Revisit any games recently?

[Sleepy Sol]

So yeah, title is rather self-explanatory; have you replayed any games recently that you hadn't played in a while? What were your impressions like this time around? Were they significantly different?

For my own contribution, I revisited Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin tonight, finishing a large part of the game and made it to Dracula in the span of 4 to 5ish hours. I know it's not at the top of many Castlevania fans' lists as far as overall quality in comparison to a lot of the other games, but replaying it has sort of solidified its place in my favorites of the series.

What's surprising to me in particular with this second go at the game is how quickly I feel I finished it in comparison to my younger self. I'm pretty sure I must have sucked terribly at games (actually, I still do), because I definitely spent more than 5 hours playing to get to the same point. But as far as gameplay impressions, I was just as enamored with the game as I was before.

The soundtrack also didn't disappoint at all so many years later either. Like most Castlevania soundtracks Portrait of Ruin's is pretty damn stellar, but it has a good number of tracks that stand out among the best in the series to me. Iron Blue Intention is boss.

I also remember hating the fuck out of certain boss fights in Portrait of Ruin, like Death. And lo and behold, when I made it to his boss room he still kicked my ass a couple times and pissed me off just as he had when I first played the game around 7 or 8 years ago. It was frustrating, but also pretty nostalgic, so I think I got quite a lot out of it.

So, overall, my fond memories of the game were not sullied. Portrait of Ruin certainly deserved my attention then, and it still does now. Now I just need Igarashi to follow in the footsteps of Keiji Inafune and make a Castlevania-except-not-sort-of and I'll be a happy camper.

So, what about you guys?

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I'm currently replaying Metal Gear Rising Revengence.

I first played it back when it came out. I didn't have the cash to buy it so I borrowed it from a friend, and gave it back to him when I finished it. Since then the Jetstream Sam DLC came out as did Bladewolf, and they're both free, so I bought the game to play through the DLCs. Now I decided to go back and replay the main game again just for the hell of it, and because I bought a new controller, a dualshock 4, and it feels way better than playing with a dualshock 3.

After that I'll probably replay Dark Souls 1 (for the nth time), this time on PC because Games for Windows Live has finally been patched out of it meaning I can buy it and play at a solid framerate for the first time.

 

[SoreWristed]

Been playing through ff8 again for the first time since i was about 12. Being older, grasping more of the english language and understanding how numbers work do make the combat in this game seriously easier.
I'm just before the end of disk 3 and all my characters have 9999 hitpoints and can wreck obscene amounts of shit.
Back then though i didn't care for obsessing about what magic to junction where and i just wanted to hit things with the gunblade. I also didn't realize that the game leveled along with me and i thought that i would have a better chance at defeating the boss at the end if i leveled to lvl 80 first...

So the game is boringly easy now, but i do notice new aspects to the story that went over my head as a kid. Some of the logic displayed by the characters in game are depressingly stupid, now that i have adult-vision.
"Let's give some 16 year old boys and girls their choice in weapons, let's allow them to carry around their weapons everywhere, and let's hope they don't kill eachother in pubescent rage. Oh, and i've built our very own Jurassic Park inside the school. Everyone's an orphan anyway so there's no parents to complain. Come to think of it, if all these kids are orphans, who is paying their clearly astronomical tuition? oh right, we rent out teenagers to go fight wars."

I also replay Jak and Daxter every year or so and every replay proves to me that it's still one of the best designed games i've ever played.

 

[Darks63]

I was playing and Just finished AC 3 and its DLC. My impressions were that Black Flag/Rogues's engine was far better, The main characters more likable, and the main story less shit.

I am also currently rerunning the Prototype series due to being on a free running parkour gaming mood for some reason.

 

[Fappy]

My sister's old work friend came over a couple weeks ago specifically to play through Donkey Kong Country with me. Proud to say we took out King K. Rool in just under two hours

At one point she got ambushed by an enemy that made her physically jump, yanking the controller and the SNES along with it. Poor thing done froze! Thankfully we didn't lose much progress (but we lost our 40-something extra lives T^T)

 

[putowtin]

Havn't played FO: New Vegas in a year.... that's my plan for the weekend... and next week... and next month!

 

[joest01]

I played DN3D since it was for free on PS+. It is more difficult than I remembered. And unfortuntely too buggy for me to continue through toxic dump

 

[StoleitfromKilgore]

Prey:

Years ago I stopped playing about two thirds through, probably because I got bored with the incessant grinding. It's not as bad as I make it sound, but replaying it, I had a feeling that most of the interesting ideas are introduced early. Later on, there isn't a lot of interesting story development or so, to make up for it.

Still, it was a lot of fun. The last few years, I think I have started playing games in a lot more attentive manner and I have learned to appreciate most games for what they are.

 

[FliedLiverAttack]

I've been playing Age of Empires 2:The Conquerors the first game I ever played. A little bit weird to play because I used to be able to smack around the highest level AI but now I'm getting crushed by moderate AI and everyone I've played in multiplayer.

 

[MetalShadowChaos]

I modded the shit out of Skyrim and have been enjoying that quite a bit lately. Base game is wank, but with the help of random people on the internet many of it's problems have been fixed for me, which is neato.

 

[BathorysGraveland2]

Rome: Total War 1, with the Europa Barbarorum mod. The game still holds up as having the finest battle engine in the series by far. So smooth, so fluid, so responsive. Well, except in certain areas of a siege... but eh.

