One of the coolest parts of my job is how many different games I get to play, but I’d be lying if said I’m not still a sucker for the classics. I’ve always got my eyes and ears open for new titles even outside of what I cover for work, and I’m really looking forward to putting together my Game of the Year list in December. But at the same time, I am just as likely to start my twentieth farm inStardew Valleyas I am to download a charming new title to get lost in on Steam.
If you’re an online player, someone who enjoys skill-based matchmaking and being the best against other real-life players, the redundancy in revisiting games is a bit less intense. you’re able to pop into and out of battle royales, MMOs, or MOBAs, but I’ve always been a story-based gamer, and those are the titles that have abysmal replay value if you’re not creative about how you do it.
The problem with returning to the same stories over and over again is that there’s only so much story for you to see. Unless it’s a choose your own adventure game where your decisions have cascading consequences or games that require multiple playthroughs to unlock alternative endings, narrative games function the same the first time you turn them on as they do the hundredth. For some people, that’s off-putting, but I’ve always taken it as something of a challenge – how do I make this thing I like stay fun for longer?
Following Fan-Made Challenges And Using Mods Makes For An Interesting Mix
Maybe it’s that I grew up playing the different entries in The Sims series, desperate for something to do besides getting a job and starting a family as the years crept by other than removing pool ladders. Maybe it’s that I’ve always loved storytelling, that I’ve been an avid writer since childhood and am no stranger to inventing rules in a universe and then ensuring I play by them. Maybe it’s my neurodivergence that always has me hyper-fixating on the same thing for months or years at a time. Either way, sometimes replaying a game you’ve played to death takes a little imagination.
I find that the better I know a game, the more fun it is to pull it apart at the seams and see how I can mess with it. For The Sims, that was with an endless supply ofplayer-made challenges shared over online forumsfor most of my life (before EA made challenges a fixture in The Sims 4). Sure, things stay relatively fresh with expansion packs every few months, but there’s nothing I love more than making my Sims struggle for sport. I’ve done all the infamous fan challenges – the Apocalypse Challenge,several Hunger Gamesevents,the Asylum challenge, andmore rags-to-riches runsthan I can count - and it made me curious about how I can tweak other games in similar ways.
It’s not always as straightforward as expansions, though – sometimes, you have to make your own fun, and make it, I do. I’ve been playing Stardew Valley since the very first version of the game, so to say I know life in Pelican Town is an understatement. However, I wrote a while back about how much I was enjoyingshuffling everything I knew about Stardew with a randomizer mod, changing the locations of every screen in the game and forcing me to completely rethink how I played the game.
My front door led to outside the Wizard’s tower, but since I couldn’t find the Community Center to trigger the invitation to meet the Wizard at said tower that allows you entry for the first time, I literally couldn’t go back home once I left for the morning.
Self-Imposed Challenges Spice Up Subsequent Story Playthroughs
It lit something of a spark in me to see how much more I could wring from games I’ve played to death. For example, I cover a lot of Persona here at TheGamer, and when Episode Aigis came out as DLC for Persona 3 Reload, I needed a way to spice things up. I played through the content regularly the first time, but as I swept back through again to write guides and clean up anything I may have missed, I was craving something different. ‘Challenging’ difficulty is only so challenging when you know a series as well as I know Persona.
Knowing that your friends decide the only way to settle a disagreement is by fighting, I wanted to see if I could change anything aboutthe Colosseo Purgatorio battleswhere said fights take place. Akihiko and Ken gave me the businesswhen I played the first time through, but how would they react in these fights if I never brought them with me into battle throughout the DLC? Excitedly, I added Metis to my team and headed into the Abyss of Time with her andonlyher until we reached Colosseo Purgatorio together.
Spoiler, nothing changed, and those two still kicked my ass the second time around, too.You learn God’s Hand at level 72, Akihiko, not at level 25 where I left you, be so for real.
I know I could also just download other games or dive through my extensive Steam library if I want to try something new, and I do that as well, but there’s something so enjoyable for me about tearing a game apart and playing it my own way. When you’ve spent your life enjoying the same series but need a little refresher to keep things interesting between installments or expansions, making your own fun with games is all but essential.
