What is a game you just keep thinking about...

Some games stick in your mind like a popcorn kernel, but a welcome popcorn kernel. A popcorn kernel that sends you on a quest purchasing popcorn wherever you can find it in the hope of getting another kernel in your pearly whites.

Maybe it's because some games do something unique and the genre evolves in a different direction. Maybe the developer didn't find success with that title and moved on. Or maybe the wonderful world of copyright has your favorite in a vice grip.

Regardless, what game sticks in your head? Routinely pops up and seemingly just won't leave?

I tend to suddenly remember Metal Gear Solid V and how fun it was to capture stuff on the battlefield and return it to my own base to use against the enemies. As occasional as the nemesis system pops into my mind from Shadow of Mordor, the capturing and build-up of forces in MGSV will always linger in my brain folds.

I mostly move on from games but I regularly wonder about another Dead Space, especially with todays lighting. That was a game I got by pure accident and it ended up being one of my favorite new properties of last gen. Then it was just left to kind of die and it really sucks.

Red Dead 2.

I think about how living in the open country would be great, tiresome, exciting and dangerous.

I want the outfits as well.

For me this is almost entirely soundtrack driven. I associate certain songs with games very strongly and I think about the game whenever I hear the song.

So I still haven't forgotten Aggressive Inline, even though everyone else has, because of Don't Sweat The Technique.

For similar reasons the Tony Hawk and Forza Horizon series pop into my head a lot, especially because I listen to songs from their soundtracks often.

I also think of Forza Horizon when I'm driving. That may be the winner there.

https://www.giantbomb.com/point-blank/3030-9281/

Most recently, Doom 2016 (soon after release) was something I didn't have any expectations for and beat in 2 extended sittings and got all of the achievements because it hooked me so hard. I still think about that, and upon trying to replay it after Doom Eternal came out for comparisons sake, it was a bit of a bummer. Still, I will reflect on that from time to time with just how much I enjoyed it for a number of reasons.

More long term, I still think about playing Final Fantasy 3 (Final Fantasy VI) on my SNES as an elementary school kid and specifically remember 3 scenes that will just come back to me randomly: 1) Kefka poisoning the water; 2) Kefka killing General Leo; and the biggest, 3) waiting for Shadow while escaping the Floating Island.

The Senran Kagura series overall, for making me the man of culture that I am today (for better and for worse), and that Sony/Jim Ryan is making it even more impossible for 7even and other niche games to be a thing.

Outer Wilds is something my partner and I discuss pretty regularly.

Diddy Kong Racing invades my dreams.

When Valheim first released I got so deep into Valheim that I started having dreams about Valheim. I had a similar thing with World Of Warcraft right after the last expansion was released last year. Typically when I have a target that I'm working towards in a game my brain starts overthinking the most efficient way to reach that goal, and the more creative and versatile the game is in allowing me to get there the more I will think about it.

When I'm bored or thinking, I'll occasionally tap out songs from video games from my childhood, specifically Quest for Glory and the theme from Chuck Rock. Probably do it once a week or so. If I'm whistling, it's probably the theme to Leisure Suit Larry. Similarly from my childhood, when I dream about flying, it generally mimics the cape from Super Mario World, that sort of rollercoaster dip.

On a more conscious level, good video game worlds tend to get stuck in my head often. Deus Ex, Final Fantasy VII, Borderlands (to a lesser extent), Fable, Fallout... that sort of thing. A lot of them inspire my work so it makes sense.

Any game with an soundtrack I love. Because I'll listen to it over and over again and it will remind me of the game. Bastion, FTL, Outer Wilds, Chrono Cross come to mind. Every time I listen to the supernova song from Outer Wilds I feel like I am going to die.

Sea Of Thieves, I've spent a ton of time in it and accomplished quite a lot by playing through game pass, but the ever hanging threat of someone coming along and ruining the fun because they get off on it always ruins my memories of it. It does so much so well, but when they announced they were never going to entertain PvE servers I finally lost my taste for it. I dream about what could have been (especially if it had been a Fallen London game, holy shit) and still feel the urge to go back, but being told flatly that they believe having your adventure ruined by assholes is part of the core design leaves a bad taste in my mouth too big to overcome.

I don’t think there’s any game that pops to my head on a weekly basis, but World of Warcraft gets close. It was such a big part of my life (for good and bad), that I doubt I can ever forget about it completely.