My new impressions are favourable since, for the first time with this mod, I'm actually having a successful campaign. As Carthage. I've defeated Rome and have them as protectorates (I did give them back the city of Roma itself though. I want Rome to survive a long time and eventually revolt against my rule when they become strong enough). I have built a mining economy in Iberia and am about to conquer North Africa with an army consisting largely of Greek toxotai, Numidian archers and the almighty Cretans! And some Balearic slingers to boot. A powerful force. And then I look to the east, to Greece as my forced allies, Rome, deal with the northern barbarians. It's all going very swell. I've even accumulated enough money to fund three standing armies - one in Iberia, one in North Africa and my famous Italian veterans, victors of the Roman-Carthago and Carthago-Epiriote wars, soon to embark to Greece to take the battle to Epirus and Makedon alongside our dear Koinon Hellenon allies. It's my first successful Europa Barbarorum campaign and it's a fucking blast.

Yep, I'm loving the game. Admittedly, I do need the force diplomacy mod to really make a lot of this work out.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I'm currently playing Final Fantasy XIII because god-dammit, I will not be beaten. Way back when this game was new, it was one of the reasons that I was given to never, ever pre-order games again. I had gone from IX to this one and it just blew me away how much worse things had gotten but I persevered and eventually made it to Chapter 11...then I got stuck on the Alexander fight and ended up saying 'screw it' until about a week or 3 ago. At this point, I've just made it to chapter 9 and I'm not having as terrible a time as I was when I first played it. I owe this to the fact that I'm skipping every cutscene though.

I just made it back to Chapter 9 and I distinctly remember the first time around, I got hopelessly stuck on one of the two bosses at the end of Chapter 8...I think I'll be able to beat this thing this time around.

FUN FACT: I typed up this post during the cutscenes in between chapters 8 and 9.

 

[Kingjackl]

I just finished replaying the original Spyro trilogy on Vita. The first game was slow-going, but once I got to 2 & 3, my brain just went on auto-pilot and I powered through them over the course of about a week. Those were the games of my childhood.

I also tried to get back into Age of Mythology after picking it up during the last Steam sale, but found I didn't enjoy it as much as I used to. Aside from the graphics not having aged particularly well, I'm just not that into real time strategy any more. Thank XCOM and Fire Emblem for that, I suppose.

 

[Xerosch]

Technically I'm doing this every time I'm playing a PS3 HD collection as I've most likely completed the games on the PS2 already.

Speaking of which: A week ago I hooked up my PS2 again and just popped in some games. I was supprised that I got a lot of 'made with love' vibe from some titles that you don't find in most new games.

And aside from that: I'm currently replaying Suikoden before starting Suikoden 2. The older I get the more excited I am when an HD remake of an old classic ist announced. For me, no other announcement of last year's E3 compared to the happiness I felt of 'Grim Fandango HD' being available soon.

 

[laggyteabag]

I'm having a go at Hearthstone again. First time that I played the game for a few days in a row for about 3 or 4 months. GvG really changed up a lot of things, and now all of my decks are mostly useless/foiled by one card that I have never seen before. It is really fun getting back into it again, and it is weird trying out all of the decks again and having my least favourite ones rise to the top, and having my favourite ones sink to the bottom.

God, I love Blizzard games.

 

[shrekfan246]

I'm currently playing Final Fantasy XIII because god-dammit, I will not be beaten.

That sounds familiar.

I was going through the entire Final Fantasy franchise, got a little burnt out by the end of IV: The After Years though so I've slowed down for the time being. I'd never played I-VI, and I don't want XIII to be the only one I couldn't finish.

OT: I just finished 100%-ing Darksiders, actually. I played it on the PS3 back around when it originally came out and bought it on Steam a while back, but I hadn't downloaded it until recently. It was a pretty easy one to achievement hunt for, so I figured I might as well.

I've redownloaded a ton of games, though. I don't even know what I'm going to do with all of these games! I've been working my way through the challenge maps in Batman: Arkham City slowly but surely, and I also started up The Darkness II again a few days ago, and I just finished downloading Dead Space and Dead Space 2 overnight, and kinda feel like playing Borderlands again, and I've reinstalled the Dragon Age games because of Inquisition, and...

Well, yeah. Lots of stuff.

 

[happyninja42]

Recently played Homeworld again, but had to stop due to some really game breaking bugs, due to playing it on a newer system.

I really wanted to play Homeworld Cataclysm, but had a critical failure there and unable to resolve it easily. I've got a shortcut to a page giving instructions on how to tweak my settings, and maybe that will work. We'll see.

 

[TheMigrantSoldier]

Medieval 2: Total War. Trying out the Stainless Steel mod for the first time and I haven't played Denmark before. Very good first impressions. Very Hard is now actually very hard! But the battle AI still makes mind-boggling mistakes occasionally. I also play Shogun 2 from time to time.

Also, Pokemon Silver on my old GBA. I'll finish the job my 11-year-old self wouldn't.

 

[Fox12]

I revisited FF7 recently, now that my sister is old enough to appreciate the story. Parts of it hold up remarkable well, and I still don't get the hate. I forgot how great the game was. Now that I know what in doing, though, the game has become quite easy. Other aspects of the game don't quite hold up, though, because I idealized it so much when I was younger. It's sad to see that your sacred cow has some wrinkles. It's still my favorite game with my favorite villain, but we can certainly do better. On another note, SH 2 is even better than I remember, so it moves up in the rankings.