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DevourerOfTime

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Memory Wipe - Games I Wish I Could Experience Fresh Again

It's the not-too-distant future. A new technology has been developed that allows you to selectively wipe certain memories from your mind. People use it to erase bad relationships, traumatizing events, and the like from their minds. Some use it for far stupider, less complex reasons: to experience a beloved piece of entertainment again with fresh eyes. A favourite video game, perhaps?

Okay, it's a stupid setup, but a nice hypothetical to think about. If you could play a game again for the first time, what would it be? What aspects of the game make it so special the first time you play it? And if you played it again at that time in your life, would it hold up? Or would the problems in the game that you were so eager to overlook the first time through end up ruining your experience?

These are mostly safe choices based on my tastes, but they're the best 25 games that I can think of.

Edit: Spelling & Grammar.

List items

  • This is the perfect game for this list. 999 has an excellent story that immediately clicked with me and kept me engaged until the very end. It also had fantastic adventure game style puzzles, a genre near and dear to my heart. The problem with both of these things is that once you've opened the box, you can't really close it again. Once you know the solution to a puzzle or the twists and turns of a story, going back to it just won't be satisfying. Which is why everyone should play 999 before Virtue's Last Reward (though obviously I would love to go back and experience VLR fresh again too).

  • I tried to play Bastion again, but it's just way too easy to ignore a lot of what made this game so special. You know how to play the game, what gameplay elements will be added as you progress. You'll never go through the experimentation with each new weapon and special you pick up, fiddling around with the idols to get the perfect difficulty, or adapting to the constantly improving qualities of your chosen arsenal.

    What's worse is that you're no longer hanging on every word of the fantastic narration as it just fades into the background once you've played through the game.

  • This is the only game that would require me to leave a note behind, Momento style. Except instead of "Don't believe his lies" it would be "4 player co-op only, subtitles off, voice volume set to 0, Skip all text and cutscenes." Most of the reason I didn't enjoy this game as much as the original is that the game lulled me into thinking it would be an okay single player experience and that the story was so insultingly terrible that it left a sour taste in my mouth whenever I had to listen to a line of dialogue.

    I tried playing it again after beating it, doing everything in my power not to absorb any of the story and only play the game multiplayer, and I had a lot of fun with the title. But I could never let go of that initial playthrough.

  • Just a badass action platformer with a ton of little secrets to uncover, like how to unlock the hidden ending and how to unlock the other guns. It'd just be great to play this game again without knowing it like the back of my hand.

  • Speaking of knowing a game like the back of my hand, I've lost track of how many times I have played through Chrono Trigger. Hell, I've played through it so many times I can't even remember when I first played the game. It almost feels like I've never had a fresh look at this game as I've just been playing it consistently since early childhood.

  • Just an incredible JRPG. The way it progresses through the Hero's life is sort of contrived, as you skip decades at seemingly random intervals, but not knowing the mechanics driving the story make the experience better going in. It's a fantastic JRPG with the solid Dragon Quest foundation and a story that later entrants still haven't matched.

  • Yes, I know Danganronpa 2 is coming out in English soon enough so I'm not quite through with the high school deathmatch yet, but you kind of know the rules at this point. Sure, the game will no doubt play around with that, but going into Hope's Peak Academy for the first time left this cloud of dread hanging over you as you progressed. The game does an excellent job in just training you to believe that anything could happen at any moment. Anyone could be murdered. Anyone could be a murderer. Anything could happen. Experiencing that dread again, that nagging feeling that you don't really want to look around that corner but you're going to be forced to eventually, is just as stressful as it is rewarding.

  • Fire Emblem: Awakening was the best recieved and most popular entrant in the series in no small part due to the concessions the game made to ease players into the experience. The game doesn't exactly hold your hand, but it never puts you in a position where you can't complete the game (unless you're playing on Lunatic).

    Fire Emblem 7 doesn't work like that. Fire Emblem 7 is a straight shot from start to finish, with no option to choose the content you're tackling next (unless you fulfill the requirements to divert your route temporarily into one of the few very challenging optional chapters). That means that if your archer that you've been training since the beginning takes a deadly critical blow to the face, you have no way of getting that experience back. Experience is a limited resource that you must consciously divvy up between your units effectively. Have one unit hog all the glory in battle and the rest of your team will fall behind. Switch units from chapter to chapter too often and your entire army will suffer.

    Sure, there are strategies to game the system so you can get way more experience than you should (arenas come to mind), but the natural progression of the game makes every turn, every attack, every decision, every experience point have an impact on your ability to tackle the harder and harder challenges that await you.

    When I first played this game, I got to the final chapter and stopped. The poor choices I made 3, 5, 10 hours prior had caught up to me at the very end. The final battle was too much, but it made me think about my choices throughout the entire game. Which characters were under developed? Which characters had I relied on too heavily? Was I even using the right team? What could I have done better?

    A lesser game would have made this experience feel like a 30 hour waste of time, but Fire Emblem made it a fascinating opportunity to analyze my play, plan a strategy for the next run, and make the most of my upcoming opportunities. It was one of the most rewarding experiences I've had in games.

    Sure, it's a risk that I would be too impatient to go through with that if this little thought experiment were to occur, but I think it would be worth it.

  • Again, much like 999, this is a perfect example for this list. A narrative of mystery, twists, and turns wrapped around inventive puzzles that are full of "Aha!" moments of discovery.

    All of that lose its potency on a second playthrough.

  • I played Grim Fandango well over a decade after it came out, yet I was still enamored by its atmosphere and setting. With the HD remake coming out soon that fixes the tank control and blurry, outdated graphics, I feel hopping into the Land of the Dead fresh with this new upcoming version would have smoothed over a lot of the rougher parts of the game.

