Kim of Later Levels made a post a few days ago (that I just got to reading yesterday) about immediately replaying games. They were mostly talking about what would induce one to replay games, but the question was asked: do you ever replay games immediately after playing them?

For me, the answer is yes, I’ve done that before more than once. But that doesn’t make for much of a blog post (commenting on days old posts seems pretty useless, at least to me). So I got to thinking: which games have I done this with? What do they have in common? Why play them over again so soon, when I always have a backlog of other games to get to (indeed, I often will not finish a game, to move on to the next new game!)?

So, these are some/most of the games that I remember giving another go right after finishing them the first time:

• Fallout: New Vegas
• Pokemon Blue/Red
• Gothic 3
• Deus Ex
• Morrowind
• Oblivion
• Skyrim
• Star Trek Online (going to count making a new character as starting over)

Looking on it, all of these have this in common: they have different possible play styles that you can choose, some right from the beginning. Even if they have the same overall story, or even the same exact story experience, every time, the way you interact with the game can be different each time. Also, the games were very compelling for one reason or another, that kept me wanting more. Sometimes you can get a completely different story, so it’s like a sequel or add-on instead of the same game; but in the end, a game’s a game, and play matters: playing ranged one time, and melee the next, can create almost a completely new game.

But story is also important, at least the story in my head. In STO, the story for a faction character is exactly the same every single time you do it (ignoring missions that have been modified or removed), but for me, each character’s story is different. While there is more possible variation in a TES game, or Fallout, the story beats, the dialog choices, the quests and missions, they’re all the same every time you play the same faction; but I can fill in the blanks, fill in motivation and reactions and stuff. But I guess that’s its own sort of game, too.