You ever go to boot up a game that you could have sworn you played a few months ago, only to see its, in fact, been several months? I find this happening to me constantly. It’s like, I have such a strong memory of playing it that it must have been just last week. Or, at the very most, last month. It always leaves me with a funny feeling. Like time has suddenly rearranged itself around me. It’s quite jarring.

I found myself in this situation, once again, this week. Never quite to this extent though.

Blades suggested playing Sanctum 2 this week. If you’re unfamiliar, its’s a first person shooter,tower defense game from the people who brought us Goat Simulator. It features shooting bugs with guns and setting up bigger guns to shoot more bugs.

It was our main game for quite a while. We finished up the base game and purchased the DLC. We even beat most of that too. So I was down to revisit an old favorite.

I could have sworn we last played it over the winter but, lo and behold, Steam had it listed as last played in 2020. 4 years ago? I couldn’t believe it! Then I went digging through posts to see if I’d ever written about it. I was shocked (SHOCKED!!!)to find I wrote one in August 2019. I guess Sanctum left quite an impression on me.

Stepping away from a game for 4 weeks let alone 4 years is tough. Trying to pick up where I left off never ends well. The controls came back easy enough but trying to figure out what my load out was and why I had chosen it way back when was borderline impenetrable. I went with it anyway, past me knew what he was doing right?

We tried starting on the map we assumed was the one we left off on. That ended quickly. I think are some mechanics we forgot about over the years because we lost our core very quickly. Defeated, we went back to one of the easier levels on endless mode to get acquainted again.

I wish I could say it was exciting to revisit. I had really liked it before, after all.

But, as it all started coming back to me, so did the feeling of having done this all before. I’ve fought these enemies, built these towers, and ran around with these character for 40 hours already. There wasn’t anything new here. It was too familiar, and not in a good way.

Some games are just played out and are better left back in the “Recent Activity” graveyard.