What Makes A Game Replayable?
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- Опубликовано: 27 май 2024
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It’s tough to make a game worth playing. But what about one worth playing AGAIN? That’s even tougher. Let’s talk about replayability. We’ll go through a ton of examples in three broad categories about how games add replay value, and we’ll also talk about what to avoid if you want to make a game as replayable as possible.
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#mariomaker #hearthstone #hades 
Игры
Game timestamps by first appearance:
0:13 - Hitman 2
0:14 - Minecraft
0:16 - Super Metroid
0:20 - Resident Evil 4
0:23 - Breath of the Wild
0:28 - Halo Combat Evolved
0:31 - OneShot
0:34 - CubeWorld
0:39 - Sonic Mania
0:43 - Pac Man Championship Edition DX
0:48 - Hades
0:48 - Mario Maker 2
0:48 - Hearthstone
1:02 - The Order 1886
1:02 - Motorbike
1:02 - Street Fighter X Tekken
1:08 - Katamari Damacy
1:11 - Hyrule Warriors
2:37 - Slay the Spire
2:42 - Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon
2:47 - Star Fox 64
2:55 - Mass Effect 2
3:00 - Witcher 3
3:01 - New Super Mario Bros
3:27 - Chrono Trigger
3:34 - Disco Elysium
3:47 - Skyrim
3:51 - Dark Souls
4:03 - Final Fantasy X
4:48 - FTL
4:56 - Spelunky
5:19 - Enter the Gungeon
5:40 - The Order: 1886
5:46 - Monkey Island 2
5:50 - Uncharted
6:12 - Ace Attorney
6:33 - Final Fantasy XIII
6:50 - Game of Thrones (Telltale)
7:02 - The Walking Dead Season 2
7:45 - Metal Gear Solid V
7:52 - ModNation Racers
7:56 - Rollercoaster Tycoon
8:04 - Dreams
8:05 - LittleBigPlanet 3
8:07 - Warcraft 3
8:20 - Terraria
9:37 - Civilization V
9:45 - Motorbike
10:01 - Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance
10:30 - Wargroove
10:39 - Super Smash Bros Ultimate
10:44 - Soundshapes
11:25 - L.A. Noire
11:36 - Red Dead Redemption 2
12:20 - Tetris Effect
12:26 - Rocket League
12:33 - Overwatch
12:40 - Splatoon 2
12:48 - Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
12:51 - Super Smash Bros Melee
13:13 - Chess on Chess.com
13:48 - Pac-Man Championship Edition 2
14:03 - Crazy Taxi
14:10 - Donkey Kong
14:17 - Kingdom Hearts 3
14:26 - Bayonetta 2
14:29 - Devil May Cry V
15:27 - Super Monkey Ball
15:35 - Mario Kart 64
15:40 - Luigi's Mansion
15:42 - Zelda Ocarina of Time
15:52 - Pokemon Red/Blue
16:06 - Lawbreakers
16:19 - Super Smash Bros Brawl
16:21 - Street Fighter X Tekken
16:33 - Evolve
16:38 - Team Sonic Racing
16:48 - Super Smash Bros Ultimate
17:05 - Tetris 99
17:14 - Guilty Gear Xrd
17:28 - Pokemon Omega Ruby
18:04 - Shadow the Hedgehog
18:17 - Dragon Quest 3
18:37 - Animal Crossing Amiibo Festival
18:55 - God of War (PS4)
19:01 - Final Fantasy IX
Leave a comment if you see a clip you don't recognize - we, or someone else, will let you know what it is.
What's the first Pic in the thumbnail?
The character on the left? That’s Zagreus from Hades.
But what about the music used in the video?
Lol dude you're a beast, this must have taken some time. Thanks for the list.
No mention of fire emblem? Those games have insane replayability. I highly recomend looking those up!
Sometimes replayability can come from the writing and not gameplay. For example, if there is a massive plot twist that gets properly foreshadowed it's tempting to replay the game just to try spotting all the little hints that were there, as well as to see how various events are recontextualized by knowing the twist that is coming. Tales of Berseria and CrossCode are examples of such games.
But how many times would you replay it though? Like once more, max 2 more?
@@icarue993 True. This reason alone isn't enough to beat the game again and again.
Ghost Trick also a good example of this. And it also give you chance to replay not a whole game, but from any chapter you want, which is great in my book.
Along with Persona 2 and Persona 4 from my experience.
Exactly. I’ve replayed Bioshock Infinite maybe 6 or 7 times for exactly that reason.
Although that may just be because I’m incredibly obsessive.
unskippable cutscenes and the good old "please walk slowly besides me while I explain something to you" are my worst nightmares, and often times are the top reasons for me to not replay something.
Always depends how long and good cutscenes are for me, i replayed Devil may cry 3 and bayonetta way to often and still watch some scenes even though they are skipable. But this stupid “walk very slowly next to me“ stuff pisses me off even on the first playthrough.
*Pokémon Sword and Shield intensifies*
I haven’t even played the game but the abundance of complaints like the unskippable or tutorials just turns me off from getting the game completely.
When I was a kid my parents got me a copy of some game called Spongebob's Robotic Revenge for the Xbox 360. It was terrible. The worst part was, the 5 minute long cutscenes weren't skippable, but the 30 second dialog parts were! They knew how to make the boring stuff skippable, _and still didn't_.
This is the only reason I’ve never replayed Final Fantasy X. There are literally hours of unskippable cutscenes.
This is why I never replayed RE7. The game just feels "slow" and takes control away from the player a lot which is unusual for an RE game. The RE games are known for their replayability but RE7 is an exception.
Am I the only one who REALLY needs a "gameplay from:" tag at the bottom of the screen? It's been too many times where I've seen games that look really interesting used in these videos but have no idea what they're called!
Can you provide timestamps for the games you don't recognize?
This. What's the purpose of showing something if the audience is not going to know where it's from?
Sorry for the delay!
Just posted a pinned comment with timestamps.
@@DesignDoc
Oh, thank you!
@@DesignDoc Thank you for doing that, it's really helpful!
"But first, we gotta pay the bills" is such a great segue into advertising
To bad vpn's don't actually work.
Make your own VPN on a Raspberry pi.
@@wesss9353 That's the fastest way to fuck yourself if you don't know what you're doing or are careless.
@@OmegaF77 versus the company that will tell the government everything?
There have been Data breaches from the RUclipsrs shilling nordvpn...
I also think that a major factor in replayability is "how long until I get to the fun bits?" because some games can be great fun but take their sweet time to get rolling, for instance an open world game that heavily restricts you for a very long time before it opens up.
on the other hand, I haven't played Skyrim yet, but from what I hear of people who do play it more than once, it seems that a dominant reason is that they have to wait relatively little time before they just ignore the main story and go off doing random nonsense, their favorite sidequests etf. I even play linear games again because I know I can just get to the good bits without it being a chore.
of course each person has a different opinion on what the "good bits" of a game are.
I’m aware this comment is three years old, but I wanted to add this is exactly why I love Breath of the Wild and Metal Gear Rising. Breath of the wild allows you to begin exploring from second 1, and I don’t find the first four shrines to be that slow. And MGR allows me to skip every cutscene, button mash through all dialogue, and slice and dice every enemy I see.
