Most gamers feel that variety is the spice of life and enjoy playing all types of games or at least multiple games in the same genre. Even that weird breed of gamer who plays the same online game day after day, week after week, month after month, even year after year without stopping to play much of anything else likes to take a break every now and then and play a little something else for a while. So this got our Gaming Respawn team thinking: “If we had to choose just one game and play only that game for the rest of our lives, what game would it be?”. We imagine this would be a difficult question for most people, but that’s what makes this such an interesting topic, right? After devoting a lot of brainpower to honestly and definitively answering this question, our Gaming Respawn team is now ready to share what is that “One Game We Would Play for the Rest of Our Lives”.
Samantha Brown
The Elder Scrolls Online
There are a lot of games that I have really enjoyed playing in the past. I am sure there will be a lot of games in the future that I will spend hours and hours playing and enjoy very much. With this in mind, it is a very difficult choice to think of one game I could play for the rest of my life. After a lot of thought and consideration, the game I have chosen is The Elder Scrolls Online.
The Elder Scrolls Online is an MMORPG or Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. Players can create their own character down to the last detail, and everything is completely customisable, including choice of class and abilities. You can have up to 8 characters on one server and can use an in-game store to purchase extra character slots if needed.
At first, The Elder Scrolls Online didn’t do very well and didn’t receive a very good reception. Over time the game has become hugely popular and has changed drastically since the original release, which was in April 2014. It is constantly growing and changing.
The Elder Scrolls Online tells the story of a Daedric Prince named Molag Bal that is stealing peoples’ souls and trying to destroy and take over the continent of Tamriel. Your character has had their soul stolen by Molag Bal, and so it is your mission to take back your soul and save Tamriel from Molag Bal. Other than the main story of The Elder Scrolls Online, there are hundreds of hours’ worth of content. This includes smaller side missions, as well as other stories to complete that can take a long time to get through. There are also extras, like raids and dungeons, to complete with other players. These are more for swiftly growing in level, as well as gaining some great equipment and loot.
The main reason that I have chosen The Elder Scrolls Online is because of the amount of content that it includes. I have already put more than 100 hours into this game, and I have still got so much left to do. The game regularly has new DLC released that keeps it interesting, with the most recent introduction being Dragons. The game is extremely fun to play, and you can play it with your friends and family too. The graphics, landscape and surroundings are absolutely stunning with so much detail, which is another reason why I enjoy playing it so much.
The Elder Scrolls franchise has a huge supportive community, and The Elder Scrolls Online is no different. The game has a lot of dedicated players, and there aren’t many places you can go in the game to be alone. If you enjoy a good role-playing game, then this is the game for you. If I could only play The Elder Scrolls Online for the rest of my life, I would be perfectly happy.
Ian Cooper
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
The game I would easily play for the rest of my living days has to be The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. This game has been played to death by every RPG fan and Norse mythology buff everywhere, and it’s been ported on every system going but for damn good reason. Okay, sure, it’s a Bethesda game, and we all know how their games can be a little rough, Skyrim included. It had glitches that have since been ironed out, although some still remain, but you can’t deny that it’s nothing short of a masterpiece.
So why choose it as the last game I would play? Well, its size and scale are unparalleled in terms of depth and variety. From our escape from Helgen as Alduin the World Eater lays waste to your sorry captors, we knew this was going to be an epic and often otherworldly journey. I’ve stood in awe as dragons soar overhead, circling before unleashing a bloodcurdling roar that cued the battle music. A hard battle ensues as we swing our swords whilst using our magical ward spell to nullify the dragon’s fire breathing attacks. This is one of many dragon battles you’ll have whilst exploring the vast countryside and mountain ranges of the continent.
There are also sights aplenty as Skyrim has some amazing locations. The city of Whiterun with its castle, Dragonsreach, is a beautiful home to the Companions, a legion of warriors who hold a secret that you uncover if you choose to join them. That’s one of the many reasons for my choice of game: choice. Although Alduin has returned and has brought a legendary race of winged creatures with him, you can put it aside to follow other paths, such as joining the Thieves Guild, a band of lovable rogues who are struggling to make ends meet. Or you can join the Dark Brotherhood, who are assassin mercenaries that have some of the coolest armour in the game. Don’t want to join any cults? That’s fine. Maybe you want to do special tasks for the many Daedric Princes that demand your assistance, and doing so grants you with some of the best weapons and artifacts in the game, but their tasks are not for the faint-hearted. Man, I love this game!
The game doesn’t stop at putting down Alduin. The DLCs took you to Solstheim, a land ruled by Miraak, the first Dragonborn, an old fort ruled by a clan of vampire hunters called the Dawnguard, or if you want to, you can build and run your very own home. I pumped so many hours into this game on its release, and even today I pick up my Nintendo Switch to play the near perfect port in the palm of my hands.
Daniel Garcia-Montes
Marvel’s Spider-Man
As much as I love Marvel’s Spider-Man, even I was surprised when I realized this was the game I would choose to play for the rest of my life. That’s not to say this was an easy decision, mind you. There were a number of other games that were in the running, namely The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Fallout 3, Dragon’s Dogma, the Batman Arkham games, and the Infamous games. I love all these games, but there are certain aspects to them that make them less likely candidates for games I’d like to stick with for life. The Witcher 3, for example, is extremely story-focused, so each time I play the game, the story would slowly but surely lose its impact, and given that the story is basically the game’s best feature, this means The Witcher 3 is a game best played sparingly. You can potentially play a single playthrough of Skyrim for years given the immense amount of content it has, but despite how immersive the game is, the combat has never thrilled me, plus the more I play the game, the higher the chances I’ll run into some nasty glitch that could undo my entire playthrough or at least mess up some missions. I won’t go over each of my candidates in detail, so suffice it to say that Spider-Man was the best game for me overall to play for the rest of my life.
