There is a very specific kind of guilt that creeps in when you boot up a game you have already finished. It usually hits somewhere between the splash screen and your hands remembering exactly what to do without any conscious thought. It is the sense that you should be playing something else. Something newer. Something people are currently talking about. Something with a discourse window that has not already closed.
Instead, I keep finding myself back in familiar places.
Lately that has meant replaying Assassin’s Creed Syndicate and Assassin’s Creed Mirage, methodically chasing their platinums, and starting yet another run of Cyberpunk 2077. At the same time, I keep trying to play new things. I load them up, give them a fair shake, appreciate what they are doing, and then quietly drift back to what I know. Games like Tormented Souls 2 or Silent Hill f sit there patiently, waiting for the right version of me to turn up.
For a long time, that felt like a failure on my part. Like I was becoming that person who only replays the same handful of games and slowly opts out of the medium without admitting it. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realised that this behaviour does not need defending at all. It just needs understanding.
The games industry has never been faster or louder. Every week there is a new release that you are apparently supposed to care about immediately. Not just play, but finish. Have an opinion. Join the conversation while it is still warm. There is an unspoken pressure that if you are not playing the hot new thing, you are falling behind, or worse, becoming irrelevant as someone who claims to love games.
But games are not a feed. They are not a conveyor belt. They are experiences, and experiences land differently depending on where your head is at. Right now, familiarity is winning and there are good reasons for that.
When I replay Syndicate or Mirage, there is no friction. I already understand the systems. I know the rhythm of a mission, how long an activity takes, when I can squeeze in “just one more” without accidentally losing an evening. That certainty is incredibly valuable. It means I can actually relax while playing, rather than constantly learning, adjusting and recalibrating.
Chasing platinums is a big part of this too. That is not passive nostalgia. That is intentional, structured engagement. Platinums turn games I already love into clean, finite projects. Clear goals. Known difficulty curves. No surprises. In a world where so many modern games feel endless by design, there is something deeply satisfying about working towards an endpoint you fully understand.
Cyberpunk sits slightly differently, but for similar reasons. Coming back to it now feels less like wrestling with systems and more like inhabiting a space. I know Night City. I know how builds work. I am not fighting the game anymore, I am living in it. That shift only really happens on repeat playthroughs, and it is something new releases simply cannot offer until you put the time in.
By contrast, starting something new always comes with hidden costs. New controls. New pacing. New emotional tone. New rules. Horror games especially demand attention and vulnerability. They are not things you dip into casually after a long day. They ask for your full focus, and that is not always something you have spare.
The important part is that I am still trying those new games. I am not closed off. I am just bouncing off them because they are not what I need right now. That distinction matters. It means this is not about fear of the new, but comfort with the known.
There is also a strange double standard when it comes to games. Nobody questions why people reread books or rewatch films. Comfort viewing is entirely normal. But with games, we have convinced ourselves that replaying equals stagnation. That if the inputs are the same, the experience must be lesser. In reality, games change because you change. Replaying something years later often reveals how well it was actually made. You notice foreshadowing. Themes land differently. Characters hit harder because you know where they end up. Familiarity breeds understanding, not boredom.
A lot of the pressure to move on is not really about enjoyment anyway. It is about participation. Being part of the moment. Being there while everyone else is there. That can be fun, but it can also be exhausting. Playing something because you genuinely want to is very different from playing it because you feel you should. One nourishes you. The other slowly burns you out.
There is also something quietly affirming about choosing games that are no longer fashionable. Syndicate and Mirage are not the trendy Assassin’s Creed picks. Cyberpunk has already had its redemption arc and exited the spotlight. Returning to them anyway is a small but meaningful act of trusting your own taste over the algorithm.
This does not mean new games are bad, or that hype is pointless. It just means novelty is not mandatory. Anticipation and comfort can coexist. The problem only starts when anticipation turns into obligation.
More than anything, replaying old favourites has reminded me why I fell in love with games in the first place. Not for the discourse. Not for the release calendar. But for the feeling. The sense of place. The quiet satisfaction of systems clicking into place. Those things do not expire just because something newer exists.
So if you are hovering over a game you have already finished, feeling that familiar flicker of guilt, consider this your permission slip. Play it again. Chase the platinum. Sink back into that world. The hot new thing will still be there when you are ready for it, and chances are it will be better for having waited.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but it is fine to replay old favourites instead of chasing the hot new thing.
And yes, I absolutely needed to hear it myself.