Top 5 Games You Play Yearly

Everyone has favorite games. Games they just can't say no to a repeat play through. Maybe you love running and jumping on goombas and flying with raccoon tails. Perhaps catching pocket monsters is your thing. Or if you're like me, you like slipping into the base on Shadow Moses Island. Everyone has their games that they play yearly or games they wish they'd play yearly. So as the title suggests, come up with the Top 5 Games You Play Yearly or the Top 5 Games You'd Play Yearly if you had more time. Preferably pick one game from a series, so that way lists are dominated by Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, Mass Effect, Mario, Zelda, etc... Diversity is the spice of life. For a little bonus game, you can pick a game that you've been playing since the day it has come out, only stipulation is that the game needs to be out for more than a year.

I'm going to go ahead and make two lists if that's OK: One definitive and one obscure. I feel like my definitive list is too obvious and lacks the love I can show in an obscure list. 5 spots just isn't enough since you listed 4 of 5 that are automatics for me. Cool?

Fine by me.  Feel free to make obscure ones too peeps. It sucks for me having that rule, because I could play every Metal Gear Solid game every year. Just would be fun to see a more broad list.

1. Final Fantasy VII
2. Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete
3. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
4. Fallout: New Vegas
5. Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions

Definitive:

1. Castlevania SotN - I wish I could put Super Metroid but I slack with that game unlike this one. Play it every year even if I don't go for 200+%.

2. Super Mario World - Not having it on SNES sucks but I still get my playthrough in.

3. Metal Gear Solid - I get in multiple playthroughs every year. On PSone.

4. Resident Evil 2 - This was a difficult choice as I also play REmake every year.

5. Star Wars: Rogue Leader - Even if I just play the trench run and the Death Star escape over and over again, this is a mainstay.

Niche:

1. Toejam and Earl - Bet nobody saw this coming.

2. Parappa The Rappa - Same as above.

3. Jumping Flash - Trifecta!

4. G-Police - I like the setting so much that I have to revisit it annually. Even more so than the other badass Psygnosis games.

5. Devil Dice - Whenever I'm looking to play through any of the PSone games previously mentioned, I see this and pop it in. It sort of wins a spot by default even though it is really great.

EMUs and PSone give me the luxury of completely ignoring the past 2 generations save Rogue Leader. Fallout 3, FTL, RDR, and Arkham will eventually make it into my annual list.

@San: Lunar: SSS is a great choice and I wish I still had it for GBA. Not opening the PSone box.

This one's tough for me. There's probably only one game I actually replay yearly, so most of these are just games I replay regularly

1. Half-Life 2. What a surprise!
2. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. don't even ask why I replay this instead of 2 all the time. I don't understand it myself
3. Portal I can beat it in about 45 minutes now so this barely counts
4. Okami I dropped the ball this year but I would've gotten to it if other things hadn't gotten in the way
5. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory As far as I'm concerned it's better than most of the MGS series. Maybe even all of them apart from 3
Honorable mentions: Persona 4 and Donkey Kong Country 2 will probably become legit yearly replays for me.

I had a lot more yearly replays before I started buying more games for myself. I probably played the entire Splinter Cell series from start to finish yearly when I had a Ps2, as well as at least one Spyro and Driver game. I'd replay a Zelda game every year as well if I didn't get stuck in the same damn spots every time in every game. I also think I beat NFS Underground 2 at least 10 times within a few years... damn I used to love racing games...

pspiddy wrote:Definitive:


@San: Lunar: SSS is a great choice and I wish I still had it for GBA. Not opening the PSone box.

Never played the GBA version, although it looked quite nice for a GBA game. I own it on PS1, PSP, and iOS (it's one of the few iPhone games I find palatable). I still want to play the Sega CD version of it. I'm as bad about Lunar as my friend GrayHaired is about Metal Gear Solid.

Some time I need to go back and play oldschool Resident Evil. I'd like to play Xenogears yearly but that game is a beast of a game in terms of length.

