There are some games that you know you will remember for a long time almost as soon as you start them, like Grand Theft Auto Vice City, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Driver: San Francisco, and Batman: Arkham Asylum. Then there are games that are completely disposable. I know I finished Prey, Dead to Rights: Retribution, and Dark Void*, but they left almost no impression, in fact I had to look at my achievements to even pull those examples out.
Then there are the games that seem like they'll fall into category 2 but stick with you for some reason. For me these are often open world games. I played the first Just Cause out of curiosity many years after its release, and though it played like a PS2 game ported up to the 360, for some reason the lame cinematics, wonky controls, and gorgeous water effects created an experience that has me thinking back on it from time to time with a lot of fondness. I have similar feelings about Prototype, which is inferior in almost every way to Infamous, but stuck with me much longer despite the incomprehensible story and lack of polish. Brutal Legend had a weird and only semi-functional RTS combat system, but an incredibly memorable world and cast of characters that I desperately wish I could return to. That's not to say that every open world game grabs me in this way or that it's only open-world games (Spider Man: Shattered Dimensions is somewhat mediocre but also very memorable) but it's always interesting when upon finishing a game I'm somewhat lukewarm to it but my mind keeps returning to it and I find myself thinking about well after completion.
Do other people have these experiences? With what kinds of games?
*Dark Void is kind of an exception because the ending is so out of nowhere and leaves so many loose threads that I was left holding my controller and legitimately wondering whether I had somehow skipped three or four levels by some weird bug. I do remember that about it.
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