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Generally speaking, once I beat a game, I'm done with it. Oh, I'll jump into multiplayer and frag around for years — I still get my kicks in Team Fortress 2 — or maybe I'll revisit an isolated level here and there to do a little Achievement/Trophy hunting. But replay an entire game from start to finish? Nope. Not me. No point.
I don't discriminate between great games and dismal ones, either. They all get left behind in my wake. I don't feel the need to 100 percent anything (unlike some people) or play on higher difficulties. Upping the pain to insane degrees is a just macho thing I'm not interested in, and really, "macho" and "video game" don't really belong in the same vocabulary. It's unfortunate they even have to share several letters.
One and done.
I admit this constitutes freakish behavior. After all, it's not like I don't re-read my favorite books. But if you want the real reasons I cast perfectly good games aside — and why you should consider doing so, too — I can boil it down to two things: time and evolution.
Believe me, when you want to play a little of everything (and a lot of some things) to keep current on the entire gaming scene, time management becomes a big factor. I loved Red Dead Redemption, Limbo, Halo: Reach, and Heavy Rain, but if I keep going back to those campaigns, I can forget making room for Crysis 2, Battlefield 3, Portal 2, or Deus Ex: Human Revolution. It's bad enough Reach's multiplayer keeps drawing me back in. The more time I spend on that, the less time I have to play the new hotness.
And there's always a new hotness.
More than any other medium, gaming puts Darwinism on fast-forward. Virtually every single game that comes out dedicates itself to doing more than games that came before…and doing it better. We even penalize those that don't. BioShock 2 felt unnecessary. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 felt rushed. Complaints about Red Dead Redemption mainly revolved on how developer Rockstar North basically covered their own Grand Theft Auto 4 in a thick coat of cowboy paint. Praise often centered on how they married a new genre to old gameplay and then made bold narrative choices. Sure, mechanically speaking, Red Dead's largely a copycat, but it feels like an entirely different experience.
Zombies! Hey, that's new!
That might seem like a shallow brand of evolution, but in the age of constant patching, a few refinements can go a long way. Virtually every shooter tweaks old loadouts, invents new weapons, and adds new multiplayer modes with every sequel. Sometimes, that's all they do. But those relatively small alterations can redefine tactics and alter the choices you make throughout the game. Dual wield pistols or keep a hand free for grenades? Flamethrower for short-range carnage or M16 for mid-range survival?
Whether the differences are major or minute, the PR for every sequel leads off with what's changed, what's improved. It's gotten to the point where my favorite games from two years ago will be outdated by the end of March. Frankly, that's a good thing.
Hey, I'm all for nostalgia, but why waste time on a static experience? Give me something new, improved, refined, balanced, and optimized. We should always strive to go forward. I don't care if it's a new game or a downloadable add-on; I want something added to my game before I return to it. Otherwise, I can play a different game. With so much new ground to cover, I'd need a very compelling reason to retread ground I've already stamped down hard.
For example, maybe you heard I lost all my Mass Effect save files.
Eh. It's only Finland.
Gaming evolutions are often ridiculously easy to outpace because they're incremental and isolated; a new gun or a larger map doesn't really matter outside of that particular title. But unlike a lot of branching stories where the differences between a "good" and "bad" ending are often cosmetic, the choices from previous Mass Effects follow you into subsequent entries in the series, sometimes with far-reaching consequences. And I like consequences. A lot. I want that full experience when Mass Effect 3 hits, but to get it, I'll have to re-invest a great deal of time in two very, very long games.
Even though it cuts deep into both my reasons for never replaying games, an unfamiliar temptation's nagging at me. I genuinely think I'm going to go all the way back to 2007 and do it all over again, crazy as it sounds. The difference in this case is I'm not rehashing the past. I'm preparing for the future, and that's never a waste of itme. These aren't three independent games you could technically play in any order without losing something. They're a single, unified experience. Doing any part of it over would actually matter to the whole story.
Maybe that's the next evolution…a game where past isn't just prologue but an omnipresent reminder of where you've been, what you've done, and where you're going next. Squeezing in a replay to reshape an epic might just be worth my time. And yours.