Which game would you like to erase from your brain, just to experience it once again completely anew, and why?

[STiFU 766]

As the title says! I am just curious. The answer doesn't necessarily have to be your all-time favorite game, because I would argue that some games even get better after the first playthrough. Obviously, all answers without major spoilers, please.

So for me, it would be the Outer Wilds and the Splinter Cell Series.

Outer Wilds, because it is an unbelievable intense experience to explore the physically simulated cold outer space and unravel the secret about that innovative 22-minute supernova timeloop that leads to some very interesting gameplay ideas. Sadly, it will never be the same as in the first playthrough, so this ist definitely my 1st place in this category. I learned about this game on this very forum and after Marc Brown (Game Maker's Toolkit) explained in one of his videos how this game works, I just tried it eventhough I thought that these types of games were not my cup of tea.

And I say the Splinter Cell series, because there is just nothing like it and I am hungry for techy espionage stealth thrillers.  

[irg 1]

i often spoil myself on game stories, not always intentionally either, so one game that's 90% story i'd like to go through fresh again is VA-11 Hall-A. i still get a lot of enjoyment and emotion out of it on replays for sure, but it would be nice to not have known the slight turns it takes further in. some other game stories i'd wanna redo unspoiled would be NieR and the Trails in the Sky trilogy.

for gameplay, Call of Juarez Gunslinger comes to mind. i had picked it up on a whim from pure curiosity and was incredibly pleased by it. very fun and quick shooter that still has a simple skill tree for some sense of progression. one time i had actually tried started a clean new game only to find it still saved all the secrets i had found, which gave me a dozen or so skill points to immediately spend anyway. i'd really love to have the proper first experience again, especially if i had played it after the other CoJ games this time. it's such a step up.

another would be Blood, or rather, the Death Wish mod. while i think having experience with the base game was vital for my amazing time with it, i'd overall still put it higher than my first time with Blood itself. there's a lot more fun exploration and secrets that don't feel too obtuse, especially getting to the hidden levels. It was incredibly satisfying to have found every secret exit on my own in one go. enemy balance was also less punishing for a first time, with a greater focus on the spectacle of exploding dozens of undead at once, etc. Can't wait for the fourth episode for something wholly new from it.

Edited January 14 by irg

[Zerg Rush 106]

A few months ago, looking through my old CDs, I found again Dark Messiah of Might & Magic, which I played many years ago on an old PC with Windows XP and I really liked it. Later with my next PC already with Windows 7 I had quite a few compatibility problems and had to download a patch, with what worked more bad than good.
Now with Windows 10 I tried to play it again and I had the pleasant surprise that the game worked wonderfully well, without a patch as is.
It is in my opinion a game that is worthwhile, a mixture of RPG and FPS with 4 alternative endings.

(Also ropearrows in the equipment and stealth elements in the game, nasty spiders too)

Edited January 14 by Zerg Rush

[Xolvix 62]

Probably the original Deus Ex (wow what a surprise, see avatar/sig).

The good thing about the game is that it's enjoyable enough to replay on its own given the variety of playstyles as well as just finding new things here and there, plus the GMDX mod gave the game a new lease on life since so many little things were changed and improvements were made. But you can't forget the mysteries, the surprises, the twists, and I'd love to be able to experience all that from the beginning again.

[Kurshok 67]

That's a bit of a loaded question, as I have a fear of forgetting things that I liked growing up without a reminded of them somewhere. I keep a list in my phone of all the games, movies, shows, and some songs that I always loved, as I don't want to forget them when I grow old and want to share them with any potential younger family members. But if i am assured of being able to experience all related paraphernalia of the game again, I'd love to re-experience the Original Spyro the Dragon Trilogy, especially Spyro 2, as that is the one I enjoyed the most, and is how i actually learned to read from due to the subtitles appearing as the characters enunciated their words. 

[chakkman 406]

Probably Fallout 4. Really, I don't think I spent 500 plus hours in any other single player game. It's that good.

I'm currently playing Dishonored 2 again, on Xbox One S. It's great as well, but, I still know lots of stuff from my first playthrough on PC...

Deus Ex - Yeah, good candidate as well. 

Edited January 15 by chakkman

[Zerg Rush 106]

I still remember MDK back in '97, back then it was revolutionary, a true 3D shooter with an amazing soundtrack.
It seems to me that it can still be downloaded as abandonware.

Full Walkthrough

Edited January 15 by Zerg Rush

[Anderson 335]

I used to think about this with enthusiasm. But then I saw the movie "Memento" (2000).

[MadMachine 2]

I wouldn't. Experiences are good in the context they are in. It is not possible to re-experience anything by simply deleting the memory of it, since the context would be different, you would have different experience about other games and your existence in general than you had in the past.
For example, when I was an elementary school kid I thought Golden Axe 2 to be quite awesome and in my mind I had idealized view on the game. But once I played it again years later I discovered to view it less favorably, since I started to notice things like graphic, for example. Similarly, if I would try to re-experience some old fps nowadays, it's gameplay I might find less to my liking due to wanting less linear experience, as that is what I have already experienced elsewhere.

[Zerg Rush 106]

That's how suddenly PORTAL occurs to me, because, as in many puzzle games, once it has passed, the second time is no longer a challenge.

