What's an old game you've come back to years later?

Left 4 Dead 2 has a new campaign called The Last Stand. RuneScape is coming to Steam. Crysis has been remastered. The early Metal Gears have been rereleased. Old games refuse to die, and keep crawling back into the light to distract us from our backlog of new games. 

What’s an old game you’ve come back to years later? One that you’ve returned to, perhaps because of an update. How did it compare to your memories?

Here are our answers, plus a few from our forum.

(Image credit: Blizzard)

Alan Dexter: WoW has been around since 2004, and I’ve played it fairly religiously since release (bar a six month break at the beginning, because… well… I was levelling a warrior and it was hell). I’ve recently found myself hitting the resubscribe button after more than a year’s break, purely to clear out my bags before Shadowlands drops. That was the plan at least. It sucked me straight back in of course, and I’m doing daily quests, running dungeons and raids, and generally chasing the purple gear monster down endless rabbit holes as if I’d never been away.

Tyler Wilde: It’s not that old, but what makes Tribes: Ascend an interesting game to return to is that many assume it’s dead and gone. Not so: You can still play Tribes: Ascend, even though it’s delisted from Steam. It won’t show up in searches, but the Steam page is still there and you can add it to your library and download it. Ignore the error message at launch and log in with a Hi-Rez account (the one I used back in 2011 still worked) and you’re good to go. There aren’t many people in the servers, but managed to get a half-full game of capture the flag going. It’s just as fun as I remembered, if bloated with weapons. (I have no recollection of when throwing knives were added, but I spent 10 minutes chasing a friend around with them.)

(Image credit: Pixel Games)

Chris Livingston: I just started playing California Games, the classic Epyx sports game from way back in 1988, which is now on Steam but I originally played on my Apple II when I was in high school. It sorta works, mostly, with an Xbox controller plugged in, kinda. There’s the half-pipe, BMX biking, surfing, roller skating, flying disc, and of course, “footbag,” which I assume they called it because Hacky Sack is a brand name.

I spent $5 and I played it once, and honestly I’ll probably play it a total of once more, because nostalgia will only carry you so far. Though the flying disc, or frisbee as everyone else calls it, is still pretty fun.

(Image credit: Warner Bros.)

Andy Chalk: I very rarely replay anything—I don’t have enough time to keep up with new games, much less revisit old stuff I’ve already been through – but one exception is FEAR. It’s an astoundingly good close-quarters shooter, with enemy AI that remains unsurpassed and one of the best shotguns in all of videogames. But what really does it for me is the absolutely off-the-hook visual chaos of its gunfights: There’s smoke and dust and broken glass and little bits of crapola flying everywhere while the guns blast and the lights flash and I can’t see a damn thing, so I just keep hosing the hallway and hope that whatever’s at the other end is dead by the time I run out of bullets.

source: gamezpot.com