1. Mass Effect trilogy- Like Kay I have to play it from start to finish. And replay them a lot more than once a year.

2. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic- I know, big surprise. Wish there was an HD remake as I love the console interface so much more than the PC one but I still love this game all the same.

3. Pokemon- Should surprise no one. Every few months I get an itch to start a new team and beat the Elite 4

4. Crash Bandicoot Warped- I bought a Vita partly to play it on that thing. And it's still not on there. Either way my Crash replay must go on.

5. Super Mario World- I'll stop replaying this when I find something that isn't perfect in every way about it. WHICH WILL NEVER HAPPEN

@san - When was the last time you played Xenogears? I loved it when it originally came out back in '98, but when it was released on the PSN a few years ago I played it on the go on my PSP and found myself very bored with the game. The story is great, I won't take anything away from that, but the battles were very boring, especially gear battles. It just felt that the only way to beat bosses was to buy the newest equipment, and if you weren't a fucking idiot you'd get through the battle. Music and story are still great, but I just find the game to be very boring now. Saddens me, I always considered it in at least my top 20.

@volvo - Have you played any PS1 games on the Vita? I've only played FFVII, Parasite Eve, Chrono Cross, and Threads of Fate, but I thought FFVII looked a lot better on the Vita as opposed to the PSP. Another thing, Super Mario World is perfect.

Yeah, I've played FFIX (which I probably should get back to) MGS and I know a few others on Vita. But Crash and Spyro still aren't on it.

@Greenie- Spyro and Crash are on PSN. Download to PS3, transfer to Vita, install and enjoy!

Crash and Spyro are some of the few games that don't transfer for some reason

Yeah, what Aja said. I had Crash on my PS3 hard drive trying to transfer it every Tuesday for four months until I gave up

Wow, that sucks. Any reason why? That doesn't make sense to me at all since those games were hugely popular.

Since you mentioned MGS and it isn't on the store, I'm assuming you can transfer it from PS3 to Vita? I've been wanting to play that on the Vita. Hopefully there is a big jump in visual quality on this as well.

You can indeed play that on Vita.

pspiddy wrote:Wow, that sucks. Any reason why? That doesn't make sense to me at all since those games were hugely popular.

I'm not totally sure. It pisses me off because people in Europe can play them on the Vita, so it can't be a compatibility issue. It's either a legal issue, Sony idiocy, or they're holding them back for some reason

BretBaber wrote:@san - When was the last time you played Xenogears?  I loved it when it originally came out back in '98, but when it was released on the PSN a few years ago I played it on the go on my PSP and found myself very bored with the game.  The story is great, I won't take anything away from that, but the battles were very boring, especially gear battles.  It just felt that the only way to beat bosses was to buy the newest equipment, and if you weren't a fucking idiot you'd get through the battle.  Music and story are still great, but I just find the game to be very boring now.  Saddens me, I always considered it in at least my top 20.

@volvo - Have you played any PS1 games on the Vita?  I've only played FFVII, Parasite Eve, Chrono Cross, and Threads of Fate, but I thought FFVII looked a lot better on the Vita as opposed to the PSP.  Another thing, Super Mario World is perfect.

I actually played it not too long ago, and in contrast to your experience, I found it quite easily to get absorbed in it again. I always rather enjoyed the hand-to-hand battles. The Gear battles, I'll grant you, aren't quite as good, but that was the same way I felt about them back in 1999 when I first got the game. My thing is that I just have such a massive backlog and Xenogears can easily eat up weeks or even months of my gaming time.

ajapam wrote:
I'm not totally sure. It pisses me off because people in Europe can play them on the Vita, so it can't be a compatibility issue. It's either a legal issue, Sony idiocy, or they're holding them back for some reason

That double sucks since the Vita only supports one account. Let's just declare it Sony idiocy since that's the case more often than not

Final Fantasy X- I have played this a ridiculous amount of times and am dying for the HD release.

