Games you can't quit

Anybody else out there have those games that you keep coming back to over the years? XCOM: Enemy Within is my latest relapse, but I have several that just pop back into my rotation time and again, including: Dark Souls, Fallout/Elder Scrolls games, Dragon Age: Origins, and Minecraft.

Whenever a new WoW expansion launches, I'll dive in deep for about 2 months, and I'll probably continue to do this until that thing is finally dead. I've done this since Cataclysm; WotLK was the last expansion to hold my interest enough to keep the sub going for its entirety.

I think I've spent at least 200-300 hours playing WWE2K14. :(

Monster Hunter 4U, i keep coming back even if i hit a wall. League of Legends, I try to quit but somehow I end up with another thousand hours instead.

NBA 2K if you can count that as a game for me. I buy it every year but spend a ton of time playing it all year. I played more than 300 hours of NBA 2K 15. At 131 for 2K16 right now.

There's definitely games I love so much I can't help but beat them again every 1-4 years, or at the very least dip my toes into them for a couple hours to reacquaint myself.

• Dark Souls (on my 4th playthrough)
• Ocarina of Time (beaten 5 or 6 times)
• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (beaten 3 or 4 times)
• Sly Cooper 1-3 (Probably 3 times for 1st game, upwards of 7 for the sequels)
• Oblivion (Hundreds of hours. Beat the four guild quest-lines and Shivering Isles at least a dozen times on different characters)
• Kotor 1 & 2 (6 or 7 times each)
• Outland (2.5 times so far)
• Mirror's Edge (10-15 times)
• World of Goo (4 or 5)
• Bastion
• Super Mario World (I've never actually beaten this game, but I've played the first two thirds of it a lot)
• Super Castlevania IV
• Freespace 2
• Bully

Binding of Isaac: Rebirth/Afterbirth. I've already got 1001%, but I'm still playing (and not just the daily challenges). Must...keep...Isaacing...

Animal Crossing New Leaf.

Rocket League - although that game is still fairly young; I wonder if I'll come back to it years from now.

Dark Souls - at this point I can't tell anymore how many characters I've created in both the PS3 and PC versions of this game, but just yesterday "Friend Lee" arrived at Firelink Shrine to start his magical journey.

Spelunky - daily challenges are a pretty clever feature, I must say.

Skyrim - mods and more mods.

Die-ah-blow (Diablo) 3

Persona 4, beat and/or watch the ER two to three times a year since 2012. Outside of Rock Band 2, its the game I've spent the most amount of time.

Borderlands 2. I put it down for a few months, see some tiny update, and think I need o pbsess over it all over again.

Resident Evil 4 about 16 times

MGS4 13 times when it came out, twice more since then.

Vice City at least 12 times

Fight night Champion, still play it semi regularly after the nearly 5 years it's been.

Dota 2. :(

WoW's still the only game (sadly) that I've played every year since 2006. Don't think there has been any other games in my relatively recent memory.

Spelunky and Binding of Isaac.

Spelunky. Took like 6 months away after beating Yama last year, but I can't not play a daily challenge. Those jerks on the leaderboards can't get a free win on me, dammit.

Hmmmm.....

Maybe Persona 4/Persona 4 Golden? It's probably the game I've spent the most time with and I've played and revisited it a number of times on and off since 2008.

I typically only play a game two or so times, so I might put in 100 hours of Fallout 3 or something, but when I'm "done" with it, I'm truly done with it. If I do, it's replaying something like GTA IV years later, but that would only be one revisit, as opposed to 4+ playthroughs.

Previously I probably would have said Hearthstone, but thankfully I did quit it. :D

Counter-Strike in all its forms. Pretty much what it's built for, though.

I think I have a legitimate masochistic relationship with the Souls games. I love exploring the worlds in them but I have serious problems with a lot of their design philosophy: invisible meters governing important battle mechanics, enemies are made "harder" by getting more health, "phone ringing? Tough shit. Pausing's for casuals" etc. That said, I can't stop myself from playing them top to bottom - I platinumed Bloodborne for crying out loud.

As for games I actually love, Resident Evil 2, 3 and 4; the No More Heroes series; the MGS series; Yakuza 3 and 4 and Zelda are the mainstays. I don't have any kind of schedule like some who play X game once a year, but Christmas usually has me feeling nostalgic and yearning for some old classics for whatever reason.

