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.

    •  Ultimatenab   ( @Ultimatenab@beehaw.org ) 
      1•3 months ago

      I’m with you, I got a lot of hours in it but still come back every few months for a new map.

      But although I’ve done mega bases, deathworld, Bobs and Space Exploration, I don’t want to do them again even though I thoroughly enjoyed them.

      My love is the early game and up to launching a rocket. Anyone with me on this?

  •  wizardbeard   ( @wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English
    16•3 months ago
    • 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.

      •  smeg   ( @smeg@feddit.uk ) English
        5•3 months ago

        Portal 2 is definitely the one I pick up regularly, but specifically for the Perpetual Testing Initiative. I’ve already played the main story enough times, but dropping in for a few really well-made user-created levels with a little bit of new Cave Johnson dialogue is great!

  •  WagnasT   ( @WagnasT@iusearchlinux.fyi ) English
    9•3 months ago

    Morrowind, there are some great multi player communities.

    Mindustry, sometimes i just listen to the machines.

    pretty much any console game on emulators, recently playing ffvii again while i wait for rebirth pc port.

    shattered pixel dungeon.

      •  WagnasT   ( @WagnasT@iusearchlinux.fyi ) English
        3•3 months ago

        You have to have the original game files either from the disk or downloaded from GoG or steam. Then you need tes3mp which runs great on linux and windows. I personally play on a server called neravarine prophecies, they have seasonal events and the community is a lot of fun. It uses the same engine as openMW so most of the mods that work on OpenMW are compatible, I’d stick with cosmetics to keep the servers you join compatible.

        Different servers have different rules, many of them forbid going into areas that cause server crashes, i.e. mornhould.

        I had a blast, then I got my kids to play and i was there to guide them a bit when the game gets tough.

    •  spriteblood   ( @spriteblood@kbin.social ) 
      3•3 months ago

      I’ve had Kenshi on my wishlist for a long time, and I haven’t pulled the trigger. What’s your favorite part about it? Most of what I know is that it’s punishing and has deep roleplaying opportunities, but I don’t know a lot of the specifics.

      •  Lurra   ( @Lurra@lemm.ee ) 
        1•3 months ago

        I love that its brutal when you start out. Everything can kill you. From bandits, to creatures, hell even certain regions are hazardous. First time playing and exploring the biomes I was walking on egg shells constantly, really enjoyed that. Overtime you get attached to your npc as they continuously get into fights and try to not lose a limb (seriously). Lore wise (if you are into that like I am) you start shifting through bits of relics from the past on your travels. You can buy maps or just randomly discover landmarks as you roam. There’s also politics and you’ll learn with time who is in charge of what. Is it safe to enter here or stay there? You are free to be whatever you want; Have a storefront and sell your crafts for cash (cats), explore and make bank with old artifacts you find, become a thief and run mock stealing, grow drugs and profit from that, you can build a base or not. Choose to make a large squad or keep is small. Watch as they fight & work together. Each play through is always different and if you love mods then you can go crazy with added customization. If that sounds good than you can totally wait for it to go on sale if anything. Kenshi 2 is in the works now so will definitely look forward to that one ☺️

  •  Chloyster [she/her]   ( @chloyster@beehaw.org ) 
    9•3 months ago

    Binding of Isaac for sure. Been playing on and off since I was in high school and there is just so much content there and new crazy synergies to find. Across all platforms I have well over a thousand hours. Hoping I can 100% it some day!

  •  Legendsofanus   ( @Legendsofanus@lemm.ee ) 
    8•3 months ago

    Definitely Bioshock Infinite. It was the first Bioshock game I ever played and the story just wow’ed me, it quickly became one of my favs.

    Now I just treat the whole game like a huge movie event, playing the game with my friends as we experience the story. It’s just something that i would introduce anyone to, even if they din’t play that many video games cuz compared to Bioshock 1 the action is a lot faster.

    (Btw Bio1 is better in almost everything, love that game as well)

      •  Mic_Check_One_Two   ( @Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.com ) 
        3•3 months ago

        I actually enjoyed the story. Some of the themes and motifs were heavy handed, but that’s par for the course. Honestly, the biggest issue with the story is that players have come to expect a big plot twist. Bioshock 1’s twist hit first-time players hard, so later games have tried to replicate that. But the issue is that it only hit players hard because they never knew it was coming. They only remember it because it was truly shocking the first time you played through it.

        So now players have come to expect that from the series, which means the series can’t replicate it; When players are looking for a big plot twist, you can’t really hide it anymore. Because as soon as you start foreshadowing it, players catch on. And if you’re too subtle with your signals, then players who have been looking for it will say that doesn’t make any sense.

        •  spriteblood   ( @spriteblood@kbin.social ) 
          3•3 months ago

          Most of the story criticism I’ve heard fall into a handful of categories:

          • Overall plot seeming convoluted and hard to follow (which is understandable when you throw both time travel and parallel universes into the same story)

          • Whitewashed portrayal of racism used for story aesthetics

          • Ending feeling confusing and/or unsatisfying

          • Certain story moments feeling out of place and/or undermining things that other story moments set up

          I haven’t seen much in the way of players expecting/predicting plot twists.

      •  Legendsofanus   ( @Legendsofanus@lemm.ee ) 
        3•3 months ago

        I haven’t read many arguments made by people who hated Infinite’s story but I loved it because it does one thing really well: making shit up as you go. Which is why it works so well when I let my friends play it as movie. There are very few ways to not have fun when beautifully interesting things like, “He doesn’t row”, lighthouse rocket chair, the bird or the cage, Quantum Entanglement, a star wars reference keep surfacing up adding to an ever increasing thread of inquires and intrigues.

        No matter what arguments someone may have against the story, it’s hard to deny that it oozes fantastical details, mystery and lore.

        There’s a childlike wow-ness to the game because it doesn’t pursue multiverse in the way we are so used to: on the nose. It lets the visuals of infinite lighthouses speak for itself.

  •  tal   ( @tal@lemmy.today ) English
    8•3 months ago

    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 have some common characteristics:

    • Didn’t live-or-die based on their technology or graphics, because they’re invariably obsolete by the time I’ve come back.

    • 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.

    • 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).