I think those two games show repeatability to an extreme while being opposites in almost every aspect of design
Skippable Cutscenes absolutely help with replayability. I used to want to go back to play the original KH 1 and 2 but stuck with KH2 because it was a slog to go back to KH1. The rerelease helped fix that though, and now I go back roughly every year to play it again. Such a good childhood game of mine...
Though apparently the Xbox One port is allowing the infamous unskippable opening cinematic to be skipped?
This also applies when you lose. If there's an unskippable cutscene before a hard area, it will drive you nuts.
The Final Mix version of 1 lets you skip cutscenes. I own the PS4 bundles & fighting Riku is amazingly swift to retry in that version.
Yes, the Final Mix version lets you skip cutscenes, but only if the game knows that you already seen it on the PS2 and PS3 versions. If, for example, you tried the Riku fight way too many times, get tired of it and turn off the console, when you try again, you have to rewatch the cutscene prior because the game thinks you didnt watch it
Katana Zero does this amazingly ... there's an extra speedrun-mode after you've completed the game with no citszenes and only action + timer for each stage/level so you can get faster and track your progress
This is basically exactly what I was going to comment
KH 1 was even worse then that though, I remember running across a tough boss fight, but it had a 10 minute cutscene before the boss on every single retry, making it torture to even play the game the first time around, let alone going back for a second play-through.
"Unskippable cutscenes make a game less speedrun friendly." To be honest, I don't even understand why games STILL has unskippable cutscenes nowadays.
Also, I think it's important to make it clear that NOT ALL GAMES should be replayable. Just because a game isn't replayable doesn't make it a bad game. As you mentioned, the Uncharted series barely has any replayability since most of your engagement with the game will be on your first playthrough. That doesn't make the Uncharted games bad.
Amazing video as always. Keep up the good work!
I really enjoy replaying the uncharted games just because... I don’t know really. But I love them and really enjoy all of the combat, characters, humor, and plot so that’s something.
@@wakkjobbwizard you enjoy it probably for the same reasons we rewatch a movie. We know what's going to happen but we can still enjoy it and in some cases, a second run can still be great for paying attention in details we didn't the first time because we were too focused on the actual gameplay
VoidGods I suppose so
they often hide loading screens
@@krystianzoadz4978 Pretty much this entirely. Half of marketing is usually "seamless open world without loading screens" but they're really doing that loading during cutscenes.
3:27
Shadow the hedgehog used multiple endings to double playtime, and was worse off for it. Add alternate endings with caution.
We actually had a short paragraph talking about that game specifically and how branching paths with a poor structure can backfire but it was cut.
@@VTRcomics Yeah that's the other thing. The core game is bad though STH's mission design is especially terrible for the first stage (destroy all enemies of either faction without any radar or visual indicator for where every one is).
Double? More like Quintuple... getting the final ending on that game was the absolute worst.
Sonic heroes could’ve done multiple playstyles better too, every team except the chaotix doesn’t have enough to differentiate themselves from one another, when it comes to gameplay other than
Heroes: normal mode
Dark: hard mode
Rose: easy mode
@@theutubepower1243 but that was their intention. Different stories, different difficulty levels.
what they were trying to achieve was well executed.
One factor you didn't mention is aesthetics/nostalgia. I often revisit Banjo-Kazooie just for the music and level design. Its just a cool place to hang out. This especially applies to noncompetitive games like animal crossing. Perhaps thats more of a factor for what makes games worth revisiting rather than replaying, if there is a difference there.
1. That falls under the novelty cathegory. (I think)
2. While those things matter, this is videogames we talking about. Not movies or anime.
Nostalgia is very personal. You can make a game more memorable in a lot of ways, of course, but nostalgia is not really an inherent quality of any particular game, let alone when talking game design specifically. It would be hard to deliberately design a game to be replayable by virtue of nostalgia and it rather assumes a game will be a classic years into the future.
nostalgia moments are great. It's one reason I was excited when Wave Race 64 was released on WiiU Virtual Console. My old cartridge crapped out.
@Tensai Akiyama That's the thing, even if there are better alternatives some people will always go back to the games they've played growing up
Like if someone has nostalgia for the original Castlevania but not for SoTN while they might enjoy the latter because it's...well a good game, it won't replace the original to them because they are very *very* different games
Like the first Pokemon gen on the gameboy might seem a bit lackluster compared to later games and the remakes are better in almost every way and while I like to play them from time to time, I'll still go back to the OG games because they're the one I grew up with, even if there are way better alternatives
I mean unless you were saying that with time the people won't have nostalgia for these games because they will get older and older and die or something (that got dark pretty quickly) therefore the "nostalgic games" will be more and more recent but I wasn't sure
Nostalgia is way too subjective to be tangible to discuss
That chess clip makes me so angry
Mike sacrificed 150 ELO to get that footage. The ultimate gambit.
The fact the knight didn't take the queen hurt me.
I don't even play chess and I was ready to smash my laptop
@BMO Let's please drop the attack helicopter joke
everything was wrong white giving up the queen free black not taking the queen and moving the other night allowing for a mate in 2
Fire emblem games, especially three houses. Most games have a cast larger than you can deploy, so you have to choose what units to bring to each map. Additionally, more modern games feature stuff like reclassing so the same unit can be totally different each time.
Please don't kill me for what I'm about to say, but FE3H is not really replayable. Yeah it is sandbox and stuff but map design is god awfull. You solve the same problems the same ways over and over again. Also maps are reused ridiculous amount of times. Even paralogues use the same maps. Not talking about 30$ DLC reusing maps too LOL
@@Doctor7175 almost every FE fan has already played through 3h at least 4 times to experience all the content. Even though the earlygame maps are reused, you get a different cast of characters and most of them are very flexible as to what they can do. There is also great potential for meme classes, like armor knight annette for something. The game is not perfect by any means, but one of the things it truly excels at is definitely replayability. It only gets stale if you choose to do the same thing over and over.
@@jerry3115 Don't forget you can do challenge runs in FE too! I went with an all gauntlets run and it was a huge blast, if only a meme. You can also increase the difficulty, the game isn't very fun if you don't play on classic imo, but also increasing the difficulty up to hard or maddening I'd encourage. Fire emblem as a series has always been replayable, with many different characters you can choose to run with and different classes they can excel at. 200 hours into FE3H and still haven't started the DLC.
@@jerry3115 I definitely agree that FE 3h is playable, but also not at the same time. You can definitely play the game again and again to experience all the houses path, but what I found super annoying was the replay-ability of exploring the monastery. I played the Silver Snow path and once I got done I was looking forward to playing Crimson Flower. The only problem that made it SOOO boring was the monastery and it killed my motivation to play the game.
Not every entry is like that, in harder games like Binding Blade and New Mystery, there are only a handful of units that are worth using.
For me, one of the biggest draws to replay a game is the story. Even games whose story is the same every time can incentivize replaying. Even if the story hasn’t changed, you may have, and you can find new meaning in and old story, or be reminded of the meaning you saw in it to begin with.
Sonnance I first played FFX when I was 11 and I didn’t understand all of the characters or plot that well. As I got older, I understood it better each time and even found out about ‘affection mechanics’ which I would have never known about at all if I just played it and didn’t look at any sources about the game in general online.
