Re-playability

First, a note to the 1-3 people who actually read this thing, my computer had a demon in it so I have had to turn it off. Turns out it was my media hard drive going the way of the dodo. Jubilations. Hence, the gap in posts.

Anyways, I've been thinking a lot lately about what makes a game worth playing more than once. Now, I'm not taking about multiplayer games obviously, because while you do play the same maps over and over, its always a different experience because of the different people involved. No, re-playability is some special quality of a single player game that makes someone go back to the same story, system, and characters over and over again. There are all sorts of games in all genres that are highly re-playable, so its not a quality of one genre of games. So I thought I'd go over some of the games I've gone back to over the years and see what kind of things they have in common.

Now, I'm not only going to be talking about games that I've gotten 100% completion on - that would be a short list. But I'm also not going to talk aout games that I never finished. Before you call stupid on me, I know what "to replay" means. But I've played Lumines about a thousand times, but I've never actually made it to the final skin of the single player mode. So I feel like my picking it up again and again is more about conquering something that going back to it. Anyway.

Devil May Cry 4: I think I've played through the single player campaign at least 4 times, mostly on the same difficulty setting. As with the others in the series, the lure of replay for me was more about the style meter than it was about beating the higher difficulty settings. The satisfaction of seeing that "Smokin' Sick Style!" pop up on your screen while you're juggling a demon in the air never gets old, no matter if its the same demon as the last one. So its less about the enemies you're facing, but how you can face them with more baddassery. Sure there were those extra challenge rooms that you could try and get to if you missed them the first time around, but for me it was always about style. But even I had to admit that tower at the end with the spiky dice where you have to fight every single other boss in the game was a little annoying. If I remember correctly, you'd already fought all of them twice, once with Nero and once with Dante. Except for that seed-pod-throwing snake lady. Killing her never got old.

Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth: I love this game. The graphics are dated, but still attractive. The characters (most of them) are relatable, and it has that underlying Norse theme that I never could resist. I'm on vacation now in the middle of my third playthrough - and believe you me this is quite a long game. The battle system is great, trying to tie your combos together with various characters never gets stale because there are so many characters to chose from. But there are lots of RPGs I've played with great systems that I haven't devoted as much time to, and I think the difference here is the system is an exquisite balance between deep and interesting. There are a lot of nuts and bolts to this game, to the point where you can't get the "good" ending unless you know most of them. But for some reason that's not frustrating or prohibitive. For one thing, the progress of the war for Valhalla changes depending on the characters you send, making for a different story experience every time. The skills system is fun - trying to balance which skills to level and which not to. In fact, most of the extraneous bits of the system are interesting and fun to uncover. Admittedly there are some secrets that are really obscure and I had to use the Interent to find them. But the combination of a fun battle system, an immersive and complicated level progression, and a story partially contingent on your actions makes me pick it back up again every couple years.

Mass Effect (1&2): I've played both these games at least twice, and plan to play them again. I prefer the second one, mostly because of the annoying vehicle sections and confusing inventory screen in the first installment. But I still played the first one twice because I wanted a "perfect" Shepard to import into the second game. But it didn't seem like a chore, it was still fun once I stopped raging at the stupid MAKO. The second one expanded my understanding of my Shepard as a character. I built her as a pale, tough looking brunette with a scar across her eyebrow, and decided she was going to be a Paragon. After that, her personality started building itself in my mind. In the first game, she was an idealistic proponent of galactic unity, willing to sacrifice herself for the greater good. She talked Wrex down when it counted, and all of her allies trusted her. But in the second game I think she gained more depth for me, mostly because of all my imported Paragon points. I knew I would be able to max out my Paragon meter halfway through the game, so I had the option of choosing some of the Renegade options when I felt like it. I decided that the experience of dying and being brought back by a company she previously thought to be evil made her a little more impatient and cynical. That coupled with a boss that wouldn't tell her anything - she definitely grated under his smugness. But her core ideals stayed the same. I wonder how Lenneth Shepard will develop in the next game. The character development coupled with the fun combat - I will probably play the second one at least one more time before the next one comes out. I've played as a Sentinel and a Vanguard, and I loved both. But there's nothing that can beat the Vanguard's Charge+Elbow to the Face+Shotgun to the Nads combo.

Dragon Age (1&2): Another Bioware series. My experience with both of these games was the same - once I finished them for the first time I immediately started over again. There are so many variables, you can get a different experience every time. There's different classes, party characters, romances, random party banter, and tons of sidequests. My first playthrough was always the quick-and-dirty one without too much sidequesting so I could see the story, but I'd always go back for the meticulous, do-everything playthrough because I loved the story and system so much.

Super Mario World: There is something incredibly charming and timeless about 2D platformers. They remind me of a simple time in my life when all I needed to worry about was pretending to be busy while I was supposed to be doing schoolwork. I've played some of those levels a dozen times and its still fun. At first its fun to figure out what patterns of jumping needs to happen to get through the level. Then after that its kind of a zen experience to watch yourself expertly maneuver Mario through the various pitfalls. I love the low-tech music, mostly because it reminds me of being a kid.

Final Fantasy X: This one was mostly about getting revenge on the Omega Weapon. There's a secret dungeon populated by ridiculously hard monsters with an ungodly ridiculously hard monster at the end. With no save points. On my first playthrough I spent six hours getting through that dungeon, leveling my characters multiple times, only to be killed in one shot by the Omega Weapon. This was my greatest rage-quit moment, and I had to put the game down for a couple weeks. But I came back to finish the story, swearing that one day I would have my revenge. The first time through I didn't pay much attention to the minigames and only got a couple of the Ultimate Weapons because at a certain point I just wanted to see how the story would end. Not the second time. While I could have started from a save from my previous game, I decided it would be better to start fresh. And so, armed with a strategy guide and some tips from friends I carefully plotted the downfall of the Omega Weapon. In doing so I discovered several elements of the game that I'd previously overlooked. For example, at first I thought blitzball was stupid, but in my trials to get Wakka's Ultimate Weapon I realized its actually kind of fun - especially because you can just play a couple games to kill twenty minutes or so. I did finally slaughter the Omega Weapon and I really hope nobody got that victory dance on tape. Thank you, No Encounter weapon!

The Elder Scrolls series: Ok, this is a bit of an exception since its more about continuous playability than re-playability. I consider them to be similar, so here we go. I've played the last three entries in the series, but I'll mostly talk about Skyrim since its the most recent. I've dropped so many hours on this game, because there are thousands of things to do. You can ride around on your (undead, in my case) horse and collect alchemy ingredients, and spend hours experimenting with potion recipes. You can explore caves and slaughter bandits. You can kill dragons and absorb their souls. There's Dragon Priests to hunt, giants to sneak up on. And I haven't even mentioned any of the questlines yet. I'm almost 100 hours deep into the game and I haven't really touched the main quest. In fact, the last few hours I've played were spent raiding people's houses and stealing their cheese and apple pies. That's right, I steal cheese.

It shouldn't be a surprise that the system is the thing most of these games have in common. Even in different genres, a well-built system is core to re-playability. But its more than that. I loved the system in quite a few games that I've only played once. In the end it comes down to a symbiotic relationship between the nuts-and-bolts of a game and its creative elements. A good system is nothing without an engaging story and characters, and the best story in the world can't be carried by a broken game. But creative elements don't only refer to story and characters - in the case of puzzle games it might be well-designed graphics or an interesting new gameplay gimmick.

I guess the moral of the story here is that moderation and balance makes things awesome. And also, I just wanted to nerd out about some of my favorite games.