10 Great Reasons to Replay Your Old Games
Ever bump into an old acquaintance you haven’t seen in a while, and after chatting for a bit, say to yourself, “Man, I really like this! We used to have a lot of fun together!”?
Replaying your old games can be a lot like that. After restarting an old game, you can find yourself asking, “Why did I stop playing this?! This game is awesome!” There are several great reasons to go back and replay your old favorites if it’s been a while.
1. Old characters can be like old friends. Agent 47, and Sam Fisher are just too cool in any iteration.
2. Cool weapons you love to use. Yeah, you know the Needler is awesome.
3. Levels that you really liked are there for you to enjoy all over again. Ghost Recon: Wildlands can be tackled in so many different ways!
4. Neat perks / abilities that other/newer games don’t have. Nailing an enemy with a grenade you’ve dropped after you died: Priceless.
5. You don’t remember the patterns, so the game is fresh all over again.
6. Perspective: You can attack old challenges with fresh, new strategies, and tactics, experience gained over time with subsequent games.
7. Old bosses that were hard to beat are still a challenge. But...
8. There is no pressure! You got this! No matter how hard it gets, no matter how bad-ass the boss is, you know you kicked her/his/its ass before. You get all the fun and none of the stress or anxiety.
9. The game you are currently playing just isn’t doing it for you. The next title you're looking forward to playing doesn’t come out for three more months, then I have to wait for a used (cheap) copy to pop up.
10. As you replay them you remember fun moments you had playing with real people.
Sometimes those old games are significant because of what was going on in your life that time. They call to mind where you were or what you were doing at that time. For example, my wife and I had just moved into our new place in San Jose when she had her original “Leeroy Jenkins” moment (years before his). We were playing Deus Ex and kept getting our asses handed to us on one particular level. I spent five minutes laying out a new strategy and said, “Okay, we’re going on the count of 3... Where the hell are you...?” The next thing I hear is her screaming, “YIIII-AAAAH-BITCHESSSS!” as her character disappeared around the corner and into the kill-zone. Machine-gun fire, hand grenades, and I’m running to catch up to her, knowing I’m only gonna die right along with her... AGAIN! TEARS! We laughed our asses off! It became our inside joke and one of us does it at least once each time we play.
So, the next time you’re surfing through your streaming services and can’t find anything to watch and that game you really want isn't being released for another couple of months, load up one of those oldies. You’ll wonder why you ever stopped playing it.