Time After Time

Why is this song stuck in my head? Why is it actually inspiring a blog post? Shame on me.




After I announced my giveaway of X-COM on iOS, I inevitably found myself picking up on my 3rd or 4th playthough and once again defending the earth from alien invaders. While the game needs polish, it's one of those that I can pick up and play even after months of letting it stagnate on my hard drive.

I've had a few other games like that in my life. Those games that you can beat over and over again, and even if the ending never changes you can still enjoy the ride. Sometimes it's because there are still multiple story paths to take, or maybe a new way to build your character - regardless, we all have at least 1 game that we could play off-and-on for the rest of our lives and still enjoy it.

X-COM is certainly one of those for me. The variety of environments, challenging enemies, differences in playthroughs, and enjoyable combat makes it a classic in my book. I still haven't manned up and tried Ironman mode (although I've always wanted to do a "Let's Play" about it), but the game has so many different ways to play that I'm never disappointed with a playthrough.

I think my very first game that made me feel this way was Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Believed by many to be the best game ever made, I spent so many hours playing and replaying that game for no real reason. Although there were some side missions, nothing in the game ever really changed. Puzzles were solved the same way, bosses had the same strategy of "find the weakness; attack it; dodge boss's displeasure; repeat," and the OoT was made before games had a mandatory RPG-lite/character upgrade system.

Nevertheless I'd flip on my N64, start with Link as a kid, and go until that seppia image of Link and Zelda signaled the end of this playthrough. I'd happily do my stuff at Lon Lon, try my darndest to woo Malon, collect my tunics, play my songs, smile as Sheik tried to deceive me, and spend hours perfecting my ability to shoot the crows in Lake Hyrule from the maximum draw distance. My cousin still talks about the time he got stuck in the game and waited until we went to visit him two states away so I could be the Water Temple for him. The game created so many childhood memories and played a huge part in the obsessive gamer I am today.

Perhaps my favorite game of all time, and the one with the most playthroughs, is Dark Souls. When I first watched IGN do a 2 hour playthrough of the game, I was in awe. I detest difficult games (stop killing me and let me play!), but something about Dark Souls instantly drew me in. Despite the game's punishing, unapologetic difficulty (with no way to even adjust the difficulty!), I knew I had to try it. So I went to the small release event, cracked open a Pepsi, and watched as my character fought his way through an undead asylum for reasons that were totally beyond me.

I finally had to abandon my first character because I screwed his stats up so badly that I was completely ineffective, and while I thought I was nearing the end I later discovered that all those hours I'd poured in to the game only put me at the halfway mark! My next characters were the result of a lot of study at the feet of Dark Souls gurus. Guys like EpicNameBro made channels based on DS's gameplay and lore, exploring every facet of this incredibly deep, unique, and twisted game. Being able to beat this game (before they softened the difficulty) was a feat of its own, and I've never felt so rewarded as I was when I extinguished that final bonfire and sent the world in to chaos (woops!).

Man, all this talk about replayable games makes me want to go fire up my Wii and play my Gamecube copy of OoT, followed by finally trying to beat Dark Souls as a level 1 character!

What about you? What are those games that you played endlessly as a kid, or perhaps still play as a much bigger kid?


See you tomorrow!

Remember to follow me on Facebook. I'm doing a blog post every single day for 2013, and Facebook is a great way to stay up-to-date as well as take part in my monthly giveaways! This month's giveaway is for an iOS copy of X-COM Enemy Unknown, so enter here to win!