Persona 3 Portable- there's never a time I don't feel like playing this and it always completely takes over my life once I start it. Shinjiro is my anime boyfriend ♥︎♥︎♥︎

Mass Effect 1 and 2- I used to replay these quite often, especially the first one because I was still a high school loser who just played games all the time back then

Costume Quest- gotta play it every Halloween, it's a tradition for me that can't be broken

Knights of the Old Republic- I actually start a ton of new games of this but rarely complete it lol. I still enjoy it every time though

I am thinking about this. I don't play many games yearly. Just Jak 1 and 3 I think. I guess Uncharted 2 since it came out as well. I more often will replay a chapter or level of something here or there. Especially with a lot of game's having chapter selects (Uncharted, Tomb Raider Anniversary, and Mirror's Edge I do this with a lot for example). I wish I had something like that for Zelda games. I know I made up about 10 save files for a pseudo level select on Sands of Time. I don't replay long games often. I guess just as a time issue. Anyway, I am still thinking of which games I'd like to play yearly.

I myself don't play certain games yearly, so definitely feel free to do it as a list of games you wish that you'd play yearly. Each year more and more games come out, and eventually a game I once loved will never get touched again due to time. That makes me really sad to think about something like that. I wish I had the time to replay every game I love multiple times, but it just gets harder and harder.

I don't play stuff yearly persay but here are 5 games I play fairly often:

1. MGS / MGS3
2. Final Fantasy (All the PSOne era ones)
3. Chrono Cross
4. Something from Bioware's catelogue. I can't be more specific but I"m just like "I feel like a bioware game" and boot up KOTOR, Jade Empire, or Mass Effect. Still haven't played KOTOR 2...need Casey to walk me through patching in the new content.
5. (Not now, but when I was younger) Thief and Thief 2. I used to adore these games.

Here you go. Don't need anything else. http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-sith-lords-restored-content-mod-tslrcm/downloads

Just download it, Twolf. It's so worth it and really simple. If I can patch the mod in, anyone can. I'm kind of a dumbshit when it comes to computers and I had no issues at all.

Huh, alright. I will pick up KOTOR II when I can then.

1.  Metal Gear Solid - It was the first Metal Gear Solid game I played, and I still think it is the best one.  The gameplay isn't as good as the other ones obviously, but I think it has the best story and the best pacing.  Upon discovering from you peeps that I can play it on my Vita if I downloaded it on my PS3, I immediately went and did it.  I just got to the Ninja fight.

2.  Final Fantasy VII - My favorite game ever, so it shouldn't be too much of a surprise.  Just leveling up my characters is a joy to me, so I could just do that and be happy.

3.  Super Mario 3 - It isn't my favorite (Super Mario World is), but this game takes me back to being a child and knowing everything about it.  Plus, I never beat the game, so maybe I'll finally do that sometime.

4.  Resident Evil - I start this game up a lot, but never finish it.  At least I beat this game unlike #3.

5.  Uncharted 1 - Out of all PS3 games, I've probably beat this one the most.  Why?  Not sure, I like 2 more.  Unlike some, I still find this game to be almost perfect.

GAMES I NEVER STOP PLAYING

1.  FIFA - I've been playing these since 1996 or 94.  Can't remember which one I started with, but I believe it is 96.  AC Milan has been my team of choice for at least 10 years.

2. Killzone 3 - Since it came out, I haven't stopped dabbling in the multiplayer. It never bores me.

I'd like to do this. Now that I write it out it seems fairly doable:

1. A Jak game (this I actually do)
2. An Uncharted game (I've also kept this up)
3. The Last of Us (I'm sure I'll be replaying this yearly too from now on)
4. Super Mario Bros. 3 (maybe swap it with Yoshi's Island and World sometimes, maybe even NSMB Wii)
5. A 3D Zelda that I like or Okami (just one a year would be sweet)

@trip - games I probably would have picked for you, but I would have guessed on a game from the series. Probably wouldn't have picked The Last of Us though, and I might have thrown in a Ratchet game.