Ask HN: What game have you replayed more times than any other?

Borderlands 2 (BL2). I love the characters, the writing and the story. Handsome Jack is my favorite villain of all time. The game play mechanics feel good to me. The difficulty levels goes up with subsequent play-throughs (True Vault Hunter Mode (TVHM) and Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode (UVHM)). There's decent DLC; "Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep" was my favorite. Also, it is possible that the story of BL2 hits for me because I also played the snot out of BL1 and fell in love with the characters there who re-appear in BL2 in very well written ways. For the record, I think BL3 and BL4 are inferior to BL2 by a long shot.

Stardew Valley. The first play-through without spoilers and without knowing what I was getting into was magical. After that, the variety of things to do and different ways to play the game kept me coming back. You can just chill and take things slow, or min/max it, or try a speed run, or just focus on your farm.

Edit to add: GTA V. Love the characters and the open world. So much to do.

Top 5 I have replayed over and over so far:

- XCOM: Enemy Unknown/Within

- XCOM2 (probably more replayed than the first one)

- Prison Architect

- Frostpunk (the first one, didn't get to replay the second one a lot yet)

- Game Dev Tycoon

Lonely Mountain Downhill, also Soduko & Wordle

Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn

A true unicorn of a game. Got the 4 CD pack and ringed instruction manual at Staples in the late 1990's. I think it was $4. Quality across the board. The cd case had incredible fantasy artwork. The thick manual with color commentary from wizards. And the game itself was deep. Unmatched for the 90's.

I don't think of it as a game anymore. It's a masterpiece of art. Nothing will ever be quite like it again. Not nostalgia, just the fact of the matter.

Fallout 1,2 also. Not quite on BG2s level but I still play them. I got both 1,2 as a $10 pack in the late 90s or early 2000's. deep F'ing value.

I'd looped through Universal Paperclips[1], exCtly 100 times in a row, when I accidentally clicked on the option at the end to actually exit instead of restart. I figured is was a sign from God

Why? - I managed to get Covid/Long Covid in 2020, and have subsequently been yeeted out of the workforce, and find myself with nothing but time on my hands, and little energy to actually do anything productive.

I've played thousands of hours of Factorio[2], I tend to play a rocket-rush game on an island, and stop when I've cleared the island of biters. The Space Age expansion made it interesting, but there's something about the grind that just killed the fun for me.

I keep playing Exponentile[3], which I think was from someone here on HN. (Yep, it's from MikeBellika, [3a])

Now I find myself playing Arrows Escape[4]

I love MineCraft[5], but I can't play it because it induces vertigo. The same was true of Doom[6], and pretty much all first person shooters from the distant past.

Oh... List minute update before the edit window closes. Railroad Tycoon 3 is still fun too.[6]

[1] https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/

[2] https://factorio.com/

[3] https://www.bellika.dk/exponentile

[3a] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39897112

[4] https://arrowsgo.io/game/

[5] https://www.minecraft.net/en-us

[6] https://store.steampowered.com/app/7610/Railroad_Tycoon_3/

Rocket League. Without a doubt the great esport of all time. I own over a thousand games but rarely play anything else.

Fallout: New Vegas. Mostly, I am getting curious about the mods and then it just grips me and I walk scorching hot Mojave again.

I've probably got the most hours on Tetris, really. It's pretty nice to zone out with. The Tetris Effect is maybe my current favorite flavor, but some of my favorite people find it too distracting to play. Tetris 99 is pretty fun, but I have trouble competing at the highest levels because I was brought up before T-Spins were rewarded and I'm resistant to change. I've never won, but I think I've hit top 3 a few times.

Lots and lots of hours on Contra and Life Force. It was pretty fun to run through those with a friend (and the Konami code).

- I've been playing the original Doom on and off for more than 20 years now. The weapons and monsters are perfectly balanced and fair, and there's a ton of extra levels and mods, with new ones even still being released.

- It's not necessarily one game, but they're all so similar that I'll count it: whatever the current Need for Speed game is (Unbound, Payback, etc.). The arcade-style racing handling is more satisfying to me than "realistic" racing, and customizing the cars is a lot of fun.

Rocket League - the most challenging and toxic game i have ever played and it keeps me coming back for more.

Computer:

  - Satisfactory
  - Trine 2
  - Minecraft

  - Super Mario Galaxy

Subnautica and BZ, we will see about S2. Not even a close second/third.

Morrowind, without a doubt. It looks and feels janky now but the storytelling is amazing. Far more interesting and unique quests than later TES games.

Video Games:

- Donkey Kong Country 1&2 on SNES

- Yoshi's Island on SNES

- Picross 3D: Round 2 on 3DS

- Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening on original Game Boy

- Proximity (old Flash game I made, but I've played hundreds of times, and it's the only game design of mine in which I've done that, out of several dozen)

Board Games:

- Legendary: A Marvel Deckbuilding Game

- Marvel Champions

- Lord of the Rings - The Card Game

- Aeon's End

- Ashes Reborn / Ashes Ascendancy (they rebooted it under a new name recently, but the other content is still compatible)

- Carcassonne

- Cribbage

The Splinter Cell and Deus Ex series for me. The stealth genre has this unique quality that you can approach the gameplay in different ways - more brute force, more stealth, anything in between - and have different outcomes/endings.

If we're talking PC games and for-all-time, then it would be Age of Empires. I played the hell out of the various isotopes of that game back in the 90s.

Not played many games since then, though, because children and work.

Plants vs Zombies, every time I get a new phone

Grim Fandango Starcraft Starcraft 2 Diablo II

Without a doubt DayZ. Many thousands of hours in, and I'm still a n00b. This game is the final form of gaming. The ultimate survival sandbox.

On mobile - Sudoku. On PC - Counter-Strike and MDickie's wrestling revolution (although haven't done so in a long time).

Sim City 4 and Civilization 5. Both are timeless and I still play them a few times a year. Hard to believe Sim City 4 is over 20 years old.

I play Quake frequently, but mostly custom-made maps and map-packs. Some of them are pretty impressive, like Brutalism Jam III.

Quake, an all time great and still being discussed in places like HN :-)

If we don't count shooters or MMOs, probably some flavor of Civ.

Solitaire is probably right up there though lol.

Chivalry 2. Jump in, do some multiplayer medieval fighting for 20 min, jump out. Always fun.

For more recent games: Control, HardSpace ship breaker, Ori, and Hollow Knight.

Oh and Journey

Skyrim, obilvion, jak and daxter, rachet and clank, tomb raider

Slay the Spire 1 and 2.

Probably Manic Miner!

Deus Ex or Half-Life, probably. The first Halo, too.

gta vc - one love, play it every time feel depressed to be recovered by warm childhood memories (around once a year)

Minecraft and the Civilization series.

Quake, Quake 2, Neverwinter nights.

Sudoku. Wordle is a distant second.

Football manager

Command and Conquer series skirmish

Cities Skylines

The original Colonization.

If we go by number of times I started up the game, it’s probably Super Mario Bros, just based on age and availability over the years.

If we’re going for hours played and the game with the most replay value for me, that’s probably Breath of the Wild. I never seem to get tired of it, as there are infinite ways to approach it.

Witcher 3

Slither.io

For me it’s probably Age of Empires. I used to watch my father play it when I was younger, so replaying it now feels weirdly nostalgic.