Everyone remembers the first time they played a really good video game. The constant surprises of Half-Life, or the drama of Final Fantasy VI, or the stress and catharsis of Far Cry 2. As good as those games were the first time around, they’d almost certainly be better the second. Or the third. Or the fourth.
I love to replay games. It’s something my colleagues occasionally give me crap for. They worry I’m sacrificing time I could otherwise spend on new games re-experiencing old ones. I do play games for a living, so I always try to maintain a healthy mix of new ones in my rotation. But I’m almost always replaying something.
In fact, I generally enjoy replying the older games more than breaking in the new ones. At the moment, I’m replaying Wolfenstein: The New Order and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I’m still regularly going back to a New Game+ playthrough of Persona 4 Golden, and I’m in the middle of my third time through The Witcher 3. I have a perpetual game of Half-Life 2 that doesn’t so much end as it does endlessly refresh and repeat.