Games that you're still surprised you find new things in.

So, when the topic of "Favorite game of all time" comes up I have a pretty quick answer to that. Mine is Ninja Gaiden Black but I'll settle for Sigma as well either version is just fine with me. Anyways, I must have played this game between the Ninja Gaiden Vanilla, Black, Sigma and now Sigma+ on vita at least 20 times or better and tonight I found something that I never realized in every single one of those playthroughs.

When you're in Muramasa's weapon shop in Tairon's Clock Tower plaza you can actually swing your weapon and hit him and he will drop essence which in this game works as currency. If you continually hit him he will die and you'll get a game over. All those playthroughs and I never found this. I'm sitting here rather delighted over this stupid little Easter egg that a game that I've played THIS much still had a few little secrets to show me.

So my question to you guys is have you ever been surprised by or found things in some of your favorite games years later that you never knew were in the game?

Ya, I find stuff like that in games I like all the time. Some of the best games ever made have this quality to them.

The simple answer for me, because it's current, is all the Souls games. If you don't spoil yourself to much there's always something new to find in those games.

Less recent, things like the Silent Hill series was/is always fun to go back to because you figure new things out about the lore and everything. Like the souls games, there is so much left up to interpretation that it never gets old talking about a lot of that stuff.

The half life games- especially Half Life 2- is always fun to go back to just in the sense of exploration. Mechanically it will always be the same game but if you go back and play it just to explore the world you may still find some things you missed.

Games like Fallout (not just the new ones, but the old ones too) and the Elder Scrolls games are some of the best for this just because they have big sprawling worlds. There is often new things to find in all of them, pick your favorite, and so they are endlessly appealing on a lot of levels- but especially because you can always find something new every time you play.

There's a lot of other games I could think of but this is a good sampling I guess. It's one of the best qualities to a great game if you can go back to it and find something new even after several years.

I didn't find out until my 10th-ish playthrough of Mass Effect that you can get Administrator Anoleis and Gianna Parasini to kill each other if you go talk to the administrator after Parasini reveals her true identity to you.

There's a few side-stories in Mass Effect 3 that only reveal themselves to you if you pay attention to several different conversations in the Citadel. For example, the girl that the Asari soldier with PTSD in Huerta Memorial talks about is Joker's sister. This can be inferred by overheard dialogue with the soldier herself, overheard dialogue with two hospital workers in the Presidium Commons, and of course a conversation with Joker himself near the end of the game.

I played Mass Effect 2 last year after getting the trilogy for the PS3. I had played the game dozens of times on the 360 and I thought I did everything...but I never knew you could endorse shops and get the famous (never realized it I guess) "I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favorite shop on the Citadel." I don't know how I missed it. Confirmed how awesome 2 is.

Has to be Morrowind or Deus Ex. Those games are just full of madness.

Chrono Trigger. I've played it dozens of times since it came out, but I still find little things. For example, I just learned this week that you can collect up to 13 cats in your home. They're even different colors!

Just crazy that after all these years it still has stuff like that.

RE4!!!!

I play through it my 13th time and still find new things! It's nuts!

@viciousbearmauling:

Came here to say this. Even if it was slight stuff, an herb here or some ammo there, that game took many, many playthroughs for me to learn about it as much as I eventually did.

Fallout (3, NV) and Skyrim had this effect on me too. Filling up the world with tons of crap and letting Bethesda's engine break the shit out of itself lead me to plenty of amusing "How the hell did this get here?" moments.

Every Metal Gear game. I find something new about those games, not only by reaplying, but just by talking about them. EVERY TIME.

When I was replaying Shadow of the Colossus (the HD version) I was surprised to find that you could eat lizards and apples that you shot with your bow. I had completely missed that when I played the PS2 game.

Hmmm, I'm not really sure. I've been replaying the old Final Fantasy games recently and finding a bunch of new stuff, but I never really bothered doing the side quests my first time through so that's why.

I'll 3rd RE4. There's tons of great little secrets in that game, just try shooting the lake a few times before the Del Lago boss fight. I was trying to shoot a fish and it nearly gave me a heart attack.

In Silent Hill: Downpour I found something new in every playthrough, surprising me. But I screwed up: I used a faq in the last playthrough so now I've seen most of the content losing interest. :(

@tobbrobb said:

Yes. MGS games are always absolutely packed with incidental little things that are easy to miss, especially codec calls. I remember finding it really funny when Naomi scolded me for killing crows on the lift before the Raven boss, and also for killing the rats in the furnace, over and over again during the original MGS.

I watch Did You Know? Gaming on Youtube alot, they're really cool actually, always find out something you hadn't heard about before. This is not a plug.... Honest...

I've played Halo 1 what feels like 100 times and there is always new marine dialogue in each playthrough. That thing is jam packed with speech.

This was actually the thing that drew me to MGS in the first place. Before I ever played an MGS game I read a guide for MGS3 in a magazine that laid out the crazy stuff you could see and do in that game. I was like "Wow this game is just filled with bizarre little things I gotta check it out!". That aspect of those games always amazes me.

MGS3 in particular is extremely dense in all sorts of weird mechanics, particularly related to the food & hunting system. One of the most impressive I find is how you can choose to blow up food storage and ammunition sheds, which will then change the guards AI patterns. The lack of food will thusly make guards more receptive to any rotten food you throw their way, and the now limited ammunition will force them to be more conservative with their ammo and won't shoot at you as often. And of course, everything to do with The End boss battle is incredible. Some truly inventive stuff in there, and regardless of what anyone may think of the series, nobody can't fault them for their attention to detail.

And can you imagine that amount of crazy in an open-world setting?? Phantom Pain is certainly going to have a lot to live up to...

Because the codec is entirely optional in Metal Gear Rising there's a load of Metal Gear universe info that I didn't catch in my first time playing it.

@yummylee: MGS 3 is one of my favorite games of all time in large part because how it in many ways feels like the point where Kojimas ridiculous detail really came together the best. Love that game to death.

@flstyle The codecs in Rising aren't that amazing. There is some entertaining stuff in there, but overall you didn't really miss much compared to some of the older games. And I think stopping for some chatter really breaks the ridiculous pace of the game. That thing was made to GO GO GO.

I enjoyed hearing from Sunny about Otacon since MGS4, especially how she says he meets women easily enough, but never gets too close to them. I thought it was interesting because we know that it's because that every time he gets close to a girl, reuniting with his sister or falling in love, they (or his dad in that one case with his step-mother) have a habit of dying. Sunny doesn't seem to realise it though. Thought it was a clever touch.

Gotta go with Deus Ex. Such an expansive, detailed world with little details you find every playthrough.

Definitely New Vegas or Skyrim. I just popped in New Vegas a few days ago and almost immediately discovered a new quest near the deathclaws in the quarry.

Murdered: Soul Suspect prompted me to look around the Ghost Trick wikia.

Ghost Trick spoilers:

:D

I am always finding spots in The Last of Us that I missed my first couple play-throughs. Also I always find new interesting splicer dialogue or random bits of the environment each time I play the original Bioshock.

This!