
Peggle
Great, now I need to play some peggle
Peglin is also pretty great
Here are some of mine:
- Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
- Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
- Romancing SaGa 2 & 3
- Mega Man X 1-4
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What do you like about Control? That’s one game I’ve been thinking about revisiting
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Factorio. I love the gameplay but none of my friends play it so I normally play other games with them and come back to Factorio every now and then.
I have an unhealthy cycle of this with Hearts of Iron IV a WW2 grand strategy game. I’ll realize the embarrassing number of hours that I’ve put into the game and then I’ll stop playing for a while. But then one of the big mods for it will update and then I dive back in and lose a weekend and then the process repeats.
The other game I consistently come back to is Threads of Fate or Dewprism it’s a PS1 action-RPG with dual protagonists where each one has their own campaign or story to play through. I guess it’s nostalgia that keeps me coming back to it, but it really wasn’t a favorite game growing up and I didn’t beat it until years after I’d gotten it. But every few years I’ll just remember it out of the blue and get the urge to play through it again.
I don’t play The Sims for months and months, then come back to it and play really intensely for few days.
Skyrim, Fallout, Stardew Valley, and the Animal Crossing Games are my perennial favorites!
Time will tell on this one, but I think Baldur’s Gate 3 will be one I come back to again and again.
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, Dwarf Fortress. Highly-replayable, open-world and they keep being developed, so when you come back, there’s new stuff.
Skyrim, Fallout 4. Same idea, but the modders have added a lot of content.
Some of the city-builders, like Tropico 5. I play for a while, get tired, uninstall, but tend to come back, because the game is replayable.
Chase the Sun and Nova Drift are action games that I have spent some time away from and then come back and played. Nova Drift has seen regular development.
Pinball sims. I think that one can only play so much pinball, but I find myself thinking “I’d like to play a pinball game” down the line and reinstall.
I think that most of the games like this:
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Didn’t live-or-die based on their technology or graphics, because they’re invariably obsolete by the time I’ve come back.
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Need to be highly-replayable. I’ve played games with story, like Fallout: New Vegas but I don’t really go back to play them for the story (though I’ll concede that specifically Fallout: New Vegas does have multiple paths to explore). They can’t be appealing because of a surprising or tense plot or a plot twist.
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Often see continued development or modding, so there’s some reason to go back and see what’s there (though pinball would be a notable exception…you don’t go back for new content).
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Total war warhammer, always the newest one. I come back, play a campaign and forget about it for a few months.
Slay the spire
Every Miyazaki Fromsoft game ever.
I have no idea how I’m not bored yet. They’re all just so damn satisfying to play. I went from mostly online FPS to these games after I got Prepare to Die Edition back in the day. Any given time I play a game now, there’s an 80% chance it’s one of these or something similar to them (like The Surge, Mortal Shell, Lies of P, etc).
Don’t starve, hands down
Also Pokémon Rom hacks
Don’t Starve ticks pretty much all the boxes for a game that I should like…but I just don’t.
I like a number of action roguelikes, like The Binding of Isaac.
I like the open-world nature.
But the game just doesn’t do it for me. I dunno. I guess that a lot of the gameplay is clicking on things to gather them, which I am not that blown away by. I don’t feel like I change things up much based on what the world throws at me, which I think is an important aspect for a roguelite/roguelike to have. Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead does a better job of this, The Binding of Isaac a much better. I think that the low-sanity graphical artifacts might build mood, but are obnoxious.
The aesthetic just doesn’t really do it for me.