Why does replaying old favourites feel like a waste of time—except when it doesn’t?
You know the feeling. You get the itch to replay something from your so-called glory days. You load it up, remembering how much you loved it, only to find out you’ve aged, the game hasn’t, and now you’re stuck in a ten-minute tutorial trying to remember why you ever thought this was fun.
Most games collapse under the weight of modern expectations. What once felt immersive now feels empty. What once felt deep now feels like a series of hoops. But every so often, a game shrugs all that off. It doesn’t care what year it is. It still works. Still hits. Still earns its place on your hard drive.
I’ve got three. Just three. The rest? Dead to me.
Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance – because strategy should be big, loud, and unforgiving
There’s real-time strategy, and then there’s Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance. Everything else feels like a training exercise. This is the one where you don’t command a squad, you command a war. A proper war, with a front line, a logistics network, and enough nuclear weaponry to trigger an existential crisis.
You start with a single mech and a vague idea of how not to die. An hour later, you’re managing dozens of factories, hundreds of units, and air strikes that blot out the sun. The economy isn’t just a number ticking up. It’s a system you have to master or watch collapse. Build too fast and you stall. Build too slow and you die. Balance or burn.
The zoom feature still deserves its own award. One moment you’re watching an engineer build power plants. The next, you’re looking at the entire battlefield with icons instead of units, like some kind of god-tier spreadsheet. You can zoom out and call air support like it’s a menu item. That’s how RTS should feel.
Every time I play it, I’m reminded how good strategy games could be. Then I look at what we’ve got now and close Steam in disgust.
Rome: Total War – because modern Total War is too busy trying to be clever
The original Rome still works because it doesn’t mess about. You’re a Roman noble. You want power. The Senate’s in the way. Your family is ambitious. Everyone else on the map hates you. Perfect.
You’ve got three cities and a half-trained legion. A few turns later, you’re either carving through Gaul like a psychopath or bankrupt because you thought roads were more important than soldiers. Every decision matters. Every mistake costs you.
The map is clean. The systems are direct. You can actually see what’s happening without digging through ten layers of interface nonsense. And the speeches before battles? Still better than anything Creative Assembly has written since.
There’s no post-battle busywork. No weird settlement mechanics. Just cities, armies, betrayal, and conquest. The good stuff.
And when you win? When you finally march on Rome itself and send the Senate packing? It still feels earned. You weren’t handed a victory because you clicked the right button. You fought tooth and nail for it.
Replayable? Absolutely. Every time I boot it up, I promise myself I’ll try something new. And every time, I end up exterminating Gaul and backstabbing the Julii by turn 50. No regrets.
TIE Fighter – because serving the Empire never goes out of style
This is it. The one game I will replay until the heat death of the universe. The perfect loop of duty, loyalty, lasers, and consequences. You’re not some whiny farm-boy. You’re a cog in the Imperial war machine. You do your job. You follow orders. You fly the worst ships in the galaxy and still come out alive.
Modern Star Wars games keep trying to sell you freedom, choice, and some kind of redemption arc. TIE Fighter laughs in their face. You get in your ship. You patrol the perimeter. You scan cargo. You identify traitors. Then you blow them up. Quietly. Efficiently. No speeches. No moral ambiguity. Just performance.
And when you’re good, really good, you get noticed. Not by some generic promotion screen, but by the Emperor’s personal enforcers. A cloaked figure appears. You’re told you’ve done well. You’re awarded a secret medallion. No fanfare. No celebration. Just silent recognition from the shadow that runs the galaxy.
The missions aren’t flashy. They’re methodical, layered, and punishing. You’re not blowing up superweapons every five minutes. You’re escorting freighters, inspecting transports, catching smugglers, and putting down rebel scum. You feel like part of a machine, not the centre of the universe.
And that’s what makes it perfect. You’re not a hero. You’re a professional. You get in your TIE, you fly the mission, you come home. Maybe.
Even now, the gameplay holds. The briefing system puts most modern games to shame. The mission design is tighter than a New Republic budget. And the soundtrack? Dynamic, reactive, and better than anything Disney’s licensed in the last decade.
I don’t replay TIE Fighter because I want to remember how it felt. I replay it because it still feels good.
Which games refuse to die for you—and which ones make you wish you’d left them in the past?
