GamerSushi Asks: Tackling Life with a New Game Plus

Mass Effect 3

The kinds of features that become commonplace in video games can take on a life of their own over the course of each generation. Things that we couldn’t have imagined a decade ago are now a staple, it seems. Cover-based shooting. RPG elements attached to everything, the list goes on. One of the more recent trends in games would have to be the idea of the New Game Plus.

Granted, this has been around for some time (Chrono Cross had it on the Playstation, for instance), but it’s only been in this generation that we’ve seen it become a fixture. The appeal behind New Game Plus is certainly appealing. Combined with the advent of RPG mechanics, this mode allows players in games like Batman: Arkham City and Mass Effect to take their skills with them into an entirely new adventure, making exciting strides and seeing things from a more powerful perspective than before.

In keeping with this idea, Kotaku writer Lisa Foiles tackles the rather philosophical question of if life had a New Game Plus, how would you replay it? The concept itself is very Groundhog Day, but it’s a fun idea that I’ve thought about from time to time. I know that many of us are still young, but I just thought I’d throw the same question at you guys: how would you handle a New Life Plus feature? Any differently?

Go!

Source – Kotaku

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I write about samurai girls and space marines. Writer for Smooth Few Films. Rooster Teeth Freelancer. Author of Red vs. Blue, The Ultimate Fan Guide, out NOW!

8 thoughts on “GamerSushi Asks: Tackling Life with a New Game Plus”

  1. I’ll answer my own question here:

    I pretty much love my life, but if I could change anything it would to start “leveling up” my writing stats at a much earlier age. I always loved the idea of telling stories, but figured I wouldn’t be good at writing until a much later age after I had gone to enough school or something. As a result, I crafted tons of stories in my head that I never got the practice of the skills required to actually put them to paper in a meaningful way. I had so much free time I wasted in college that I could have spent writing rough drafts to terrible novels, rather than doing them now at almost 30. It sounds cheesy, but if you want to be good at something creative, just do it. It’s the only way to get those stats up.

  2. As far as New Game Plus features go in games, I actually think this is more of a last-gen trope. Granted, maybe I haven’t played enough singleplayer games this generation, but New Game Pluses are about as common as Cheat codes nowadays, and the lack of both really is a shame. NGP (and cheat code shenanigans) make the game a whole lot more fun because you get to essentially break it; by playing with a character 100% more powerful, you get to bulldoze through the game like a demigod, unless of course the enemies’ strength is fittingly boosted as well. I’d like to see even more NGP and similar post-game features that encourage replaying the game in different ways, subtly or noticeably changing gameplay (as opposed to choosing different moral choices or different starting equipment and whatnot).

    As far as my life, I would definitely NOT want an NGP. As a kid, I always strove to be mature, to act like a conscientious adult. I was still pretty naive, but I’ve always maintained my ethics. There’s no decision in my life where my maturity prevented me from making a good decision. I have regrets about being a moronic kid with anger issues, but not about being a cooperative, patient mini-adult. An NGP would only give me wisdom that I wouldn’t be able to act on as such a young person, trapped in a world of people even further from my level of self-reflection. Call me narcissistic, but I really struggled with kids being less mature than me and liking it.
    Although, I guess I would have liked to take a martial art and stick with it through high school, buuut there’s really no reason why I can’t do that now and get the same result. Yeah, I really have no need for an NGP.

  3. If by New Game Plus you mean that I’m allowed to keep all my memories of what I’ve already done… then maybe. My life has been great for the most part. My family is fantastic, I’ve already visited 10 different countries (at the age of 23), I have an awesome bunch of friends. But at the same time there are some things that I wish I had done differently. Whether or not its worth it, I’m not sure.

  4. I’d be worried if I did anything differently that I’d not have the same friends this time round. My friend, JJ (not the one here obviously!), has been my best friend since we were 5 so ANYTHING I could do diferently runs the risk of losing that friendship. Naturally, the same applies to all my friends, but when it was forged some 14 years ago and is still running strong, then you don’t wanna risk that. Same applies with my girlfriend : ) (I’m such a romantic).
    If anything, I’d try to be a bit more physically active. I’m not overweight or unhealthy but if my cardiovascular exercises featured a little more prominently in my lifestyle then that would make so many things so much easier. Like running any distance. : /
    Perhaps I could have NOT gone through that year/year and a half phase where I just stopped reading books. I’m still getting back into to it properly a year and a bit later.
    That’s all I can think of off the top of my head atm. Interesting post Eddy. 🙂

  5. I wish I hadn’t stopped taking piano lessons. It sucked when I was 8 years old, but looking back now… It’s one of the only instruments I can’t play well enough to play with others and that always makes me chuckle. It’s what brought me into the music world and now I hardly use it unless it’s to fill in a little part and it takes me forever. Had I known then what I know now, I would have invested a lot more time into it and developed earlier. I could start again now, but I’m an adult! I have too many other things to do like being a little lazy and stubborn.

    But, then, who knows. Maybe I wouldn’t have spent so much time gaming =).

  6. I’ve actually fallen in love with the New Game Plus mechanic. Whenever I play older games, I get so sad that once the game is over, that’s it. There’s nothing else to do. You can’t save, you don’t get to start over with perks, nothing. Just a blank screen where all you can do is shut the game off.

    Zelda: WW was the first game I played that had a New Game Plus, and that extended its replay value tenfold. When a game is really good, I want to be able to play it even after it’s over. That’s why Twilight Princess’s ending bummed me out.

  7. Oh, right. Real life New Game Plus.

    Well, for one, I would record everything. I wouldn’t delete files from my computer. I want to preserve all of these great memories.

    Second, I’d probably work on building better relationships with people. I was very reserved as a kid; I had a lot of friends when I was younger, but when those friends started moving away, it didn’t occur to me that I had to replace those friends with new ones, and as a result I was quite lonely and bored growing up.

    Third, I would create more. I would utilize every second of free time I had.

  8. I’m a douche. I’m offensive, rude, ignorant. I love it. There is very little about what I and others have shaped me to be that I would change.
    HOWEVER.
    I have said really, really, stupid, offensive shit that I wish I could take back. I’ve told offensive, tasteless, karma-ruining jokes, but I wouldn’t take those back. But when I look at someone and see true pain in their eyes from something I said, did or didn’t do, I would give anything to completely erase that from ever happening.

    All that won’t stop me blazing before I go to your birthday party though.

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