Has anyone else had the experience of going back to a game you haven’t played in a long time and some lower level part of your brain just remembers all the controls? Like when you try and remember which key does what, you can’t, but then you start playing and your brain just does the thing.
Yes, absolutely. My dad recently purchased the same model of electric guitar he had as a teenager and he felt the same way about it.
Now here’s another funky bit. Sometimes taking a break from a game and coming back to it weeks, months or even years later will make it feel like you’ve never been better before. And the numbers or scores might validate it.
I’ve personally experienced this with:
- QuakeWorld in the early 2000s, where my shaft hitscan rate went from low 20s to mid 30s and my movement control got even more fluid. Factor here might have been a PC upgrade
- WoW around 2008 -> 2010 where I went from struggling in arena to hit the lowest rank to duelist. Factor here might have been my aging reflexes starting to compensate more strategy instead
- Enter the Gungeon from 2013 -> 2015 where I was struggling to get past the first few biomes to maxing out the whole game and attempting streaks with 9 curse and turbo on. This definitely came after watching a few streamers trying to do speed runs and their movement and situational awareness of the mob patterns inspired me.
I’ve also revisited these games since, again, and definitely only gotten worse at them.
Tetris, I have to have the original controllers though.
I’m the opposite of this picture. It’s like I have to relearn the game each time and fluid play takes a long time to return.
Funnily enough my muscle memory persists to some degree though. So for instance if a particularly tough enemy is charging me I might push a specific key without actually knowing what it does. Afterwards I have to reason and rediscover what I was trying to accomplish and bind that action to the key I pressed.
I call it “The Muscle Zen”. You just gotta relax, trust yourself, your fingers know what to do.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengance is one for me. When I first fire up a playthrough, I’ll feel rusty as hell, but once that music starts kicking my brain, it’s like night and day.
I have a bad habit of resubbing to wow every couple years for a bit, and yes I feel like Theoden king. My fingers start to remember their strength as soon as I lay my hands on the keyboard, it feels like returning to home. In no time we’re back spreading a little plague in raids, arena and bgs
Just started KOTOR (2003) after last playing 3 years ago. It’s like riding a bike.
This is true of other skills too. Sometimes I can remember how to do things only when I stop thinking
*you’re
Heil Grammer!!!
Joke’s on you, I was never good in the first place
I picked Elden Ring back up today (why no, it has nothing to do with the DLC). I’m still garbage.
Souls-likes are pretty much the antithesis of what I personally enjoy in games. They seem stressful as fuck and my capacity for handling more stress is currently somewhere near zero
They don’t have to be, I feel like their reputation might be what stresses newcomers to the genre more than the game itself.
Oh trust me, I know myself. I really haven’t had the energy to play challenging games in a while now, so games like Cloudpunk, Sable, Lightyear Frontier, The Invincible, etc etc have been right up my alley. Anything I don’t have to grind, I have enough of that in my life as it is
That’s fair, it’s personal preference I suppose. If ever you’re interested, remember that there are always cheats/mods that can make the game easier if you want to experience the world and story.
That’s a good tip. I keep hearing lots of positive things about the story and the world, so it’d be fun to check it out for myself
I’ll go back to a game and load up a character with all my endgame gear and then die.
My still good at it.
Years ago my friend group was heavily into Beat Saber, custom maps, the whole deal. We played at least 3 hours a day, every day, all piling into a dorm and taking turns on a Vive until we were so tired we couldn’t move. After graduating and moving I hadn’t bothered to set the whole VR rig back up again. I finally dusted it off a few months ago and holy crap have I gotten out of shape. It took me a good 12 hours of playing to get into the swing of things and several more hours to hit full pace but I’m back. I’ve lost 12 lbs too - this game’s intense.
I recently loaded up Street Fighter Alpha 3 for the first time in at least 20 years and blew through it. Of course, Bison wiped the floor with me but I won every round up to him.
Of all video game bosses in existence, fighting game bosses are the most bullshit of them all. You typically have to find some way to cheese them to death before they do it to you.
Or . . . you load that old save game and think, “oh yeah. NOW I remember why I stopped playing this.”
I came back to counterstrike with CS2 and couldn’t figure out for a few round why everything felt so wrong until I realized my flipping crosshair was moving! Disabled that and started murdering folk.
This is not BG3 for me
4 me this is hypixel
Your fingers would remember their old strength better, if they grasped your AWP.
Team fortress 2 is completely unrecognizable to me
I just fired up Donkey Kong Country recently after lowkey bragging about how I knew all the secrets, despite playing it last years ago. Partner was like, “Aight. Show.”
“Kay”
And to my surprise I still remember where everything is and breezed past all except one level so far.
And you all know which fucking level that was.
Me loading up A Link to the Past and still having a full memory of every palace, which areas are secrets, which walls make the satisfying clink clink clink, and how to get the Golden Master Sword without having to check GameFAQs:
“Hell yeah. Zelda, go put on your green tunic and let’s go save Link.
