The Replay Notebook
Second visits, written down
Every piece here follows a full replay of a game finished at least four years earlier, with notes from both playthroughs side by side.
The Replay Notebook
Second visits, written down
Every piece here follows a full replay of a game finished at least four years earlier, with notes from both playthroughs side by side.
The Replay Notebook writes about PC games played twice, years apart. Each piece compares what a game was on the first visit with what it is on the second, and tries to be honest about which of those two things actually changed.
When a game feels different years later, three explanations are available: the game changed, the surrounding genre changed, or the player changed. Reviews at release cannot distinguish between them, because only one point in time is available. A second playthrough can, and that is the whole purpose of this notebook.
In practice the third explanation is the most common and the least often admitted, which is why every piece here records both playtimes. A game finished in nine hours that took twenty eight years ago has usually not been made easier.
Because anything shorter is a second playthrough rather than a replay. Two years is not long enough for a genre's assumptions to move or for a player's habits to change, and the comparison produces nothing that a single review could not have said.
I have kept written notes on games since long before this notebook existed, which is the only reason it can exist at all. Those notes are the primary source for the first-visit half of every piece, and where they contradict my memory the notes win, including when they are embarrassing.
They frequently are. The first-visit notes are usually longer, more enthusiastic and considerably less accurate than the second set, and the gap between them is often the most useful material in a piece.
One person, with no professional connection to the games industry and no involvement in game development. There is no staff and no contributor network, and every judgement here is a single reader's, which is a limitation worth stating rather than concealing.
None. No advertising, no sponsorship, no affiliate arrangements, no subscriptions and no donations. Every game discussed was bought at retail, in most cases years ago at full price. No developer, publisher or platform has supplied anything or seen a piece before publication, and the games covered are old enough that nobody has any commercial interest in them.
There is none. This site carries no address, no form and no submission route of any kind, deliberately rather than by omission. Nothing can be pitched here, and since every piece requires a playthrough I finished at least four years ago, nothing could be.
None. A score would have to be a score for one of the two playthroughs, and choosing which one is precisely the question these pieces are about. Each closes with a short passage stating where the replay leaves the game, and that is the entire verdict.
Factual errors about what a game contains are corrected in place with a note recording the change. Playtimes are corrected if I have miscounted. Opinions are not revised because somebody objects, and nothing is withdrawn on request.
Games are referred to by descriptive titles and are not linked to any storefront, because these pieces are not purchase advice and most of the games involved are years past the point where that would be useful. Every image on this site was made for it; none is a screenshot and none depicts an actual game.