What are some games you find yourself frequently coming back to?
I was going to say replaying but I feel like that limits the question to games like Prey or Fallout New Vegas that have endings and games like The Sims 2 or Cities Skylines where you can play indefinitely end up excluded.
I'm not really referring to games like League of Legends where you're coming back every month. More so games where you stop playing for an extended period of time.
Metal Gear Solid V (on PC with mods that greatly expand/enhance free roam, and add more side ops)
Tomba 1 and 2 (Tombi in the EU)
Chrono Trigger
Megaman Legends (love the sequel, but haven't ever completed it, life keeps getting in the way)
Castlevania Syphony of the Night
Sonic Adventure (it's trash, but fun trash, especially with mods)
Sonic Mania, Sonic 3 and Knuckles
Minecraft
Some that I haven't come back to in a while, but I'm overdue:
Ape Escape
Crash Bandicoot (1-3)
Spyro (1-3)
Digimon World 3
Any of the GBA or DS Castlevanias
Actraiser
Rayman 2
Megaman Battle Network series(3 and 4 are my favorite entries)
Dissidia Duodecim
Zone of the Enders 2
God Hand
Wipeout Pulse/Pure
Pretty much any Kirby game
Most of these games I find just plain fun. Thanks for asking, I was starting to get burned out and not finding stuff as fun, but writing this out has me hankering to revisit some old favorites again.
Binding of Isaac for sure. Been playing on and off since I was in high school and there is just so much content there and new crazy synergies to find. Across all platforms I have well over a thousand hours. Hoping I can 100% it some day!
Definitely Bioshock Infinite. It was the first Bioshock game I ever played and the story just wow'ed me, it quickly became one of my favs.
Now I just treat the whole game like a huge movie event, playing the game with my friends as we experience the story. It's just something that i would introduce anyone to, even if they din't play that many video games cuz compared to Bioshock 1 the action is a lot faster.
(Btw Bio1 is better in almost everything, love that game as well)
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, Dwarf Fortress. Highly-replayable, open-world and they keep being developed, so when you come back, there's new stuff.
Skyrim, Fallout 4. Same idea, but the modders have added a lot of content.
Some of the city-builders, like Tropico 5. I play for a while, get tired, uninstall, but tend to come back, because the game is replayable.
Chase the Sun and Nova Drift are action games that I have spent some time away from and then come back and played. Nova Drift has seen regular development.
Pinball sims. I think that one can only play so much pinball, but I find myself thinking "I'd like to play a pinball game" down the line and reinstall.
I think that most of the games have some common characteristics:
Didn't live-or-die based on their technology or graphics, because they're invariably obsolete by the time I've come back.
Need to be highly-replayable. I've played games with story, like Fallout: New Vegas but I don't really go back to play them for the story (though I'll concede that specifically Fallout: New Vegas does have multiple paths to explore). They can't be appealing because of a surprising or tense plot or a plot twist.
Often see continued development or modding, so there's some reason to go back and see what's there (though pinball would be a notable exception...you don't go back for new content).
Star Wars: The Old Republic. I don’t care about all the MMO stuff, but every time I watch or read something star-wars-related, I want to fire it up, get the one month subscription, and go on with some single-player story I need to finish.
This happens twice a year more or less.
Postal 2. The game mechanics and open-world flexibility have aged amazingly well, it's still very funny, and I love the way the game's level of violence firmly depends on the player's actions.
Plus the Postal Dude's petition to make whiney congressmen play violent video games is needed more than ever.
On Android I miss Spaghetti & Marshmallows, where you had to build towers out of said materials. That was a wonderful game with great physics but sadly only runs on very old phones.
I have no idea how I'm not bored yet. They're all just so damn satisfying to play. I went from mostly online FPS to these games after I got Prepare to Die Edition back in the day. Any given time I play a game now, there's an 80% chance it's one of these or something similar to them (like The Surge, Mortal Shell, Lies of P, etc).
Mirror's Edge, Jet set radio future (and now bomb rush cyberfunk)
The 3D Mario's (I haven't gotten around to playing galaxy 2 yet and it's eating me up inside lol)
Skyrim, Minecraft, stardew Valley
Ocarina of time and majoras mask.
Animal crossing (usually whatever latest entry, but I liked new leaf the best so far)
Lumines has become an addiction
Forza Horizon (similar to animal crossing, usually the latest entry, but surprisingly I enjoyed 1 and 4 the most. I was surprised about 4 because I didn't think I really cared too much about the location, but I liked the seasons a lot. It kept everything feeling new)
I don't game very much, all the more so as I got older, but now and then I always return to the older fire emblem games and sometimes casual games like Diner Dash.
Satisfactory, I'm hoping to get employee of the planet cup before 1.0 comes out.
Angband. I don't stick with it long, but I always come back, even though I've never killed Morgoth or the Balrog in Moria before that. Still, I enjoy it for a while and then move on again.
I have an unhealthy cycle of this with Hearts of Iron IV a WW2 grand strategy game. I'll realize the embarrassing number of hours that I've put into the game and then I'll stop playing for a while. But then one of the big mods for it will update and then I dive back in and lose a weekend and then the process repeats.
The other game I consistently come back to is Threads of Fate or Dewprism it's a PS1 action-RPG with dual protagonists where each one has their own campaign or story to play through. I guess it's nostalgia that keeps me coming back to it, but it really wasn't a favorite game growing up and I didn't beat it until years after I'd gotten it. But every few years I'll just remember it out of the blue and get the urge to play through it again.
I have over 4,000 hours across all the trackmania games. So that, I guess. Most is 2,000 in United followed by a couple hundred in all the rest. 1,000 in trackmania 2020
Its just such a nice looking game with no real skill curve once you know not to go running through the bush hoping to see a dear, it takes patience.
On a hot day, put the ac on a nice cup of coffee and go walking through the bushlands looking at points of interest and maybe shoot me a dear all without sweating like a pig like i do where i live.
That game is the reason im moving south, im so tired of trying tondo anything and dying from the heat.
Neverwinter Nights (the first one) and Heroes of Might and Magic (3 and 4). They're just so comfortable for me to play so I just start them up when I'm to stressed out to play anything new.
Paper Mario for the N64 and Super Mario World for the SNES. I think it's because I found them both at the perfect point in my childhood where they were the first games in their genres I managed to beat.
I had a blast finding every single exit and bonus stage in SMW, and Paper Mario was the first RPG that didn't make my eyes glaze over (including Super Mario RPG). Plus the characters and aesthetics are still so charming, the whole game gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.
Star Citizen, I like to poke my head in every few patches to see how things have progressed. I gotta say, despite what a lot of the naysayers claim, it has become quite a fun game and their development has only sped up since I first started playing. Still, a couple months hiatus every once and a while is worth it.
Fallout 4, I get that this is one of the more controversial choices but while the main storyline was super weak the world design was phenomenal. I love just wandering through the Boston area wastelands uncovering random things and fighting ghouls and bandits.