Games you always return to

[Mayali]

Painkiller Black Edition :dance:

[Mudran]

Skyrim - probably the only game I feel the need to return.

And then some old MMOs, but sooner or later I usually cover in fear when I see what another horrible changes they made to make the game "better", but it is almost never better... So I run away quite fast.

Edited March 1, 2019 by Mudran

[Chezana]

RuneScape - I might take breaks. Sometimes longer ones. But as sure as the dawn, I will always find my way back eventually. Say what you want about the grind, but noone will ever take away the fact that this game knows how to make quests.

Whereas most other games will be all "Go kill 675489 something", RS has a skill based around that concept, called Slayer. If you want to do that, and get rewards for it, you can. Quests, on the other hand, are like their own little point-and-click adventures. I quite like that, being a fan of series such as Monkey Island.

(RuneScape's pirate questline/series is a pretty big homage to the whole silly likeable pirate trope too. I like.)

And, even when on my breaks, RS soundtrack is so extensive it's got plenty of tracks I like to listen to when just going about my daily business.

The playtime logged on this over all the years makes it my most-played game period.

 

Binding of Isaac - This game is like some sort of weird abusive partner to me. I manage to break free, only to return once for fun, having a run that seems to suggest "I've changed, please come back, I promise I won't hurt you ever again", getting hooked, and having all my confidence in my skills slowly drained away until I feel like all I do is wasting my time with nothing to show for it. (It is currently my second-most played game according to play time logged on Steam. I might speak harshly of the game at times, but it is awesome, will run on a potato, and if you haven't tried it, I think you should. Yup. Suffer like I do.)

 

Pokémon - One of the first games I ever played, back in the days of Gen1. I like to play around with the older games from time to time, and in Gen6-7, I find shiny hunting to be a fun pasttime. It all goes in episodes tho. I can have weeks or months where I'll obsessively hunt for shinies, followed by weeks or months where I barely touch the games at all. The older ones, Gen5 and earlier, are fun, because it's possible to glean so much of what went through my kiddo/teen head at the times, looking at the nicknames and choices of Pokémon for my teams and so on.

The recent announcement of Gen8 has me pretty excited too, so the shiny hunts are on again. I even had some luck with it yesterday, and hatched a shiny Rowlet! Seeing those sparkles will never grow old.

The Mystery Dungeon spinoff series is an underrated gem too, and I have a second copy of Explorers of Sky specifically for replaying it. They really should make more of those... For as long as they're more like Sky and nothing like Gates to Infinity. >->'

 

Elder Scrolls - Skyrim is my most played game according to Steam, and with mods, I believe there'll always be ways to switch things up and keep it interesting for more or less forever, even if I take breaks at time.

The earlier games are awesome and fun to revisit from time to time too.

 

Minecraft - Another game that I play sporadically. It's naturally most fun with friends, but occasionally, splatting together a pile of mods and playing on your own is fun too.

I've been on such a spree lately, with all kinds of fun stuff added. Like with other moddable games, I enjoy how I can tinker with and tweak the experience to be just perfect for my tastes.

 

RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 - The bestest park building sim ever. Overcharging for umbrellas has never been more entertaining. Thanks to that games community, it has been brought up to a state where it's possible to run it on newer systems without any issues whatsoever, and I can easily re-live my childhood whenever I wish.

 

The Sims - I love Sims 2, and thinks that was the best entry in the series. I wish I could get it work on windows 10, but last I checked, people had yet to figure out how to do that. Could never get into Sims 3, but Sims 4 has struck me as a good compromise between 2 and 3, so I enjoy playing that from time to time.

I wish I could say I liked it more, but given some... say, questionable decisions... made by the company owning it, it's really hard to truly allow myself to grow attached or get too into it. Like I could with 2.

The Nine knows I'd play the heck out of 2 if given the chance... >->

 

Legend of Zelda - Especially Majora's Mask and Twilight Princess. One save is dedicated to replaying on each.

[skaybestrog]

Street FIghter II Champion Edition, KOF 98 and Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge ( with Mental Omega MoD btw )

 

Nice. For me it's Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo edition. Also Morrowind, competitive Pokemon and someSNES/Genesis titles.

[tekmage]

I keep going back to playing Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn and Path of Radiance. Something about this series resonates with me.

[Almir]

Age of Mythology, Warcraft 3

[RGMage2]

I lost all my games a couple of months ago in a HD failure, and so far I've only gotten around to reinstalling one of them, Civ5. So I guess that's my goto game. If I want to mod it will be Oblivion or Skyrim, but if it's just to pass the time it's Civ5.