Yeah!!!!!
as long as it not too difficult and just fun.. no problem.... if just too much bullshit so you can not rent it then... no...
The TWEWY avatar is fitting.
@@an_impasse Old comment, but Tales of Symphonia was the same way - I played it when I was 10 or so and didn't realize the game had some different outcomes based on different character's affection. Pretty neat hidden feature!
The 2D Sonic games are an excellent example of replayability through evolution. And they're also one of few titles I can think of that uses the "back to the start" style of game over to aid in that idea. The more times you play through the game, the better of a route you find, and the better your execution gets.
Not just 2D.
The amount of times I've replayed Adventure and Rush is far too many.
As a big rpg fan I like to replay them for story and character's alone sometimes, also having new knowledge on how the game work's let's me experiment more with the battle system.
Persona and "tales of" are an example of this.
Golden Sun as well
Never stop doing these types of videos. They’re so Damn entertaining and educational.
There aren't that many videos that delved into game design like this as well
@@keysmash_roa Adam Millard, Extra Credits, TheGamingBritShow... although each channel has their own tilt in how they cover games.
Hades is SO replayable! I've sunk so many hours into it already and I still feel like I haven't found everything they're hiding. And it's not even "done" yet!
Google paid me to rate your comment lmao i.imgur.com/IvSFwdS.png
Mar2ck mmmm a scam this is
@@wakkjobbwizard its the official google rewards app
@@mar2ck_ Oh no, I've been compromised! They're going to know I'm a spam-bot in disguise!
I love how randomizers helped with replayability for some older games. I’ve found myself going back to a lot of the older Legend of Zelda games to play the randomizer versions. Added challenge and different ways to approach the games.
I completely agree. Randomized Zelda games up the challenge while making it so fun and nostalgic at the same time.
A nitpick about Chess - the ruleset has been tweaked frequently for as long as the game's existed, so it's never had the same ruleset for even a single century. In the late 20th century, the international body governing Chess introduced a minimum period of 4 years between rule updates in order to limit the pace of change...
My pet example of unskippable cutscenes is the start of Ocarina of Time - I've played the game dozens of times, and every time I have to resign myself to sitting through the opening, which even requires you to start pressing a button to advance text partway through so you can't even leave it running and come back when it's done...
It‘s funny how like a third of current speedruns consist of just the opening
I don't know if I agree that the Ace Attorney games aren't re-playable. They're as re-playable as a book is re-readable.
I pretty much only play single player games where a completionist playstyle can be achieved and to me, any game is re-playable because I always try to make the act of getting everything as efficient as possible (perhaps not to a speedrun level) every time I decide to re-play a game.
I think that the experience of replaying arcade games or gauntlet style games is similar. Speedrunning is probably the extreme case, but some experiences can be meaningfully different every time, despite the fact that you know exactly what's going to happen.
That's a little bit more difficult to put a finger on though, especially when there's no score to speak of, but playing through resident evil 2 is great every time for example.
I agree. And often times I love seeingvthe foreshadowing and details I missed the first time.
Very much agree, was just about to write the same thing.
Couldn't agree more. I replay the Ace attorney games every couple years when I've started to forget the details the same way I return to my favorite books every few years or so when I'm in the mood.
I mean you could argue that if you remember the correct answers then it kinda ceases to be replayable just based on the fact that their is no longer any game play. That doesn't mean you cant read it but it makes just like most other visual novels where theirs no actual gameplay for you their for your not really replaying it.
The Saints Row franchise keeps me coming back time and time again just for the amount of fun the user can create for themselves. Also, Final Fantasy 7 is a great game to go back and play again and again, as long as you inhibit yourself in some way. For example, last time I played it I wanted to get all of the weapons, limit breaks and materia within 70 hours.
I miss when the vehicles mattered in saints row
@@FlutterSwag Well in that case, go back and play any of the first three again! They're all very different games, just find the one that suits you best and go crazy! :)
One thing that I love about Saints Row: the main character's voice. You choose their voice during character creation, and it gives them some personality. But when you replay the game, you notice that some moments they say something sliiiiiiightly different. And instead of being a bummer like Telltale games, this makes the player wanting to replay the game, just to see which moments are different, what sentences are changed.
@@ruanvcunha I love when different voice choices have slightly different lines. It's one reason I chose the Nolan North voice in SR4.
@@ruanvcunha Yeah, I totally agree. And of course, the singing! :)
"You can't get good at rng"
Tell that to Alphard and Mario party
*ahem*
Chuggaconroy
@@rtmushroom9454 hm I'll have to check him out but Alphard has had some pretty crazy luck before
My reaction to this line was: "Laughs in Golden Sun"
(For people who don't know, in the GBA Golden Sun games (well, actually one game on two cartridges), the RNG manipulation was as easy as soft reset + right combat choices throughout two turns.)
DMC especially 5 is so good even after I can S rank all missions, complete all trophies. I still come back to play it over and over again.
They removed many gimmicks from previous games like puzzle, platforming, timer(except in BP) and focus on what they do best. It gives you satisfying combat with a lot of moves and mechanics. Enemies always have weaknesses but still, need skill and practice to deal with.
The best thing is when you finally can dominate the enemies you were struggled with while performing those Smoken sexy stylish combo. This alone always keeps me to come back.
"removed gimmicks from previous games like puzzle, platforming" Thats why its a game made for dumb people.
Previous games were far better.Love the combat though.But It gets stale after one playthrough.
@@qwerty9398 If that's your opinion, that's fine.
I don't really think It's a bad thing focusing on core gameplay. We got more variety of tools, movesets and enemies, more hidden mechanics.
It adds more replayability than Puzzles and Platforming that lose their value once we know how to solve them. Especially in this game that we need to do multiple playthroughs.
And for god sake, one playthrough is not enough to see the true potential of its combat. This game rewards you for being good. After I finished DH around 15 hrs. I stopped playing for a while but then I came back and started to practice for completing achievements.
Once I learned how to deals with enemies, timing exceed, dodge, royal guard, parrying, bosses' moveset and play Dante properly. That's when I can't quit at all even after I completed all achievements at 80hrs. I still continue to play for 300hrs, now.
@@qwerty9398 lol what? The game gets stale after one playthrough? You literally cant even get majority of the character skills in one playthrough.. let alone two... the puzzles were holding dmc back from what it truly was. A non-brainless hack n slash.
Servers going down make me super paranoid about online and digital-only games just disappearing. Thankfully, if the game has a devoted enough following, chances are it'll get fan servers like with Battlefield 2 or Mario Kart Wii. Sadly doesn't seem like the case for ModNation though. One of your best videos yet, Doc!
Yeah, The thing is, for a fan server to actually happen, people need to study the data that flows in and out of the server. Most people don't even think about doing this until a company announces that the server is going to be taken down. Unfortunately, either there wasn't enough time or there just wasn't anyone playing the game that even thought to do it that could do it. A real shame.
It'd be nice if they did a remaster or even a sequel, but it doesn't look like United Front Games is really into making toon like kart racers anymore since they closed their doors back in 2016.
This is why I have a rule that I don't buy anything digital that I can't pirate. I pay to support developers and for convienience, so I would be fine with playing a pirated copy because it's not my fault that the version I paid for is unavailable.