I guess I do think about Grim Fandango often enough-ish too. That game’s setting is still so unique to me and I can’t think of another game that would’ve come close to being that memorable for me. I recently replayed it from start to finish for the first time since it came out and I still remembered just about every detail from it.

I think about 7 people in the world think about this game, and I am one of them, and it's The Saboteur.

That game had such a vibe that no other game since has had for me. The Black/White color palette which only turned into color once you liberated an area, the soundtrack full of Nina Simone and Ella Fitzgerald, and the feeling of climbing around WWII Paris was just way too much sensory overdose for me. That's a game that I re-play every 3-4 years, and still enjoy it tremendously.

I was extremely bummed that game didn't do well, and Pandemic Studios soon went under after its release. Now that I think about it, I am still bummed about it.

Honestly, a lot. Whatever my current go to game is will generally be a big brain worm burrowing in. The current Hitman trilogy, Euro Truck, Trackmania, KSP and Civ are the worst for just springing up out of the blue even if I haven't touched them for a while. Outside of games themselves, I have to put the Outrun and Lotus Esprit soundtracks on very regularly to get a song out from being trapped in my noggin.

@daiphyer: Let's not pretend you're not actually thinking about that game's saucy DLC! Man would that particular piece of content not play in 2021.

The Saboteur is a game I only think about when I'm playing another open world game and it's bland. I don't think that it was truly great (the controls were so-so, the plot was only above average, the level design had issues, and the missions weren't the best) but man did ever have style. So many open world games just feel like sterile interpretations of Grand Theft Auto with all the humor and satire sucked out, with cities that are boring to be in, but The Saboteur is up there with Ghost of Tsushima in terms of having unique visual panache and a cohesive design. There are times when you're running along the rooftops of Paris that you can't help being sucked into the feeling of being in Nazi occupied France just because of how the game looks and sounds.

It's a super shame that the game tanked and took the studio down with it. A sequel could have ironed out the problems. Of course given how Mercenaries 2 turned out, I'm not sure I fully trust Pandemic to make a sequel better than the original, but hey, they deserved a chance.

If that studio were still around it would have had to change its name last year though. Yikes.

I also remember games based on how much I enjoyed the soundtrack while playing it, more so than the gameplay itself. So games I remember can be random based on if a certain tune pops in my head. Luckily, I have a lot of video game OSTs so when that occurs, I usually just listen to the music and get my enjoyment out of it. For example, a couple of days ago, I remembered Hook for the SNES based on how much I enjoyed the music.

13 sentinels has been living in my head rent free since I completed it back in January. I desperately want to experience more of that world.

Journey.

I hesitate to call any artistic effort transcendental but Journey stirred something in me that no game had done up to that point or has since. Everything about it is as close to flawless as I think you can get, it is the complete package. I think about it constantly and wish I could find something else that would do something similar.

Watching my girlfriend play through it for the first time last year was also a joyous experience.

Breath of the Wild and Silent Hill.. and I can never quite shake Mario music.

Space Rangers 2 always sticks out to my mind as a brilliant game. It's a mix of different genres blended together to produce something truly unique. It's the game most appropriate to be characterized as better than the sum of its parts.

I also think about Megaman Legends 2 because of how I enjoyed it as a child. I have played no other game like it ever since.

Alundra is also a game that I think about often because I truly believe it's a better game than A Link to the Past.

Death by Degrees...
I don't think there's a particular reason why, i hadn't played it until a few years ago, i tried to emulate it but it wouldn't run correctly, and i needed a new PS2 anyway because mine wasn't working and i wanted to play Tony Hawk's Underground too which also wouldn't emulate (it does now).
So i kinda got a new PS2 Slim to play Death by Degrees, i think that's why i think about it often, in the genre of tank control games it's one of my favourites :P.

Cheeky bonus answer, Robosaurus Versus The Space Bastards.

I often think about games I either never finished or just never even played, oddly enough. Must be the sense of untapped wonder.

For example, I think about Myst a lot, specifically the tree canopy area and the spaceship on the spaceport. And I barely played the game. My family mostly just gathered around to watch my mom play through it.

Don't kill me for this, but I think about Kingdom Hearts 1 a lot. There was a lunch table in 7th grade that was obsessed with it and would read the booklet and strategy guides during lunch, and I loved the look and name of the Gummy ship, and the idea that it was customizable (it was, right?). Here's the thing, though: I never played a second of any of the games, so my imagination isn't tarnished. I also have zero love or nostalgia for disney, so it's just the art style that gets me inspired.

