Replaying Games

I'm feeling pretty good lately.  I put in the effort of applying for a job at two companies with one of them requiring a mock-up.  I created the mock-up throughout the month of July and really liked how it turned out, though I doubt I'll get the job.  I'm getting back into the rhythm of exercising and sleeping better (need work on falling asleep earlier though).  I finished up my Guilty Gear X - May Remix last week and uploaded it yesterday:
And I've been buying/playing some really fun games recently!  I pre-ordered God Eater 2 Rage Burst last week and it released earlier yesterday.  I've played a few hours and am anxious to play some more today, but not before I do a little bit of work today.  Just this past weekend, I finished up Resident Evil Revelations 2 and found out that there were two endings to the game.  I got the bad ending and was flabbergasted when I saw the credits roll because I thought that was the real ending of the game.  There were unanswered questions and the ending left me feeling unsatisfied.  I then thought of the possibility of multiple endings and looked it up to find that the game indeed had two different endings.  I didn't have to play the entire game over again to get the true ending, but I felt compelled to play it again.  In my first playthrough, I played on Normal and was pretty thorough in exploration.  So I decided to play Easy the 2nd time and have a relaxing experience with the game.  And it was a lot of fun!  This brings me to discuss today's topic of "replaying games"

Replaying a game, whether it's multiple runs in a row or revisiting it years later, is not uncommon and is something I used to do quite often when I was younger and had significantly fewer games.  But post-College years, I have accumulated an insurmountable amount of games of which many can relate to as a backlog.  Because of this, it is very rare for me to play a game more than once and I'll usually just move onto the next game.  Other times, playing a game just once and ignoring all the side missions/quests is enough for me because the extra content becomes mundane.  So it's been quite a surprise to myself that I have replayed a few games multiple times in a row throughout this year.  When Mighty No. 9 released, I played through it 2 times normally and then a 3rd time with the DLC character.  I even still plan on playing it for the challenge modes and maybe on harder difficulties.  Then earlier this month, Another Metroid 2 Remake released as the fan-made remake of Metroid 2 and I ended up playing that game FIVE times in a row!  For Resident Evil Revelations 2, I've been wanting to play it since last November when I got it but haven't had the time or Hard Drive space to do so.  I was expecting the game to be mildly entertaining and only planned on playing through it once.  But I enjoyed it so much that I might consider playing it a 3rd time.  I haven't even gone through the DLC stories yet and played much of Raid Mode because God Eater just came out.

So what is it about replaying a game that's so fun and makes it worth the extra time and effort put into it?  Well, it's a bit similar to reading a book or watching a movie.  When reading a book a 2nd time, certain plot points will be perceived differently because all the plot twists and  pivotal points are already known from the first read through.  Watching a movie over and over again, you might be inclined to pay attention to different things throughout the film like the background or other character's facial expressions that aren't the focus of the shot while watching a movie again years later might be for the purpose of nostalgia or you'll have a different opinion of the film after so many years.  But for books and movies, they don't change.  They're the same every time you read/watch through them.  For videogames, it's a bit different because you interact with the medium and have control over it.  When I was younger, this is how I would play and replay games: I would play the game normally and enjoy the game casually as it was meant to be played; then I would try 100% the game doing everything you possibly can in the game; and lastly I would try to finish the game as quickly as possible.  Two games that comes to mind that I have done this with is Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Metroid: Zero Mission; both for the Gameboy Advance.

Ultimately, the reasoning for replaying a game is having a different experience with it.  With books and movies, the experience will probably have 2-3 different experiences: the first time, knowing everything that'll happen the 2nd time onwards, and revisiting it years later with possibly a different mind set.  But with videogames, there are an array of dynamics put into play such as difficulty levels, different modes, and multiple characters.

Let's take Resident Evil Revelations 2 as an example since it's the most recent game I have played through multiple times (twice so far).  Here are some reasons for why I would play through the game multiple times if I decided to play it a bunch of times: *I actually did these

-*Playing on Normal difficulty: My first playthrough with a decent amount of challenge.
-*Playing on Easy difficulty: Relaxing experience while getting the true ending.
-Playing on Survival difficulty: A truly challenging experience with low resources
-Playing Countdown Mode: It's kind of like a speedrun!
-Playing Invisible Mode: Enemies are invisible.  Makes it that much harder
-Beating the game with knife only: There was a mode like that in the older Resident Evil games
-Beating the game under 3 hours: There's an achievement for that
-Beating the game with only the use of the Pistol
-Playing through Raid mode with all character levels maxed