@@Gnidel Yeah, stuff like the Scott Pilgrim game and everything on the Wii Shop can be downloaded and emulated, and I'm sure someone out there has uploaded P.T. onto a rom site or something. Even patches and dlc for physical games won't be around forever, so I hope someone has our back for those too. I'll happily pay if the price is right though, as long as they let me in the first place.
Video is 20:20 long and made in 2020 but we can’t replay 2020 so like persona 5 says take your time
And released on 2/20
Design Doc I didn’t realize that
released on 2/20/2020 and is 20:20 long
@@DesignDoc Was that on purpose?
@@coyraig8332 NOPE
My favorite example of replayability in a game? That must be Sonic Adventure 2. Not only did they add different challenges to each stage, they also added rank systems. And being one of the few who enjoy treasure hunting stages, the randomness of these stages makes me want to keep replaying them.
Don’t forget the chao garden
"Games with good Mod support like Warcraft III"
Blizzard: Hold on there, me bucko!
Splatoon pulled me in because every match feels distinct, with your team and enemy team compositions varying, and the maps literally changing every game with the change in ink.
This is a great topic. I'm trying to design a game myself and I want it to be replayable, and you gave me some ideas here.
In particular the concept of allowing speedruns and creativity were eye opening. When I think about it, those are exactly the things I like about the games that I replay all the time. It's like, I already knew this stuff but never consciously thought about it or heard somebody talk about it specifically out loud.
You'd be surprised just how many "obvious" things go into game design that people never notice because of the Iceberg issue. (Also, doing game design classes. Can't unsee what I saw, and now most game suck ass to me... '-')
I've noticed that most of the games that keep bringing me back are games that let you keep the real life technical skill you've learned from your previous run by not entirely locking advanced movement/tech behind items or "cut scene said I can do this move now". Like Super Metroid(for speed running the entire game) and MH(for letting me breeze through the first half of the new games) because I know what I'm doing each time I play and the game doesn't stop me from using my prior knowledge for some dumb reason.
@@chironthecuddley6144 Hollow Knight is like that sometimes.
The speedrun & rank aspects are some things I love about most Sonic games. It's always exhilarating getting that A/S rank depending on the game, even if getting them in Generations is really easy to do. Hell, I've been meaning to try speedrunning Adventure 2 since it was my first Sonic game. The one part I dread is Mad Space with its wonky gravity on some of the planets.
Sonic games feel like completely different games when you play them for the first time and when you replay them. The evolution of skill evolves the gameplay in awesome way.
I’d say SA2 is the most replayable sonic game. It has the chao garden, multiple missions within each level, hidden power ups ( mostly magic used to get chao’s in certain missions though ), and a hidden level that’s unlocked after getting every single medal ( or whatever they’re called )
12:07 "It's alright, miss."
12:09 "NO IT'S NOT"
I love how in Mgs5 the guards change their behavior and equipment based on you playstyle. For example if you often attack at night they will wear nightvision goggles or if you snipe to much they start wearing helmets. In response to that you can send troops to intercept supplies, like a transport of helmets, of the enemies to help you.
Hmm no wonder my shots started to keep on ricocheting off the peoples heads cause of helmets 90% of the time lol
13:16
Why, oh God why. Why did he not take the Queen...
Another point that makes a game replayable is the way you control your character. Super Mario 64 leads to a lot of creativity in just Mario's movement options alone.
It's not the most important part but... that red / purple colour you used for the thumbnail and background of the graphics in this video. Gorgeous
9:02 did that guy get killed by.... what it looks it? That must've been an ancient burger if it can result in that
You know how they always tell you fast food can kill you?
Didn't kill him, but sure as hell knocked him out cold!
Hollow Knight, Dark Souls and Zelda: A Link to the Past are very replayable. The huge amount of options early on combined with a great gameplay definitely hooks me up.
Isn't a link to the past pretty linear, i don't remember having a lot of options especially before finishing the first few dungeons. I thibk a link between worlds would be a good example though .
I believe another factor to making a game replayable is whether the characters are likeable or not, and if they're fun to interact with, enough to make you want to see them again. A Hat in Time does that really well. all the characters are so charming, at least I can't stop playing and replaying it
6:12 I’ve probably played through all Ace Attorney games 2 or 3 times each, even through it’s the exact same every time. Just goes to show how good these games are
6:15 I think a good acception here is Celeste. A game that has a rigid story, as rigid as you can get, but it's fun to replay because now you have learned the game a lot more so you can blast through it with ease.
Idk if you are going to mention that sort of thing in the video, just thought I'd say.
10:15 you would think Celeste falls into this, but it doesn't, as you can get past obsticles in different ways. There's the obvious intended way, yes, but the game has deeper systems that allow you to get through the game faster in creative ways.
12:20 okay this is what I was getting at. Celeste is a PRIME example of evolution.
18:20 and this is one of the biggest reasons why. Celestes mechanics are consistent. Nothing is random. If you get to a point at the exact same time, every time it's going to be the exact same as it was last time.
A game not having a slow start, letting a player skip cutscenes, adaptive difficulty, a good new game plus, post game unlockables, and creative ways to tackle the game, these are all very important. Resident Evil 4 is the perfect example of this.
"Good modding support like Warcraft 3"
I think a lot of players would disagree with that after Reforged...
10:21 "To fix it, a game might have to add a system like limited resources to help discourage using the same solution over and over again"
Well funny that you decided to use MGSV as an example because they DO have a system in place in the form of a "Revenge System" to balance the reliance of a single tool kit. This includes the tranq pistol by giving the enemies helmets as a counter to it if you land headshots in that area too often making it much harder to land a instant sleep by making you need to do it in the direction facing them instead of in the back. The are many other examples like them starting to have flashlights or night vision to counter the constant reliance of night attacks on the base.
"You can make a bad game that's replayable"
*cough*leagueoflegends*cough*
Its not the game itself, its the community.
@@GeolyteGM Meh. I find the game very boring. Laning phase is boring as hell. After that once in a blue moon there's some exciting action. But there's just too much downtime for me to justify spending 20+ minutes on a game with sparingly few fun moments. Ironically, toxic people make the game _more_ fun for me, since it makes it more satisfying to kick their ass or troll them if they are on your team. I deleted all my accounts except one (which is still Level 1) months ago and have since stopped playing. It's just a time sink, and not a very good one at that.
@@zak9399 oh, alright. I get your point.
@@zak9399 true, Battlerite was much more fun while it lasted
I dropped the game about 6 years ago, but honestly it wasn't so much the game being boring, but since my friends moved to DOTA2 (and I didnt like that one) it became more of a roll of the dice with solo queue, and getting good CAN let you carry games, until the ELO catches up to you and youre stuck again with.
That and playing mostly league for 3 years left me with a massive backlog I'm still trying to get through to this day.
Devil may cry has quickly become one of my favorite games ever. You grow so much so fast and learn how to play and look cooler doing it. It rewards you not only for speed, and skill, but looking bad ass, you can play it however you want as long as you're kicking demon ass. The game also feels like it was made for the highest difficulty, allowing you to pull off longer, more stylish combos. I cant get enough of it
IS THAT MY BOY ZAG IN THE THUMBNAIL-
I think one series of games that is infinitely replayable is the Pokémon series. Discus all you want if the games are good or bad, but the crazy amount of Pokémon in any game, plus moves and abilities and other stats can make for hours of play in battles, with a little creativity. With its shorter length and less emphasis on story (compared to other RPGs), its one of the few RPGs that I consider very replayable. Nuzlockes, single type teams, only use Biddoofs: do what you want.
