2021: year of the replay

Hi all. I found myself in an odd place this year where I seemed to have the time to replay (or in some cases play for the first time) a bunch of older stuff, including games that I abandoned before finishing.

It started in January when I decided to replay Persona 5, though the first time with the Royal version. I then, for some godforsaken reason loaded up and finished Mass Effect: Andromeda. After that, I went back to Undertale, Pillars of Eternity 2, Subnautica (and Subnautica 2, but that was new), Pathologic 2, Shovel Knight, Cyberpunk 2077 and I’m currently early in a replay of Dragon Age Inquisition. I also touched but didn’t continue a ton of others like Butnout Paradise, Astroneer, Fallout 3 New Vegas and 4, Enter the Gungeon, Ys books I & II, Children of Morta and Breath of the Wild.

There were a decent amount of new games I played and finished too, but there was a shocking amount of older games played and actually finished in my diet this year, both good and bad (for example, Andromeda remains not great but not as bad as I remembered, Ys book I & II better than I remembered).

Did others find the last year (or two) drawing them to older stuff they either loved or bounced off of before?

I think i can count the number of "new" games i've played in the last 2 years on one hand, last year i joked about not playing anything new but this year's been pretty much the same.
This year i've been doing a lot of emulating old games i never had, i played through Quake for the first time, i've got Unreal installed ready to go for comparison but i'm currently replaying GTA3 (not definitive), it's making me want to replay GTA1 and play GTA2 for the first time, though i did play it multiplayer over LAN back in the day.
Some other quick mentions, Ninja Gaiden, Twin Snakes, MGS2, Max Payne, both the Gamecube Star Fox games, Zool, RE5 and 6, RTCW, Urban Chaos, NFS Hot Pursuit, Red Faction, talking about it is actually making me feel a lot better, i am actually still playing a lot of games, just nothing relevant :P.

I've got a friend who really wants me to play Red Dead Redemption 2, i loved the first one back on 360, but i'm really intimidated at the moment, it's way easier to just dive into something old and comfortable.

I have far too many games that I bought on sale on the Switch and haven't gotten to, so I've made a conscious effort to try and finish those before buying any new ones. It's finding the time that's been the hardest part. I'm teaching 30 periods a week this year thanks to the foreign teacher shortage in China, and when I get home I have a cat and a girlfriend to pay attention to.

Still, I've managed to check a few off the list. Shiren the Wanderer, Hades, The Mummy Demastered, Dragon Quest XI, and River City Girls all got a lot of attention this year. I also finally went back and finished my Black Eagle playthrough of Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

I've also been occasionally going back to Into The Breach and Invisible, Inc., two of the best games ever made.

I also need to get back to Salt and Sanctuary. It's one of my favorite games of all time that I haven't completed, to my eternal shame.

Yea, especially once I got a PS5 in September. I'm finally getting to the Ultimate Edition of Control (ray tracing - wow!) and immediately re-enamored by its atmosphere and sound design. I also finally decided to give Dishonored/Arkane Studios in general a shot in earnest due to a massive sale on all their definitive editions running up to Deathloop. I didn't find myself fully enamored with the first Dishonored and kind of fell off that project, but I do keep glancing back at it.

Last year I wound up playing a ton of Japanese-language games which ultimately lead to me completing Yakuza Kiwami and Zero as well as Nier: Automata, followed by Kiwami 2 this year and now tentatively eyeing bundle deals for Yakuza 3-5 (I already own Song of Life...) as well as the original Judgement. Yikes!

Last summer I also enjoyed Full Throttle Remastered and Burnout Paradise as some comfort food, grabbed Detroit from PS+ and had a predictably rollercoastery experience with a David Cage game once again, cracked open Vampyr for the same reasons and was shocked at how into that world I was even if it didn't fully come together in the gameplay.

Lastly, back to this year, Final Fantasy XV was my first Instant Game Collection game I cashed in from the PS4 on PS5 vault, but after a few hours I'm not sure I'll keep going. Just kind of dull and a lot all at the same time. Alternately, I've been really, really enjoying coming back to Ghost of Tsushima after a year and a half and trying to make an honest go of things on Lethal+ New Game+ while enjoying all the new touches for PS5 and eager to see the new area in the DLC. I played most of the second half of that game after Lethal had been released and really loved it, but Lethal+ without ramping up from Medium to Hard over half of the game is a real son of a bitch. I love it, this is my Sekiro (albeit the boss encounters still mostly stink, those duels are so damn cool!).

Bizarrely, despite being built specifically for PS5 it's still Red Dead Redemption II that really makes this console sing even if it's basically just running the PS4 version. A truly steady framerate, honestly amazing load times compared to the base console and true, functional HDR plus actually seeing this game in 4K (I also upgraded my TV) I'm just astounded. I really thought I was just gonna put a few pointless hours into Red Dead Online to, y'know, look at all of that, but no, I'm just lounging in Chapter 2 of the story trying to experience every single diagetic detail and complete every challenge I can before moving into Chapter 3 and really getting the ball rolling.

Turns out, you were always supposed to play this game like it was a year-long experience and a lot of people really hurt it for themselves by trying to beat it before Game of the Year conversations. It's truly bonkers how much is stuffed into this game for the patient, sim-type cowboy.

sorta yes. i've only played a handful of new releases this yr cause frankly very little honestly appealed to me. so while not nessessarily a replaying old games yr for me its definately been a try n clean some of my backlog of older games year. of the 31 or so games i beat this yr so far only 7? of them were new, and a few of them i counted were games old games inside of new games ( vf5s and alex kidd instead of lost judgement for example)

beaten games aside i started a handful of new releases games but most were indie games that i haven't gotten around to do more than trying out too.

For me 2021 was YEAR OF THE GAMEPASS. I'm pretty sure i've had gamepass for a while but i never really engaged with it because i only played a $1 for it as part of an upgrade. I own and have access enough to games that i dont need gamepass. Queuing up a download that fails while you're at work licking your chops is too frustraing. No i'm not getting spare harddrives. My gamepass just lapsed and im more interested in spending the $60 year membership fee on some of the just announced backwards compatible games like Max Payne, Max Payne 2, and Max Payne 3. Since Halo Infinite is free-to-play I really dont need to subscribe since tlat will be my go to shooter if i want some online competition, which i dont.

I guess the game coverage landscape was very saturated with gamepass news since they couldn't count on people caring since they couldn't get ahold of new consoles. This might be the first year that games that came out in years past got the top of the fold front page for gaming sites in a equal or greater manner than contemporary games. Gamepass helped tremendously with that. Outside of Halo the release calendar for now until the end of the year is vague for me for Xbox, PS, and Switch. Normally i'd be able to name 4 to 5 games coming. Console shortages have caused those without new consoles to at first pretend to not care and evolve into actually not caring about what is coming out.

I've got about 30+ games that I've finished on my list of games for 2021, so it's mostly new games for me. I almost never replay games though. I did finish a handful of backlog stuff. Jedi: Fallen Order, Obra Dinn, A Short Hike, Downwell to name a few.