The balance between story, combat, and content in Spider-Man, to me, is just absolutely perfect. The story is very solid and enjoyable to go through multiple times, and the fact you don’t make any moral decisions or choices keeps things simple. Furthermore, the game’s length makes it perfect for repeat playthroughs. It’s not as long or time-consuming as the likes of Skyrim, The Witcher 3, Fallout 3, or even Dragon’s Dogma, instead it’s much closer to the length of the Batman or Infamous games, so it’s well balanced in that regard. Finally, the combat is just so f#$king fun and fast-paced that I never want to stop beating up small armies of bad guys using Spidey’s awesome abilities and gadgets. And between the random crimes, challenge missions, and bases filled with bad guys to beat the crap out of (which can be replayed at your leisure), there’s basically never any shortage of opportunities to test out and experiment with Spidey’s combat abilities and gadgets and figure out new and exciting ways to inflict harm upon his enemies with style and panache.
All things considered, I guess it makes perfect sense that I’d choose this game to play for the rest of my life. Spider-Man has been my favorite superhero for years, which my many comics, t-shirts, posters, and action figures can attest to, so choosing to play this game for the rest of my life, namely the one that makes me truly feel like Spider-Man more than any other game before it, is the obvious choice for me.
Daire Behan
Persona 4: Golden
It’s getting harder and harder to fully appreciate games these days. Games like Anthem and The Division 2 launch back-to-back promising years of content, and huge open-world adventures like Red Dead Redemption II and Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey release mere weeks apart. It makes choosing only one game to play for the rest of my life even harder because I couldn’t live without chipping away at Odyssey the way I have been for the past 5 months. So instead, I’ll take the easy way out.
Persona 4: Golden is my favourite game of all time, mostly because at the time that I played it, I desperately needed a game as inviting and immersive as it was. The Persona games are easy recommendations for people who are dealing with daily mental or social struggles as, nine times out of ten, there will be a character that echoes your struggles that you can connect with, and if not, the casts of are just so wonderful that it’s impossible not to love them.
This is only the tip of the iceberg for how deep my love for Persona 4 goes, but needless to say, a 60-70 hour JRPG does do enough to keep you engaged over numerous playthroughs with a great New Game + mode and a couple of optional bosses and Social Links that you will most likely miss the first time around, alongside a platinum trophy I’ve been putting off for about four years now. The main reason though is that I just never get sick of the game’s main hub world of Inaba. Persona 4 just has such a wonderful atmosphere, and the mixture of its wonderful locales and music makes Inaba feel like one of those video game worlds you almost want to call home, and that’s exactly why I would choose Persona 4: Golden. It’s home.
Anthony Pamias
Pokemon Silver
If I had to pick one game to play forever, I would pick Pokémon Silver. It is the game that I like to play every now and then since it is one of my favorite games – not to mention my favorite Game Boy Color game and Pokémon game. I have spent so many hours playing it when I was a kid and got it in the year 2000. It was my first gen 2 Pokémon game, and it changed my mind on what a Pokémon game could be. It was a longer Pokémon game and set in the Johto region. Some would ask why I wouldn’t pick the updated DS version instead, and the answer is because of nostalgia, plus, I rushed through those versions, so I don’t even remember them. What I do remember is the original Game Boy Color version I grew up playing.
I love Pokémon Silver, and even though there is an end to the game, unlike Skyrim, I still pick it for the game I would play for the rest of my life. I love everything about Pokémon Silver – it has one of my favorite soundtracks that I love to listen to as I play and explore the Johto region, and I love the gen 2 Pokémon.
I always pick up Pokémon Silver and play it every month. There is just something about playing it that calms me and relaxes my mind. I can never get tired of playing Pokémon Silver. I listen to the soundtrack (among other favorite soundtracks) while I drive.
There isn’t really a new game plus in Pokemon Silver, but after you collect all the Johto badges and defeat the elite four, it opens up the Kanto region. I love battling against Red on the edge of Mt. Silver and the rival Silver battles. They are my favorite characters and trainers in the Pokémon franchise. Red is the final boss in generation two and has the most powerful team throughout the Silver, Gold and Crystal games. I also love how it was the first generation that introduced shiny Pokémon – I always caught the red Garados because I just like how cool it looked. Not to mention that the game also introduced one of my favorite gen two and Legendary Pokémon, Lugia, plus the Three Legendary Dogs – Entei, Raikou, and Suicune. These three Pokémon were always the hardest to find and track down, and catching them was always such a thrill. That is what made finding them challenging and fun for me.
There you have it, the games us Gaming Respawners would choose to play for the rest of our lives. Thankfully, I can’t foresee any realistic situation in which someone would have to choose only one game to play until their final breath. But that’s what makes this hypothetical experiment so fun to take part in. Join us by sharing in the comments section the one game you would choose to play for the rest of your life. Stay tuned to Gaming Respawn for more features and reviews.