Great video! Love how you categorise all the ways a game is replayable into four main categories here, or the examples given.
For a few others:
On the good side, Pokemon proves almost infinitely replayable due to almost all of these things. It's got the community aspect you mentioned with Nuzlocke runes, the clockwork system with the different Pokemon to catch/trade/breed, stats and moves, and the creativity that goes with it. No one will ever make the same team as everyone else, so there's always replayability in trying new strategies there.
I also feel Breath of the Wild does quite well on the community side of things too, and not just because of the potential for speedrunning. The tricks and exploits there can let you skip and break all manner of things, such as avoid collecting the Sheikah Slate, skip any and all runes, get the Master Sword early, wrong warp into dungeons, etc. Even if you're not necessarily a speedrunner, there's value in say, getting Revali's Gale early, playing the Plateau with a pseudo glider and playing the whole game without Remote Bombs or Magnesis.
There's also the small design decisions some more linear games make to add replayability too. Like how in 3D Mario games, the Banjo-Kazooie series, etc you don't need all the stars/jiggies/whatever to win, just enough to reach the final boss. So there's replay value added in collecting the ones you didn't need afterwards, as well as collecting different combinations of the same in future playthroughs.
As for a negative example? Well, I think Paper Mario Sticker Star and Color Splash fall into the 'virtually zero replayability because of extremely limited options' category. There's one way to beat each boss (especially in Color Splash where only certain Things can damage certain bosses at all), one solution for each level (each one requires one or more specific stickers to solve puzzles) and a world map where progression is dead linear, despite initially appearing otherwise. You also drop dead on the spot if you ever end up out of bounds too.
That makes for two games which are very uninteresting to replay, and have very little speedrun community so to speak of. It also falls into a lot of the traps TellTale games do too; Color Splash's map looks open with a bunch of branching paths, but after a short while you realise it's just a complete illusion, there's no freedom here whatsoever. Every level past about level 3 has to be tackled in a certain order, with no real divergence allowed.
The end result is that the games are about as paper thin in terms of mechanics and replayability as the art style itself.
I think that just nostalgia alone can make you replay a game several times. I had dk tropical freeze for Christmas and since Hé reminds me of this period, I Come back to it every year
Fire Emblem is extremely replayable. With a playable cast of usually 40+ characters (over 70 in FE12, wow) and a limited of around 12 you can use at a time, your playthroughs can be very different just by changing up your main squad. And this is before you start thinking about the high level play of 0% growths mods and doing low turn count runs.
FE awakening and fates also gives more replayability due to the many combinations you can pair certain couples and their kids
And Three houses has multiple paths in the game, its almost like you have 3+ games in one package
15:52 - _"That's the worst name I've ever heard."_
VPNs sound like a great way to give a specific company access to phishing through my data. Encryption doesn't mean squat if the people who encrypt it are also the people who can see the encrypted data and have the means to decrypt that data.
I mean, sure, but would you rather have just the one company phishing through your data, or multiple?
Love the detail in this video but tbh i don’t think some of the kinds of games mentioned here can be replayed. Games with fan generated content like Mario maker 2 can be experienced by just playing new levels. In that sense you are endlessly playing a game rather than replaying it. The same goes for multiplayer games like overwatch where the experience can be vastly different from game to game. Replaying a game to some extent means that you finished playing and then played again. You don’t really finish playing overwatch or Minecraft.
I would love to see a whole video centered around user generated content, sounds like a topic worth discussing in its own standalone video
A game that does that job pretty good is Styx 2, a infiltration game. Every mission has medals for stealth, speed, mercy or greed, so once you've completed it, you can try it again. You know the level now, but you have to re-think entirely your approach : "how can I pass this guard whithout killing it ? How to do this goal in less than 5 min ?" It really encourages to discover the level, and to use all your skillset, while having differents goals.
Hades is probably my favorite roguelike I've played in a long time. I loved how they incorporated multiple playthroughs into the story and mythos.
Unless you have previous experience with the game you're probably not going to make it to the end in one run and even if you did you'd be doing a great disservice in not revisiting it again as there's so much story in the game to discover based simply on the boons you choose to take and it's still in its early access phase. The more you interact with a certain god/character the more you learn about them which keeps me coming back over and over again and thats not even mentioning the phenomenal art, atmosphere and music.
Supergiant let me date Artemis you cowards.
It’s pretty funny that a character called meta knight was the best thing in the ssb brawl meta
I wish you would have talked more about making cinematic action games or other story based game replayable. There are some cinematic action games and other story based games which are so goo that some people still play them, almost on an annual basis, despite knowing how it ends. It's almost like a good movie. What makes a cinematic game like that?
I think there might be a 4th quality of replayability… length.
Maybe it's just me, but the longer it takes to actually paly a game from beginning to end, the less like I find myself willing to commit to that time investment all over again. A game that takes me dozens of hours to finish is something I might replay once or maybe even twice if it's of exceptional quality, but most often the first time through is also the last. Whereas a shorter game, especially one that I can play all the way through in a single sitting, is something that I can replay dozens of times over and still look forward to revisiting dozens times more.
There are only 3 games where I replayed and are longer than 4 hours when semi-speedrunning (go fast, but for example don't skip a power-up that makes the game easier, but skip cutscenes etc). And games that I replayed the most are under 2 hours.
It's kind of obvious, but it should be mentioned that the quality of a game plays another large role in replayability. Some people will want to replay an incredibly linear game like Uncharted because the story, characters, gameplay, etc. were so fun, despite the diminishing returns, whereas a purely multiplayer game, such as Sony All Stars (I have nothing against this game, personally), which is inherently replayable, may not be able to sustain interest or draw it in the first place.
Perhaps you could do a video on playability? Or are many of them already based on that topic? In any case, playability comes before replayability, and a single-player game should always be more concerned with incentivizing the player to go through the game once than with incentivizing multiple playthroughs.
On a side note, I think something like dullness or repetitiveness can be mentioned on the topic of replayability. Sure, an open world game like Grand Theft Auto gives the player a lot of options, but I can only hijack so many cars and run over so many people before it becomes boring, even if the game creates an environment and many ways to accomplish these tasks. It's cool if I can do an infinite number of tasks and all, but these tasks need to stay fun. Who can forget No Man's Sky and it's trillions of planets? Most gamers, upon No Man's Sky's initial release, could hardly visit a dozen of these trillions of planets before they got bored and quit. For this reason, it's important to remember that quality can and usually does matter more than quantity when it comes to replayability.
Final Fantasy Tactics bro! That games got so much depth from characters classes to skills. I probably put in hundreds of hours into that game!
I love fft but it has some dominant strategy issues, in order to keep up the challenge you have to place restrictions on yourself
@@uaenruotel I divide the exp between a good amount of units. The game can be extremely easy fast if you dedicate 1 or 2 characters to level up the fastest.