I'll always go back to WoW for a couple months after new expansions, and every so often I get the urge to just level a Diablo 3 character all the way through.

I always find myself going back to Dead Space 2 even though I've beaten it multiple times already.

Final Fantasy Tactics

Resident Evil 4

Dark Souls

Castlevania Symphony of the Night

Demon Souls and Dark Souls 1 and 2.

FF14 keeps pulling me back again and again...I've re-subbed a couple times now.

Skyrim and Oblivion and Morrowind were each more than 3 year long obsessions for me. I still mess around with them each every couple months (instant nostalgia and relaxation when I do)

Dark Souls, Minecraft, Elder Scrolls and Guild Wars 2

KOTOR, Mass Effect trilogy and Jade Empire. Played all those a handfull of times each and will probably continue to do so.

Knights of the Old Republic, Marvel Heroes and my love Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time

I'll have bursts of being into Minecraft like crazy, then fade, then back in again.
I'm currently on another run of Medieval 2 Total War.
Mount and Blade has taken years from me.
Fallout 3/NV I always find room for (with mods, I play Vanilla once then never touch again, mods or go home)
And ActRaiser gets at least one playthrough a year.

How about when you were a kid?

I have over 3000 hours in FFXI, which Steam hasn't kept track of because I started running FFXI through third-party software for the sake of plug-ins.

I've also played MGS3 probably close to 100 times now.

Ufc games I put 125 hours into EA UFC the most on current gen.

Musou games...Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors, One Piece Pirate Warriors, Hyrule Warriors. Man, I can't get enough of those things.

@artisanbreads: Yep! almost 400 hours in NBA 2K15, but any time i'm playing 2K i'm doing something else at the same time like watching TV/videos.

Pretty much the exact same for me man. Perfect for that kind of thing.

1200 hours of dota 2. Still terrible at it.

@beachthunder: Damn man that's impressive. I've been getting into that deep recently. Fallout 4 is sitting there not being played meanwhile I'm trying to bang out Hush runs and slowly farming the greed machine.

Per the question - there are things I go in and out with, but there are a lot of games I play for years. TF2, Dota, CS, Dark Souls, WoW, Mario 64, New Vegas, Minecraft. Typical things.

I play through Zelda LttP at least once a year but it's only a few hours really. I suppose it would be Minecraft. I come back to it maybe once or twice a year for a few weeks at a time, run through the tech trees on a few mods, then burn out and move on.

I don't know. Max Payne 2, Half Life? I play those game pretty regularly.

Currently logged 709 hours into Civ V. I can't see myself stop playing this until they release the next one.

Halo C.E. I've been playing consistently since 2002

Geometry Wars since launch, as much as I played of 2 and 3 I always relish going back to 1 for whatever reason.

Bioshock I replay every few years

The Sims 3. I have hundreds and hundreds of hours logged in that

The Elder Scrolls games, generally Morrowind or Skyrim, though I'll give Oblivion some love occasionally. Mods are the best.

Star Wars the Old Republic, I think this may also be the game I've given the most money to over the years. I love it even more since they have made it easier to access the content I actually want to play.

Musou games, this one is the most recent, there's something about it that gives me simple gratification and puts my mind at ease. They also can be far more charming than most seem to give them credit for.

I liked to read this. Makes me feel slightly more normal. :) Enjoy the games you love, for however long you want.

Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door, Wind Waker, Luigi's Mansion, Insurgency, Skyrim, Advanced Wars 2, Metroid: Fusion and my brother and I get the urge to get into WoW again every few months but we typically go for either classic or BC on some private server... That's where all of our memories are. Oh, Magicka too, and Super Hexagon, and Minecraft. Way more games than I thought!

Sure. There are games I revisit whenever I get the urge, sometimes just for a couple hours & other times it'll be all I play for a week or so - Sims 3, TES Oblivion & Skyrim, Digimon World, Zoo Tycoon 2, Pokemon Pinball & Burnout Takedown are the usual suspects

I also enjoy replaying my favourites start to finish, the ones I've done this most often with are the Dragon Age series, Mass Effect series, Bully & the original Spyro trilogy