The underrated game R.A.D. (Robot Alchemic Drive) for the PS2. It ran like total ass and I only had the demo, but I played it a dozen+ times. Still a concept that hasn't been done as well since. The full game gets insanely repetitive fairly quickly and (I only realized recently) the story is just a gamified copy of Evangelion's, sans-depression allegory. Maybe a demo was the best way to experience that game. Though, any time I see a robot game I imagine how much cooler it would be if I was a little character standing on a rooftop controlling one of them while the camera is locked to my character's viewpoint.

And lastly, Silent Hill. That game hit me hard. I had played RE 2, and 1, in that order as a kid, but instantaneously Silent Hill was both more compelling and bone-rattlingly terrifying. Also the art direction. As a kid I didn't understand good art, but kids are smarter than they get credit for sometimes, and I knew I just enjoyed the visuals far more than I did RE's. So Silent Hill pops in my head all the time, especially lately as PS1-aesthetic is experiencing a renaissance. The whole intro is golden and is a decent vertical slice of the whole game, complete with a swooping camera shot as you round a narrowing corner that you just haven't been able to get since then, as most games stopped using fixed camera angles.

Way of the Samurai. I love the core concept of it (something very short with tons of branching paths and divergent endings, so you can play it several times and it's different every time) and wish those sorts of games were more common.

Outer Wilds is a game that I finished over a year ago and I still think about it almost daily.

TLOU2 has been living rent-free in my mind since launch. everything from the performances, to the art design, to the music- it's got me.

oh also E. V. O.: Search for Eden. because that game is dope and weird and great.

In a good way- Doom Eternal because of how badass and cool the gameplay is .

In a bad way- Tlou2 because of how disappointingly bad the writing and characters turned out.

Oh, most people are talking about old games. So I'd say there's too many classic games I think about a lot cause I'm just a big video game dork.

Nier Automata is one I think about a lot, mostly for the music, but also the beauty of those stark environments (enhanced by the music). It is a game I constantly tell myself I should play some more of (I did get 25 of 26 endings, but that last one will take forever), but I never really do.

Apex Legends is one I used to think about in an almost unhealthy way. It really took hold of me in a way few games ever have. I haven't played since Season 3, though, so now I occasionally look fondly at the ads on the front page of the Xbox and say," Yeah, that was a good time," knowing I am too far out of the loop to get back in.

I also recently spent a lot of time digging into the lore of the Fallout Universe. I have played about half of the games, so I know things, but wanted to find some concise reads that tied together all the factions over the multiple games. I wasn't really looking to get back into the games, though.

Tokyo Jungle

Gabriel Knight 3, Dungeon Keeper, Black & White, Shogo, Re-volt, Final Fantasy 8, Escape from monkey island, Stupid Invaders.

Vagrant Story. It's a PS1 classic that I revisit annually. Intriguing story, subtle characterization, ambiguous scenarios and motivations, and an intensely customizable system for equipment and skills.

Tom and Jerry. Dunno why.

Red Dead Redemption 2. I download the game every three or four months to give Red Dead Online another shot, inevitably wind up hating how long it takes to do everything, and then come up on a day off and wind up spending five or six hours making basically zero progress towards anything and having an excellent time before uninstalling the game again.

I picture myself driving to the border of the map in ATV Offroad Fury for PS2 every so often when I'm stressed, lol.

Metal Gear Solid V is a good one. Sometimes I think about starting a new game, but I'm not sure what the state of that game's economy is or anything like that and also worry it's one of those games that's hard to forget how much more fun it is with all the upgrades.

EverQuest.

Greatest game ever made. Cant shake it.

Phantasy Star Online. I played the ever loving hell out of it on the Gamecube and I think about it almost every week. The music, the atmosphere, the characters, the slow reveal of the truth behind what was happening...man I miss it.

To me, it is Spec Ops: the Line. Yeah, the story is good and it has some great twists I won't spoil, but the acting, characters and environmental design elevates it far above other AAA games which try to say something (like Haze). Nolan North is at his absolute best in this game, and his slow fall is immaculately conveyed both in tone of voice and his face. The music is great, and there is a ton of stuff to unpack when you dig in there.