8:05 - “like Warcraft 3” ooft. Maybe not the best example any more lol
especially the refunded edition
There may be a distinct difference between replayable and revisiting. I define replayable as playing a game right after you beat it and revisiting as jumping back into a game sometime after you beat just to play it again. Games like 2D Mario and Sonic, Halo, and Uncharted fits the bill there. They're linear games that once you beat them, that's it, but they're just fun enough that you can play through them again and appreciate them for the classics they are.
And then for me because I'm a trophy collector, I revisit some of these games just so I can platinum them. But that's if the game was fun enough to play! ^w^
two things: a good gameplay loop and as little story as possible.
one more thing that helps is well adjusted difficulty settings.
a game that nails all three aspects on the campaign mode is ninja gaiden black. specially the difficulty setting thing. I love how instead of just changing stats on the enemies (like gears of war does, doubling their damage and health depending on difficulty), they swap enemies for more powerful and versatile equivalents. Not just changed numbers, the whole enemy behavior and patterns change, and so does their appearance (well, it's a new enemy filling each role). it's awesome. I wish every game had that level of care for difficulty settings.
GraveUypo first I agreed with the ”two things” and then you nailed it with mentioning Ninja Gaiden! :D I still have my old Xbox just to be able to play Ninja gaiden. The world is fascinating and getting better at the game is so rewarding, far beyond any rank system has ever given me.
I feel like it's a common pick, but one of my favorite games to go back to is Skyrim. I hardly ever finish full playthroughs anymore because the main story isn't super interesting, but I've gone back to try new races and new builds more times than I can remember
Dead cells is a really fun replayable game, with all the different weapons and tools you can get in a run every game is different
One factor that makes a big difference for single player games is having some way for the player to make the game harder on the second playthrough. Most commonly that means an explicit "hard mode" (or better yet, more granular modifiers), but it can also be stuff like level rankings, max health/ammo pickups you can choose to skip, skill points you can choose not to spend (without just tanking your offence), sequence breaks, or more. Like you said with speedrunning, sometimes this won't even be intentional on the dev's part, but putting it in on purpose does help.
Allow me to mention Shin Megami Tensei : Devil Survivor and also Devil Survivor 2. The main source of replayability comes from its Demon compendium. First, you can choose which demon you want in your party (if you have and can use the demon of course). Each demon has racial skill and personal skill plus personal resistance and vulnerability. This combination changes how player battles against other demons and demon users. In new game, player could change demon set used in 1st gameplay to try something new. Oh I should mention that demons gained in 1st play can be carried to new game+ :). Second, the game has multiple endings which requires doing certain things and at final chapter player will be asked which path to choose to get specific ending. Player who has gained one ending could choose different ending in next play, by doing correct things to get it of course. Third, Devil Survivor 2 has unlockables which can only be gained on New Game+.
I think we need a bigger discusion for this topic this one is really complex because it depends of the player
Yes some players rush through a level, some players will willingly replay a level. Some players like me will try to do be better or do it different. I can enjoy this. Some players hate this. The 16 types of Meyers Briggs personality types has a type that will willingly practice and another type that hates to practice and absolutely will not practice. Even if you have no knowledge or curiosity about these personality types, you gave seen these two types of persons in real life.
@@eastlynburkholder3559 What letters are associated with these traits? I LOVE Meyers-Briggs so I'm super curious now
@@beardlessdragon I can not look it up right now (intp), error check me, will practice and will try to gain skills even without score increases. Intp is called the engineer and about 3% of the population is this type and 3/4 of those are male. If one is a female intp , one is an odd duck no matter where one goes. I wish I had known about Myers briggs types earlier in my life, might have made better choices or might have had less pain.
The race car driver thrill seeker type performer ( e?j? ) hates to practice and will not if there is any way around it and when they love something, they hardly need practice for they just display a knack for it. And if they do not like doing it they might be very bad at it or might do the most superficial, barely passable job ever. Look for the type that craves novelty and is said to be a good performer naturally.
This is the best I can do tonight. Every one have a great day.
One issue I noticed he didn't really cover is length of main campaign playthrough.
I've played through CT & SMRPG more times than FFX or the Paper Marios even though I like the later games more simply because a full playthrough takes longer.
@@KitCloud1 while this can be a factor, I think this is also personal preference. some people love long games and don't mind sinking tons of time, even if they've played it before
Tetris is the most repayable game for me. I've always liked tetris growing up but the past 2ish years I've been playing almost everyday and regularly place in the top 10 daily high score leaderboards
I feel like 70-80% of the games I go back and replay are some of those single player narrative games that have little new content to provide the player. I replay them to experience the story again, to see anything I may have missed or catch plot details I wouldn't have had knowledge of prior, which is also why I rarely skip cut scenes when replaying. The remaining 20-30% are also single player games but offer the player extra content on replay like upgrades, unlockable skills or weapons, new modes, etc.
The Battle Cats is a great example of replayability in evolution, even being a single-player game. Though at first it looks like a cute cat game with cartoon drawings, as players look deeper into the game they realize the huge, HUGE amount of content there is.
There are different classes of cats, and as players continue (the game is not easy btw, it presents challenge at every corner) they start to learn how to arrange their armies, where to put certain shield units, attackers, backliners, etc. As more stages are completed, cats can quite literally evolve, gaining new abilities and changing how players can use them in battle. No two strategies of a certain battle are the same due to the great balance in the game.
Also, as I noted before, The Battle Cats has SO MUCH content: 3 full story chapters, each with 144 different stages, hundreds of subchapters in the Legend stages, monthly events, anniversary events, season events, dojo mode with leaderboards, and special battles on certain days that let you evolve cats or unlock new variations that help you in battle. There are also constant updates and revisions all the time which keep players (like myself) coming back. Woah that was a lot lol
The video is live for less than a minute and has a downvote already. How and why?
because i can't stand his voice, nor could i stan the video
reddit
Haters gonna hate.
@@lunapage871 Who is the evildoer that's forcing you to watch the video then?
sean thewise Loser
This was definetly one of the Main weaknesses of Megaman 11.
That last shot with Tetris is funny because that’s just what I was gonna bring up. I’m interested in trying to make a similar style sort of replayable very small scale game and it’s interesting looking at how some games like this are incredibly famous where others are just seen as useless App Store bloat.
Final Fantasy 5 is probably the game I've replayed the most. Yeah there's unskippable cutscenes, but there's a huge amount of replay value in the game's job system. Being able to pair jobs in different ways and maybe discover combos I didn't know about are why I love the Four Job Fiesta so much.
Please make an episode on how to design a fun, engaging game
One of my favorite games of all time is Xenoblade on the Wii: and as much I love the game, as much do I think the NG+ is completely unnecessary. The story restarts, all sidequests reset(some have choices but most don't).
Your party stays the same:you can take a lot of your items with you and the levels stay the same.(you still have to unlock them) But every enemy stays the same as well. And there is not much to compensate this. Running though the first area with lv80 is not fun. But even if it would be fun, it's the same as starting my normal savefile and quicktravel to the start. There is no hard mode either.
the only funny thing is that all story-based equipment gets swapped out by your current gear(including cutscenes)
NG+ is like playing pokemon but you cheat your starter to lv100
A wonderful point there. Its a shame that nowadays everybody asks for NG+ in ever god damn game (most often in RPGs). NG+ shouldnt be a thing for a game that isnt build around replayabilty. Two examples: Persona games are pretty good examples how to implement NG+ because they create the game with that mechanic in mind. Kingdom Hearts is a really bad example on why to not cater to certain people and implement a NG+. It just doesnt have any purpose at all (like your Xenoblade example as well). People need to stop asking for NG+ because in all honesty, maybe only a handfull of games every really benefited from that feature. The devs themselves will decide if a game needs it or not.
