taste me, as the food and drink Alice found almost said. she was cast unto a stormshorn sunderedsea. you too will fall beneath my waves in time.


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armormodekeeg
@armormodekeeg

remember when this was a phrase people would use when evaluating games? the idea that you'd beat a game and then play it again, and how enjoyable an experience you'd have on this second play? we need to bring that shit back instead of letting people who write or talk about games act like games spontaneously combust as soon as the credits roll. "the game is only 1/2/4/10 hours long" No The Fuck It Is not


but what is good replay value anyway? IMO it's not just having content that can only be experienced across multiple playthroughs, or having achievements for playing on higher difficulties. a game with all this can still have gameplay that gets rote and boring when repeated, and I'd say that has poor replay value.
things to look for in determining replay value:

  • does the players' experience change with the understanding gained from a finished playthrough? does a player with experience play meaningfully differently than one without?
  • can a player make different decisions during gameplay, short or long term, that notably affect game state? how many different ways can the player approach the game?
  • can a player skip cutscenes and dialogue? how about tutorials?
  • is there a level/chapter select system? is it easy to replay specific parts rather than the whole game?
    things like story routes, difficulty levels, etc. can still certainly add to replay value, of course! it's just important to consider how well the game supports them and how much the experience holds up

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in reply to @armormodekeeg's post:

Part of why I sunk 250+ hours into Max Payne 3 is because of this, at least with mods to skip cutscenes

Inexperienced players will probably play it like a cover shooter and constantly be running out of bullet time. They're still learning the game's various oddities and mechanics, and getting jumped by some admittedly BS until memorized enemy spawns.

Experienced players can absolutely pull off amazing things once they memorize all the enemy spawns, realize that dodge-roll is very spammy and good for mobility when bullet time is active, and get used to how bullet time is only rewarded for kills outside of bullet time (line up headshot in bullet time, turn it off, then open fire). Once experience is gained, the player's playstyle will be far more aggressive instead of "cover shooter" style.

Skip Cutscenes Mod makes even more of the cutscenes skippable, although some cutscenes are unsafe to skip until they play out to a specific point

There's level/chapter select, and even an arcade mode. Arcade mode always puts you right at the first gunfight of every chapter, letting you skip the "story" segments where you're just walking around. Either mode (Story/Arcade) is replayable because you can pick which level you want to replay.

Max Payne 3's replayability also benefits from being a linear third-person shooter, there is no open-world emptiness where you're constantly doing nothing but driving Point A to Point B so you can finally fight somebody. I always disliked that about Grand Theft Auto V. Too much time wasted with all this driving-around doing nothing.

Max Payne 3 is certainly flawed, but I can tolerate those flaws so I can enjoy the absolute best combat Rockstar Games has ever put into their games.

sometimes i feel like the whole roguelike genres as they exist right now were a way to be like "here are the things you play more than once" as a kind of response to long games that most players dont finish once much less replay. the growth of speedrunning too, maybe. but thats even more speculative

i remember when i had a game informer subscription circa... 2008-2012ish? and they would list replay value for things they'd review....

i remember having a similar feeling about that back then, too. some games are meant for replay, some are linear and more of a 'replay maybe a year or two later to revisit it' thing.

sometimes i wonder if they meant more of a like, indicator of whether you'd pick it up after putting it down (not necessarily 'finish', just stopping after a session of play)... maybe not! but i feel like it'd be more useful than the alternative.