Since I’m still kind of in that lull of figuring out what to play next, I’ve been kinda picking through my library trying to see if there’s something I’d like to replay. I’d settled on Super Paper Mario previously, but my Wiimote finally died, so I gotta go for something else until I can get it replaced. And, as I was looking through all my old games, I found that there were a lot that I absolutely loved but just could not bring myself to start up again. Like, as if there was some sort of emotional block that just wouldn’t allow it. Weird, yeah?

The first game I thought I’d touch back on is Transistor. Transistor might just be on the shortlist for my personal best games ever. I absolutely love everything about that game, from the music to the characters to the visuals.

And that gameplay! It clicked with me so well that I stuck around and developed my own combos, loadouts and strats! I dove so far into it that I could probably have called myself a master at the time! …and I just can’tbring myself to play it again. It’s not that I’m tired of it. I’m sure I’d have a ton of fun with the combat again. It just feels like…that chapter is over I guess. Like Transistor had its day, and now its place is in the past. I’m not fully sure, but I guess that’s kind of where it’s at.

I’ve long felt similarly about the Mass Effect games, but I think that’s more just me tying those games to my high school and college self. Mass Effect was probably the most important game of them all to me at the time, to the point where I’d played through ME1 and ME2 more than 5 times each, was buying merch, doodling and even reading fanfiction stories about it in my spare time. I was all in on Mass Effect until I just…wasn’t anymore. Mass Effect 3’s original ending basically broke the spell for me and now I just look at as a period I don’t necessarily want to revisit. Great games, but I just can’t anymore.

The last one I want to talk about is Nier: Automata. This is another game that I absolutelylove to death but probably won’t play again. Just like with Mass Effect, it’s probably because I’ve got more than a few memories wrapped up in it. See, it’s come to represent the time when I was living with my two best friends and we were all hanging out in our apartment’s living room gaming it up nightly.

It really was a blast of a time! But life goes on and we all had to move out of that apartment eventually, and now we all live on opposite side of the globe. Right now, thinking about Nier: Automata brings those couple of years back in vivid detail, and I guess I don’t want to compromise that by playing it again now. Another reason is the ending, I suppose. Nier: Automata ended so powerfully that I kind of also want to preserve that in some weird way.

I kind of wish I hadn’t gone and gotten these games all mixed up in memory and emotion, but at the same time, I don’t think I could have done differently. It’s just what I do with media, I guess. And, who knows, maybe the time to unseal these time capsules will eventually come. You never know, right?

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Are there any games that you either can’t play anymore or have come to house certain memories? Are there any other reasons why you might not revisit an otherwise good game?

Header image captured by Hatmonster