@@15Seili
At worst, NG+ is pointless (and costs some development time that could have gone elsewhere). On the other hand, as features go, it's pretty cheap - if you have a game where it's possible for someone with enough determination to hit the level cap in the tutorial zone then you already need to test all the abilities gained from levels for crashes and boundary breaks in the rest of the game anyway, and you don't particularly need to worry about game balance on a NG+ run.
The question is more whether there's a compelling reason not to provide players with that option - you personally may not enjoy wandering through the game's story, breezing through every encounter, but does that mean those who do enjoy it shouldn't have that option? There are players who will never play KH3 Critical Mode - does that mean that the game should only have Beginner difficulty?
In addition to the obvious benefits of offering an even easier difficulty (for those who've already completed it), NG+ where you carry over levels gained allows for a more interesting way to reach the level cap than grinding during the post-game content. Or it can allow you to skip some chores in a game - personally, I have no interest in replaying Frozen Slider from KH3 now that I've managed to get the 10 treasures needed for the Orichalcum+ needed to synthesise Ultima Weapon - that alone would justify NG+ in KH3 for my purposes.
Not every feature in a game needs to be for you for it to be a good feature for the game to have.
@@rmsgrey
If the story does not interest you, if the beginning levels seem too easy or are filled with activities you do not like, it seems that the game is a bad fit for you. Rather than alter the game to start at a higher level why not just go to a different game.
Something I don't think is talked about enough regarding dominant strategy in single-player games is difficulty. Some of the late-game fights in Dream Drop Distance, for example, are so frustratingly difficult and unforgiving that you're actively discouraged from trying new things and have to resort to using the same spammy moveset if you don't want to lose progress and be pushed back to the start of a lengthy boss fight.
I honestly love Taro Yoko's approach to replayability. To begin with, one of his game design policies is to create something new every time - in his eyes, a "more is better" sequel is a failure. There has to be something new in every game he works on. Second, he integrates replayability into his projects as a core mechanic - you don't just find out interesting trivia if you go into NG+, you are highly encouraged to do so in order to understand the games' plot. Nier: Automata wouldn't be itself if it didn't have five main endings and 21 "funny" ones, and AFAIK other games in his Drakengard/Nier universe abide by the same rules (haven't played them, unfortunately). Hopefully, when I'm a game designer, I can put out quality works like that as well!
I think you're mistaken. There are only two ways to play Skyrim: Stealth archer with some melee build and stealth archer and some mage build
I would like to put forth the third way: “Gimmicky shenanigans to punch everything to death”
"Ace attorney linear makes it unreplayable"
Meanwhile me replaying Apollo Justice case 1 ten times already 😂
Games I've always thought were quite replayable but more on a "I'll play this every year or so" level are games with great narratives. The one that always comes to mind is Final Fantasy X. While the gameplay and story stay the same with each playthrough, it's just nice to have that story told again and to re-experience it every now and then. Great video!
This was a really enjoyable video and all your points on what increases or decreases replayability were well explained.
What I think you have overlooked is a distinction in a type of replayability, match replayability vs narrative replayability.
The best place i can think of to show this is the pokemon series, match replayability would be 'how much fun is it to battle other players on online battles, and how much fun is the battle tower'. I call it match replyability as you have a 'match' against a player or AI again and again. Here, narrative replayability is things like nuuzzlocking, speedrunning or just trying the game with a different strater/team. It's narrative because you experience the narrative again and again.
I think these two different styles of replayability have an important distinction, as very few games excel at both.
COD excels at match replayability, but I've never heard of someone wanting to replay the campaigns. Chess would be a game which only has match replayability.
To see what your game may have, think about what folks call the 'core gameplay loop', what is the thing which players do repeatedly that is fun, and what ways can players shake up that loop to make it interesting?
your videos are always really inspirational to me
keep up the good work ;)
Sonic Adventure 2. It successfully integrates the Ranking System, by giving 5 possible grades for each of the 5 missions in each of the 31 stages. It also adds re-playability by making some paths or obstacles in early levels only conquerable with a power-up found later in the game. In the Gamecube version, Sonic Adventure 2: Battle, multiplayer was added, allowing players to battle each other in mechs, race each other through various levels, and even added kart racing.
For Roguelike games it's also a really good idea to have your items synergize. It makes runs memorable and even more diverse, but it also adds a strong layer of strategy. Binding of Isaac and Enter the Gungeon are both wonderful examples of this in action
Risk of Rain is also a wonderful example of this
@@b2198.And then we've got the king of roguelikes, Dead Cells
Glad you showed a ton of footage from hades. That is my top pick for a replayable game. My Steam version of the game (I have it on EGS too but it doesn't record time played) has over 90 hours on it and you can complete a run in about 20 minutes on average. That's a LOT of runs I've done because you've got a ton of choices to make about what gods to try and patron, what weapon to use, Pact of Punishment mods and even playstyles like my personal favorite the Dash Only run.
A poisonous thing for me are games that rely on player induced experimentation, but also expect massive time sinks into the game's story that said experimentation relies on (Persona, Catherine, Infamous, Detroit: Become Human). If it doesn't come off as intimidating for newcomers, it becomes exhausting for those who don't have all that time to invest in a game they'd otherwise enjoy even for the story.
My favorite flavor or replayability comes from the Monster Hunter games. Picking a diferent weapon completely changes how you play the game and it is one of my favorite games ever.
The old RaC games are one of my favorite examples of replayabilty via evolution. Going from rookie to speedrunner is one of the best feelings ever. Or that one player who plays no strafe for the challenge or a diferent experience in gameplay like no strafe. A feeling that the modern tittles are missing.
The Ratchet & Clank series New game + mode is the first example that comes to my mind when I think of good replayability.
First of all, the mode unlocks more upgrades for your weapons, and in some cases whole new weapons. Not only that, but you start the game again with your full artillery this time, where previously you had to unlock new wepons progressively. Essentially, this means that you go through the same planets with much more tools than during your first run, adding Novelty.
This added novelty also increases your Creativity options, as you can now approach some problems in unique ways. One challenge I like to make for mysely for instance is imposing me a limited number of weapons for a whole level. This means that I have to stick to my initial decision which might not always be the most optimal, but forces me sometimes to approach the challenges in new ways. However, I wouldn't call any of the games systemic per say as the systems still feel quite limited for the most part. So, most of your creative options might boil down to something like "get closer to the boss in order to hit it with this weapon" instead of something crazy like "change this ennemy into a sheep in order to attract wild predators who will then attack the other guards, allowing you to sneak in without firing a single bullet". In fact, now that I think about it, this might be where there is more room for improvement in that regard (you listenin' Insomniac?).
Finally, when it comes to Evolution, the games have a system in place encouraging mastery: the bolt multiplier. If you manage to kill multiple ennemies without being hit, the number of bolts (the games' currency) you earn will be multiplied by roughly the same amount of ennemies you've defeated without being hit. Therfore, trying to keep this multiplier as high as possible for as long as possible can feel like quite the accomplishment sometimes.