[datiswous 11]

On 1/15/2021 at 12:40 AM, Zerg Rush said:

A few months ago, looking through my old CDs, I found again Dark Messiah of Might & Magic, which I played many years ago on an old PC with Windows XP and I really liked it.

I actually started playing this recently for the first time. I think I might not got to it before because it's an hack and slash game and also based on the suposed theme. I'm a fan of Heroes of Might and Magic (actually Heroes Chronicles) and this seemed too far off. Aparently it doesn't matter. I invested mostly in stealth abilities in combination with some magic that combines well with it (charm, fire trap). I just have been having this problematic issue that the game slows down to a slideshow over time, sometimes really fast (Orc village). I tried many fixes, but none worked (maybe because I use Linux), so now I play it less, partly also because I play more TDM a.t.m.

[datiswous 11]

On topic: System Shock 2, probably. I played that game in the wrong way. Playing it at easy difficulty level while there was no actual need for that and made some poor choices in te build.

Also Arcanum. I never finished the game at the time, but find it hard to get back to because having to replay all the stuff I did while still remembering it so clearly. I guess that's with a lot of games. I'm not sure if it would still impress me as much as it did at the time (it was my first RPG of that type, I couldn't get into Baldurs Gate because I did not understand the D&D system and I'm not sure about Fallout although Arcanum is a sort of classic Fallout game anyway, just with a different theme).

Edited April 6 by datiswous

[Zerg Rush 106]

Dark Messiah certainly has nothing to do with Heroes of Might and Magic, rather it is an FPS with RPG elements, in the vein of the classic Heretic. It is a beautiful game with 3 alternative endings, but the problem is that the same CD indicates that it is only compatible with Windows XP,
This is why I had to download a patch to be able to play it in Windows 7, however it was not necessary in Windows 10, where it works fluently as is.
I suppose that for Linux perhaps there is also a patch to be able to replace the graphical problems that it has with another OS that is not the W XP. or W10.

[datiswous 11]

I've also read somewhere that the Steam version is not the same version as the cd-version and not all fixes are aplied to it, but you can't patch it with the official patch. I might find a fix for it somehow. Workaround is quicksave-quickload often, this resets the behaviour.

[Zerg Rush 106]

Due to lack of system resources, of course it is not, the minimum requirements for Dark Messiah are much lower than those of TDM, without forgetting that it dates from the times of Win XP, although the graphic aspect is quite successful.

Too bad that ReactOS does not end up being developed properly, a life CD with this Win XP OpenSource fork would be an alternative for Linux user to run games like this. (Maybe it works, who knows)

Edited April 6 by Zerg Rush

[Anderson 335]

22 hours ago, Zerg Rush said:

That's how suddenly PORTAL occurs to me, because, as in many puzzle games, once it has passed, the second time is no longer a challenge.

That's valid for Portal 1 which was Valve's best game, but in Portal 2 they fixed that with the "Perpetual Testing Initiative" and the endless Steam Workshop submissions. Not enough to exhaust even in a lifetime. Technically, mods don't count but the modding scene is also stellar for both Portal games. I wonder what more would they have been able to do had the Source engine been open source.

[Zerg Rush 106]

I only know P1, also the forerunner created by the authors as DigiPen students, before being hired by Valve.

[Zerg Rush 106]

A game that has impressed me the most in the past is kkrieger, an FPS with good graphics and soundtrack for this time, although quite short, it can be played in a few minutes. But what is impressive is that it only occupies 96kB, less than a screenshot in this forum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.kkrieger

What you can do with 96 kb

Abandonware (standalone 1 file) https://www.myabandonware.com/game/kkrieger-chapter-1-cl1 (don't work in W10)

- 1.5GHz Pentium3/Athlon or faster.
- 512MB of RAM 
- A Geforce4Ti or ATI Radeon8500 graphics card
  supporting pixel shaders 1.3, preferably with 128MB or more of VRAM.
- Some kind of sound hardware
- DirectX 9.0b 

Edited April 6 by Zerg Rush

[MadMachine 2]

Quote

Also Arcanum. I never finished the game at the time, but find it hard to get back to because having to replay all the stuff I did while still remembering it so clearly.

I did just that. I had played like 3 times up to that Elven forest city, where I always got stuck because of a bug in the pirated version. Years later I finished the game with proper patches. Finished it with a simple half-orc brute. I don't think I will replay again, though.

Edited April 7 by MadMachine

[datiswous 11]

My first (and most sucesful) character was also a half-orc, but I tried to make him liked, mostly, so I always had a nice suite with me for conversations with people. I remember there were a lot of situation to sort of trick the game with the pickpocket ability. Stealing an object for a person and then stealing it from him to give it to someone else for maximum experience (2 conflicting quest outcomes). There was also the good/evil meter which you could alter to good by paying like 20 times a coin to a beggler and then stealing it all back in one go.

7 hours ago, MadMachine said:

I had played like 3 times up to that Elven forest city

Yeah I think it was around that part that I stopped playing as well. I think on the way back when I lost Virgil and recruited this dwarven magicien. I remember doing a lot of side quests though. At that moment my character already became completly overpowered (25 speed, master throwing, master dodging, etc.).