There's a lot more variations I could probably put in that list.  A lot of hardcore speed-runners enjoy setting challenges and mixing it up which keeps the same game fresh.  That's why even now, people are still speed-running games back from the NES days.  There are 100% runs, fastest runs, one type of weapon runs, blind-folded runs, minimal upgrades runs, etc.  I miss enjoying games in this fashion, but I generally don't have the right mindset to be able to do so because going through so many games each year that I rarely feel like I have the time to play a game multiple times.  I guess it's a little different for me this year because I decided I wanted to play games I enjoyed as a lot of games I played last year left me frustrated or disappointed.  The one exception I've made throughout these past 6 years is revisiting older games, mainly one's I've never completed.  I was in the middle of running through Super Metroid again after playing Another Metroid 2 Remake and Metroid 2 earlier this month, but I didn't get to finish because of Resident Evil Revelations 2 and now God Eater 1 & 2.  I think I will play Resident Evil Revelations 2 a few more times as well as Mighty No. 9 until I feel completely satisfied before I delete them off my hard drive (with Mighty No. 9, it's not a big problem, but RE:R2 is taking up 18 GB of Hard Drive space).  If I ever get around to it, I'm pretty sure I'll be spending a lot of time playing through Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

Let's talk about Another Metroid 2 Remake

There was a job opportunity and I finished up applying for it.  I had to stop all projects to work on the application.  It's a composer position and it's an extremely small chance, but I still took it anyways.  After I finished up, I went back to my own projects.  Shortly afterwards, I saw that Metroid had reached its 30th anniversary since its initial release on the Nintendo Famicom.

"Whoop-dee-doo, we've reached the 30th Anniversary and they're giving us Metroid Prime: Federation Force. I don't think it looks bad, but it feels like they slapped the Metroid brand on a project that would otherwise get no attention. We haven't had a proper Metroid game in 12 years and haven't had a spinoff in 6 years. I don't think this is the spinoff fans expected or wanted, but perhaps it has a chance to surprise us."

That was my initial reaction to the news (as posted on Facebook).  It has bothered me for the longest time that there were so many Mario and Zelda games still being made with even some Donkey Kong Country and Star Fox games released while the Metroid series has been mostly ignored by Nintendo.  Even on the anniversary, no mention or celebration was made by Nintendo.  It wasn't even used as a marketing ploy to bring interest to their upcoming game Metroid Prime: Federation Force.

Moments after seeing the news for the anniversary, I came across Another Metroid 2 Remake when I typed in "Metroid" in google.  I've played quite a few fan-made Metroid games and they mostly capture the controls of the game, but not the full gameplay.  The game looked interesting and I decided to download and try it out.  I have never finished the original Metroid 2 as I got stuck on the last boss and couldn't beat it.  I was thinking the game was going to be a graphics overhaul of the original game and didn't think there would be too much deviation from it.  Boy, was I wrong!

This trailer is about 3 years old and was possibly the only time I've heard about this project.  Back then, it was just a demo and I didn't feel like playing an unfinished game.  So I didn't think much of it.  But on the 30th anniversary, the game was fully released.  I was expecting the game to be short since it was a fan-made game.  What I got was a fully fleshed out Metroid experience that is nearly on par with the quality it would have been if Nintendo had created the game.  Much of the gameplay, visuals and design is influenced by Metroid Zero Mission, which was a remake of the very first Metroid game.  The basic world layout and concept of Metroid 2 is still there: Kill all the Metroids, move onto the next area.  Obviously, the first and most notable difference in the remake is how rich and nicer looking the graphics are.  The original Metroid 2 was released on the original Black and White gameboy which had a limited amount of technology and memory space to work with.  In terms of control and gameplay, it closely resembles Zero Mission as Metroid 2's controls were slower and floaty to compensate for the limited amount of screen space it had.  The only critique I personally have for the game is the audio.  Some of the sound effects feel like misplaced foley recordings and some of the arranged music from the original are a bit monotonous and boring.  It also doesn't capture the eerie and atmospheric experience that the original had, despite its limited capabilities.  Still, it wasn't enough to call it "bad", just not up to expectation.  Everything else is great though!  Enemies have a lot more movement and AI patterns, bosses are challenging and memorable, level designs and item placements are well thought out and teaches the player along the way without actually having them go through any tutorial.  It was so fun, in fact, that I played the game 5 times in a row!  I played Normal the first time with the attempt to do everything and collect all the items (couldn't, got 94%).  Then I played 2 more times to improve my time.  I was going to stop.  But then I played through the original Metroid 2 and was reminded on how difficult it was due to enemies dealing a lot of damage and save points being scarce and far apart from each other and it made me wonder if enemies would hurt as much as they did in the original if I played on Hard difficulty for the remake.  And so I played the game a 4th time on Hard difficulty (with all other runs on Normal, I didn't play Easy).  It was challenging and it definitely made boss battles that much more intense, but I think I enjoyed the game more on Normal.  I wanted to try the game on Normal one last time and try to finish it in 1.5 hours.  I ended my run at 1:42:50 with my previous fastest time at 1:57:36.  I was hoping to get a much faster time than that after skipping a boss fight and many miscellaneous items.  I'm satisfied now in terms of Another Metroid 2 Remake.  The fans didn't exactly get the 30th Anniversary celebration they wanted for Metroid, but the fan-made game will have to do.

By the way, a DMCA was issued to the site a day after it was released and they had to take down the downloads for it.  Sad but true.

I'm planning on revisiting all the other Metroid games other than the original since I already did that earlier this year.  Maybe I'll finally get around to actually playing Metroid Prime 3 and Other M.