Anyway, thanks for the video! It's a fun exercise to look back at some games through those 3 categories in order to assess their replayability!
One of my favorite games that I've played again and again is Persona 3. One thing that keeps me coming back is the fact that there are some features that the player can't even access until a second playthrough, like a huge, challenging bonus dungeon. Also (at least in the PSP version) you can have a special cut-scene at the end of the game where you interact with your boy or girlfriend, which is a nice bonus. There are slightly different ending scenes based upon who your character dates throughout the game.
These are four random games I could think of to represent being good with high replayability, good with low replayability, bad with high replayability, and bad with low replayability, in my opinion, and why.
Good/High: Radiant Silvergun. Radiant Silvergun is one of the best shmups ever made and maybe one of the greatest games out there. It's high replayability comes from a combination of weapon use and pattern recognition, figuring out what weapons are best to use and when, and memorizing the patterns of enemy attacks to survive longer and play more efficiently each time.
Good/Low: Okami. Okami is another one of my personal favorites, but as much as I love it, I feel like many design choices hold it back from being a great game to constantly revisit. For one, the simplest reason, the game is just too long to want to play again, at least until a long enough period of time has passed. Not having the same kind of level-up system as many other action rpgs also means that it's not hard to reach maximum potential in an already, admittedly, not particularly difficult game in the way of not dying or in combat portions(the challenge comes from puzzles that, once you've solved once, you've solved forever). The story is also the kind that you only really need to experience once and there will not be many surprises on repeat playthroughs.
Bad/High: Mega Man X6. Mega Man X6 is kinda terrible. That's no secret, though it is also still a Mega Man game, and Mega Man games inherently have high replayability, that being no different here. Mega Man X6 might even be one of the most highly replayable Mega Man games solely because it is so frustrating and terrible. The ridiculous(and unfair) challenge presented in Mega Man X6 is the kind that, while agonizing the first time through, I find becomes surprisingly fun to learn and get better at dealing with the more the game is played.
Bad/Low: Sonic Forces. I want to make it known first and foremost that I actually generally really love Sonic games... take from that what you will. I'm not a Sonic hater, far from it actually. All that being said, Sonic Forces provides maybe the least amount of replayability out of the Sonic series, a series partly know for its replayability. The game is pitifully easy, there's next to no incentive not to just choose the one best wispon and never change out of it, S-ranks are not hard to accomplish, and the whole game feels like an automated sequence zooming down a single hallway to the end with little resistance or player skill required.
Fact that’ll trigger you: Sonic Forces was intentionally easy.
Otherwise yeah Forces is pretty bland.
@@Z-G.-2000 Just because a game is easy, that doesn't mean that it's bad or that I hate it. The Kirby series is one of my absolute favorites and one that I think has provided mostly consistent quality throughout its lifetime, albeit with a few entries here and there that I dislike, some I even hate. I even mentioned that I don't find Okami particularly hard either, but it's still one of my favorite games ever made. Sonic Forces is just completely lacking in any substance.
Yeah, I’m aware. Still, intentionally making levels straight lines... yeah I’ll pass on this.
The games I replay have a world I love being in and are simple enough to just finish in it's entirety or play through in comfy little chunks. Spyro, Crash, Mario,Sonic are the games where you can just sit down and immerse for a day or two and find satisfaction in it's core gameplay and the world you play in.
Finding a good point to feel accomplished is why sometimes I'll play for another hour in say an RPG not to find a save point but to feel like I can end it well for the session, 1st time or 5th time playing. Some games have easy to digest "chapters" or arcs that feel nice to stop on, I will happily replay a game that feels good to experience in such segments.
Battleborn was an amazingly fun game with tons of great characters, almost all of whom were a blast to play!
...It also had multiple meta-knight level characters in it. Once the meta developed about a month into the game's run and you started encountering Thorn AND Milo in every single match it was pretty much over.
I actually don't think every game NEEDS to be replayable. I remember a big criticism about the Telltale games, is that ultimately your choices don't matter much beyond a few small details, a slightly different party, and the like, but those games DO genuinely create the illusion of all your choices having weight and consequence on your first playthrough. That's good enough for me.
The boss rush challenge in Kirby series games has always been one of my favorite examples of replayability. Learning the patterns of all the bosses, mastery over differing Copy Abilities and figuring out how to complete boss fights in as little time as possible with the tools each ability grants you. Almost every main series Kirby title has featured a boss rush challenge, and I find myself constantly revisiting titles to test my skills and learn how to make the most out of different Copy Abilities against different sets of bosses. It's why the series is so easy to build upon; a new set of bosses, or even old ones with tweaks and new mechanics, against a large variety of both brand new and older, revised movesets is enough to push a new title to great heights. I've always likened the series more to a beat-em-up than a platformer for that very reason; the main campaign is a very easy adventure, but the true depth of the game always lies with its boss fights.
I like your section about clockwork systems impacting creativity. It reminds me of how Pokemon of all games can be limiting due to gym leaders and major bosses using healing items, and as a result discourages status moves in favor of over leveling
I think you overlooked some major elements that can make a game replayable (or not), which are those they can share with books and films. A compelling and dense enough narrative or message (in or out of the actual ludic medium- As in, in terms of the plot, divorced from the gameplay, as in most JRPGs, or in terms of the plot served by or told entirely through the gameplay, as in something like Papers, Please, or anything in between those extremes) can be satisfying to periodically revisit regardless of any kind of dynamic factor like those you talked about. Or better yet, a well-designed narrative (or ludo-narrative) can practically REQUIRE multiple passes to digest, either because of details that form cases of dramatic irony but only with the context of information that becomes available to the audience later (foreshadowing of any kind being the cheapest form of this), or simply because the symbolism is tough enough to dissect (like the film Angel's Egg, which is like a case study in difficult narrative- It's a 75-minute animated film with about half of its runtime being long silences where nothing happens, and it still takes most people at least a few watches to start to get a grip on what's actually being said).
I can think of plenty of examples of the first two in games (and for an obvious one, it shouldn't come as any surprise that The Witcher 3, renowned for its storytelling, easily qualifies for the first two, that is, details or motifs with significance that only becomes clear on successive playthroughs, and simply being appealing enough to experience again), but the last one is a lot tougher to find in games (and, to be fair, in books and films as well, though there are certainly authors that are well known for it).
Also I guess it probably doesn't actually go without saying that it doesn't have to be strictly narrative that drives something to be compelling enough to revisit periodically. Just as in film, or any other artform, any kind of beauty that inspires strong positive or cathartic emotion can beckon the audience back months or years after they're "done" with something. Dragon's Dogma is a good example for me- It's a really rough, clearly unfinished game with a fairly generic plot, and I've done pretty much everything there is to do in it gameplay-wise even with its fairly complex class system and moderately emergent style of gameplay, but sometimes the emotion I get from its music cues cutting in at certain moments during gameplay is just something I want to feel again.
A key part in those community challenges is, well, if they’re possible. If a game’s rules are too strict, you won’t be able to even start a challenge.
That’s one of the many things I love about BoTW- the game is so free and unrestrictive in its rules that you can really make up any challenge you want!