The setup of a Dubai, ravaged and abandoned because of sandstorms with people making bullets by melting silver and toys with silk gives such a unique sense of place, and it has some truly breathtaking skyboxes. With global warming and climate change only becoming a larger part of the conversation since it came out, as well as human rights abuses by middle eastern leadership or the US military still being a reality, the game has only gotten more relevant since it came out.

I have never actually played this game as I suck at shooters, but I have watched about 7-8 different people play through it, watched a ton of analysis and secrets videos, read "Killing is Harmless" which is a fan analysis of the game (I don't recommend it), watched and listened to interviews of Walter Williams, the lead writer of the game, read the entire TVTropes page and even seen a demo of a play some people were making based on it. I was borderline obsessed with it, and it truly has been life-changing for me and had a large effect on my worldview. I've since mellowed out, and haven't watched any cutscenes at least in a couple of years, but it still regularly pops into my mind.

Transistor would be second choice for me because of it's sung soundtrack, world and themes. I listen to "We all become", "In cicles", "the Spine", "Signals" and "Paper boats" at least once a week, and as someone interested in philosophy, there is a lot to unpack there, and it really makes me think about the nature of democracy, control and identity.

Also Red Dead 2

These are answers that popped into my head pretty immediately. I'm particularly pleased to see Alundra mentioned here, as I usually feel quite lonely flying the flag for that game. Vagrant Story is more widely recognised, but still nowhere near to the degree it deserves.

The fact I haven't finished, and likely never will, is a thorn on my gamer side.

Quest for Glory 2. You roll into a city of cat people to save them from elementals and an evil sorcerer while navigating a giant city with a paper map and asking everyone a series of direct questions. Oh and your Saurus is a sultan transformed into a saurus you buy from Groucho Marx.

I've been playing a ton of Morrowind since all those Bethesda games got released on GamePass. Maybe I'm crazy, but if people asked me which game of the Elder Scrolls series is the best, I think I'd always end up looping back to that one.

I mean, Skyrim is an objectively better game in a lot of ways. It's obviously better graphically, and it's way more accessible to a newcomer. But there's something about Morrowind that, even though it has a ton of obnoxious "I can't believe people used to make games like this" moments, makes me remember it more fondly and have a lot more fun playing through it again.

On the other end of the spectrum, Sekiro, which is a game that for some reason keeps getting a ton of praise. Normally, if I don't like a game, I'm at least capable of seeing what makes other people enjoy it, even if it isn't for me. But with Sekiro I just don't think I ever will understand what people see in it.

Antichamber

My partner recently finished The Witness, so we've been looking for vaguely similar puzzle games. I was reminded of Fez and Antichamber, which I played on a gaming laptop at the time. Both awesome games.

I do all my gaming on Xbox and Switch now and don't have a gaming PC, so I'm really happy that Fez just got released on Switch. Eventually I'll need to get a PC again and hook it up to the living room TV so I can replay the gems in my Steam library.

The Phoenix Wright games. There's nothing else like them.

Max Payne 1/2 - I end up replaying these every few years. Every time I think I would love a remake of these I realize if the graphics or presentation was changed it would lose its charm. God I love those games.

Titanfall 2 was such a fun experience. I think about it off and on.

STALKER franchise and its announced sequel. That first game was so foundational to modern survival games, and I'm always reminded of it when I see certain features in games. From Escape from Tarkov to Halo Infinite.

Dead Space 2, specifically the opening and Halo Infinite.

Fallout New Vegas, specifically the opening hours stretching from Goodsprings to the Mojave Outpost. I'm not known for having the best sense of direction, but I can run through every corner of that portion of the map in my head. Haven't felt that way about an RPG ever since.

Golden Sun/Golden Sun: The Lost Age. I wouldn't say I keep thinking about them but they are the RPG I will always be fondest for. I don't know if that means I want them to make another one (I flipflop) since Dark Dawn was just awright but I'll always have a soft spot for them.

It’s the soundtracks of games I find myself daydreaming about most often. The desperate drama in the strings of Shadow of the Colossus; the trip-hoppy industrial soundscapes of Silent Hill; the high-energy , joyful playground of Japanese electronic chaos in Jet Set Radio Future; the nostalgic, dreamy piano and music box twinkles of Kingdom Hearts; the thoughtful, dynamic swells and layered movements that perfectly reflect Cyrodiil in Oblivion. They all really nuzzle themselves into folds of my brain, as weird as it is to vocalise it that way ha.