[blaze1514]

Roller Coaster Tycoon 2, Tropico 5, Halo 2/3/Rch, and Minecraft.

Though with MC I tend to loose nostalgia quickly and log out in disgust at how convoluted and BS filled the game is now. I used to play on alpha MC servers, and I still remember when they first added rivers and cave systems into the game. It was so simplistically beautiful back then. Now they are adding things like panda bears? WTF.

Sometimes I might go through one of the CoD MW (1-3) campaigns, or will want to play battlefield 3 or Hardline. Thought that happens way less than the others.

[WeissYohji]

The Genesis Sonic games are high on the list, especially that Holy Grail of them all: Sonic 3 & Knuckles.

 

Sonic Mania has become another go-to game. I love how Sega and Christian Whitehead took what made the old Genesis/Sega CD games great and improved on that. THAT'S what Sega should have given us on the Saturn! The 3D Sonic games all suck because of the camera issues; I kept falling through too many loops to justify playing further. Sega should have kept Sonic 2D or at least gone the 2.5D route like Nintendo did with New Super Mario Bros. The Saturn was a 2D powerhouse in its day so there's no reason Sega couldn't have given us something like Mania then and there instead of teasing Sonic Xtreme and then never releasing it. Mania has truly become S3&K's equal in every way. Sega really made Sonic great again.

 

Oblivion was in the club of go-to games for a while but has long since fallen by the wayside. I fire it up now and then for mod testing, though, but then I quit because it's so exploitable. The fastest way to build your Intelligence is to summon skeletons or brew potions. If you want to build your health, equip some heavy armor and let a mudcrab beat on you. Leveling up requires you to sleep after building your major skills ten times; if you never sleep, you can finish the main quest, Shivering Isles, and Knights of the Nine all at level 1. Playing as a Breton and then equipping the Mundane Ring is a recipe for total immunity to magic. There are enchanted items that have Reflect Damage and Reflect Spell effects; equipping all of each type at once will render you totally immune to melee and magic damage. Merely making a spell or enchanting an item is a great way to break the game. And this is all before using the 100% Chameleon exploit.

 

Fallout: New Vegas has since come to fill the role that Oblivion once did. I came to it from Oblivion because both games were made using the same engine. But boy was I in for a surprise. My first character in FNV was a Jane Everywoman not specced into any particular skills; I aborted that run because I had leveled her wrong for trying to pass certain skill checks. Nowadays, I've developed a system, which involves doing all the add-ons well before ever going to the Strip. I'll grind til I'm level 10, then start with Dead Money and end with Lonesome Road all in order of release. Then it's off to do the main quest and all the side quests I want. I've got plenty of mods here just like in Oblivion before it, but not enough to break the limit. FNV has its share of exploits, too, but not as bad as Oblivion. And the people also look more like real people than in Oblivion. There's so many ways to finish the game, DLCs and all. This and the mods always keep me coming back for more. My parrot always loves to watch me play, too, but he's yet to mimic any of the dialogue in the game.

 

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is another one I return to here and there. I bought a used copy of it at GameStop 15 years ago, right after graduating from high school. I beat the game back then and still have that same clear file in order to play as Richter (I have the PS1 version). Mostly, though, I just play as Alucard. But I always enter the 99 Luck cheat to get the Lapis Lazuli early, then doing the glitch to keep Death from stripping my inventory. Then all I have to hunt for is the Shield Rod and the rest of the game is easy as f*#@. Hit Square and Circle to cast the Shield Rod/Alucard Shield spell, then just run into enemies with your shield up. Nearly nothing in the game can harm you now. Shaft and Dracula will go down in mere seconds.

 

Legend of Zelda is among the ranks, particularly Ocarina of Time. It was the first Zelda game I ever played; I didn't have any Nintendo hardware til the N64 came out. I still have my childhood N64 and version 1.1 gray cartridge (here's a guide to tell which version your cartridge is) but haven't played it in a long time because I haven't modded my N64 to output HDMI yet. To hell with the composite cable that the system came with. When I'm not playing OoT, I've got Twilight Princess around. Those and Link's Awakening are the only three Zelda games I've ever finished; I only played the NES and Super NES games through emulators and re-releases and don't have any of the rest.

 

I've also got Rise of Nations, Age of Empires, the old Diablos, Empire Earth, Duke Nukem 3D, the old Unreal games, Xenosaga, old school Halo, Chrono Cross, Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy 4-8 (7 is on PC and the rest are the PS1 releases), Secret of Mana, Super Mario World, Super Mario 64, Mario Kart, Virtua Racing, Daytona USA, the old SimCity games, and Team Fortress 2 to migrate to and from.

[Taletio]

Rome Total War and Skyrim