  • "That's the old passage to Ravenholm. We don't go there anymore."

    I hate horror. I absolutely cannot stand horror. But when Gordon Freeman steps into Ravenholm, I still felt compelled to press on. Sure, it's not THAT scary, but it was more than enough for me to take several hours to just complete that part of the game. But still I pressed on. The feeling I got when I finally exited that godforsaken place was pure elation and accomplishment.

    Half-Life 2 is a fantastic game and I would love to play the rest of it fresh again, including Episode 1 and 2, but having that feeling of accomplishment again when I finish Ravenholm, instead of just running through it like a maniac like I do now, would be the highlight.

  • When you're making your way down the slide and your jaw just hangs there and you just look like a stupid idiot because you are so mystified by the majesty happening in front of you. That's what I'd like back.

  • Again, like Dragon Quest V, just a solid all around experience in one of my favourite genres.

    Although, if I had to pick a moment from the game that I would love to see fresh again, it would be the ending. It hit me like a goddamn truck. Like, the type of ending where all you want to do for the rest of the day is stare at the ceiling.

  • There simply hasn't been anything like it since. The time mechanic is so unique, so satisfying. I would love to discover ways to sneak in the time to get all the masks, beat all the temples, grab all the faeries, etc. etc. just in time before the moon smashes into the planet.

  • Metroid Prime was one of the first games I ever played that actually felt like it took place on a living, breathing world. There was just something about scanning the world around you, learning about the flora and fauna surrounding you (and, sometimes, attacking you). It felt like you were exploring a game world that had been discovered, not constructed by developers.

    Subsequent playthroughs of the game gloss over that wonderment, as you're laser focused on the task at hand and barely pay the grass you're walking through or the rock formation above you any notice. Give me back that sense of awe and wonder, goddamnit!

  • Another safe choice. Mother 3 is an excellent JPRG, with an entertaining battle system, fantastic story, and beautifully weird art style. What's not to love?

  • So here's a game that is a little different then the rest of the list: I really don't like Thousand-Year Door. It's not because I hate Paper Mario. I absolutely loved the original. But it's one of those times that your excitement ends up being the source of your disappointment. I felt it didn't do the original justice... or at least my vision of a sequel to the original justice. In reality, no game could have lived up to those expectations.

    So I would love to experience it again without that year of hype beforehand putting the game on a pedestal. I would love to just appreciate it for what it is, instead of being constantly disappointed by it.

    Wish I could say the same thing with the later two Paper Mario games, but Super Paper Mario just was just flat out a bad direction for the series and Sticker Star was just flat out bad.

  • Once again, Visual Novels are perfect for this list. I would love to play every single Ace Attorney game again with no knowledge of why lay ahead, even the pretty lackluster Edgeworth games. The delightful twists in every case kept me hooked for a good two week sprint through the entire series (at least every game that was released in English in 2010).

    But if there was one Ace Attorney game I would love to see fresh, it would be the highlight of the series: Trials and Tribulations. The game does an absolute perfect job of keeping you guessing until the very end and creating a satisfying conclusion to not just the final case, but the entire original trilogy.

  • Portal seems so mundane now. It exploded in popularity and now everything about it has been talked to death. It's hard to believe how special it was when it first was released. The excellent performance behind bringing GLaDOS to life. The time you stumbled upon the world beyond the test chambers. The perfectly paced tutorial of the game mechanics so the second half could be as natural as breathing. The constant sense of discovery. Hell, even the coolness factor of first stepping through a portal or shooting one of your own.

    Portal is just an easy title to take for granted and I'd love to experience it again without the frenzy around it clouding its appeal.

  • I hate open world games. And looking at Saints Row: The Third for the first time, I was just reminded of every other open world crime game out there. How much Grand Theft Auto bored me to tears. How much Crackdown's super powers didn't make up for the unappealing base gameplay. How Infamous somehow made zapping people with lighting so routine and generic.

    Saints Row: The Third does an excellent job of taking those expectations and experiences and turning them on their head. It's the open world game for people who abhor open world games. It was a game that I was forced to start that quickly turned into a game I had to force myself to stop playing.

    And it didn't overstay it's welcome. It introduced a ton of fun mission variety, had amazing and unique story missions, and rolled the credits before you got bored of Steelport. People might complain that 30 hours of gameplay is a bad value as compared to the hundreds of hours in games like Grand Theft Auto IV, but I'd rather have a game that was engaging from start to finish than a game I can't stand for longer than an hour.

    Saints Row: The Third played with my boredom for a genre and opened my eyes to what they are capable of. It's not everyday that a single game can change your perspective like that.

  • I really just want to play my favourite game of all time again without knowing who the serial killer terrorizing Inaba is, what the deal is with your friends and party member, or even what the strategies are for the tough as nails bosses.

  • I had the wrong experience with Stanley Parable: I played the original first. The remake is such an improvement that knowing where some of the paths were going to lead, even if it was just a handful of the over a dozen endings, really dampened the experience. Would love to have played this game without having that knowledge going in.

  • Great mechanics. Great story. Great characters. Great experience. Another simple entrant on the list.

  • Another JRPG.

    Another fantastic set of characters.

    Another unique battle system.

    Another story with a ton of twists and turns.

    Another obvious answer.

  • Damn you, Dan Ryckert.

    You make me want to play WoW again.

    But not resubscribe and hop on my 85 Elemental Shaman and explore the latest expansion. I want to play WoW like I did 9 years ago. I want to pop into the game world and have no idea what I'm doing, learning the ins and outs of the design of the game and having it slowly dawn on me just how big the game is, how much content there is to experience, and how much of my life is going to be consumed by this wonderful experience. I don't care if you wipe my memory and strap me in front of the original or in front of the newest expansion, I want that feeling back.
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