T w e n t y S i d e d

Jay Barnson poses the question:

John Carmack tackled a question like this once in an interview, and he dodged it by suggesting he’d rather have a compiler than a game, because if he has a compiler he can just make whatever game he fancies playing. Good answer, and I suppose I’d give the same one if it didn’t defeat the purpose of asking the question. So what we really want to know is what three games have the most replay value. Each game has to provide a year’s worth of replay, so it’s gotta have major replay. “Has an alternate ending” isn’t nearly good enough. We need games that are ever-changing.

Here are my choices, in no particular order:

• Galactic Civilizations 2 – We need some sort of “civ” game. They offer long games, lots of ways to play, and lots of starting scenarios. GalCiv 2 offers all of this, plus a diverting little ship builder and some fierce AI.
• Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 – I’ll also want a “sim” game, since these have lots of replay value. RCT 3 wins over “Sim City” and its cousins because of the variety of gameplay. There is the “building” part of the game, the financial sim part of the game, the “design and ride your own coaster” part of the game, and the “see how many people you can explode at once” part of the game. That should keep me plenty busy.
• Latest Unreal Tournament, whatever version that is: The game itself is fun, but the most important feature for me is that it comes with the level editor. I’ll probably spend most of my time on this Island dying of malnutrition, exposure, and infection building levels. This is a highly rewarding activity and can offer more diversion than any game. If I’m allowed to download the contents of the Wiki before I go, I’ll be able to make an endless variety of mods and changes to keep the game fresh and new.

I considered Nethack, but really that game is only fun in limited doses. Once every couple of years I’ll get the latest version and play it for a couple of weeks. I burn out on it easily, and it can be more than a little frustrating.

I thought about Oblivion, but it’s just not nearly as deep as it seems at first glance. I played it for about a month, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it all. The game would be worthless without several user-made patches that fix the various flukes, interface flaws, and bugs within the game. So I guess Oblivion would be worth consideration if I’d never played it before and I was allowed to download all of the user mods. Even then, I don’t think it has the depth to make the cut. The editor is a miserable cuss to use, so I wouldn’t want to spend time making new content for myself.

Fallout would be an excellent choice, but I already played that thing to death. I doubt there is much that I have not already seen or done in that game. I’ve played as many types of characters with many different skills. I’ve visited all the locations and did all the little sidequests. I even had a game where I simply crusied around and tried to purge the entire world of life: Kill everyone, good guys, bad guys, animals, everything. This game would be a good choice if I hadn’t already worn it into the ground.

So I’m going to wind up on the island without an RPG. This is odd, since those are my favorite sorts of games. The problem is that there aren’t any left that I haven’t beaten to death.

Actually, I know what I’ll do: Use the Unreal editor (and notpad) and make myself an RPG in Unreal Tournament. Yeah. That sounds pretty cool.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.