How long does it take you to forget how to play a game?

I often like to revisit games I haven’t played in a while. As a result, I often find myself with little to no idea what the heck I am doing when I do this. For example, the other day I was playing Horizon Forbidden West, got to a good stopping point, and decided, “Hey, I could play Horizon Zero Dawn!” only to realize all my muscle memory and awareness of the game was for Forbidden West and I kept doing things wrong.

Another example would be my disastrous foray into the Fable remaster, which I have on my Xbox, and which I am completely incapable of playing because I have no idea what I am doing since it’s been almost two decades since I played it last. Or every time I play WoW Classic and have to remember how to Warrior with three stances, target limits on Thunder Clap (which isn’t usable in Defensive Stance) and… yeah, it’s a lot to remember. I mean, I play WoW frequently, but the game has changed a lot since the original days that WoW Classic is trying to preserve and I have forgotten a lot of it.

I mean, it’s not disastrous — generally speaking I’ll pick it all up again in a day or two. And some games it’s like I never left — Mass Effect is one that I can play again without much lag time, the game just seems to be wired into my brain, and I can start Assassin’s Creed Odyssey at any time and I just know what I’m doing. So it’s not impossible for me to play older games and pick up what’s going on, but I don’t always have that familiarity when I first start to pick up a game I used to play. So what about you? Do you forget games, or once you’ve played one for a while are you always able to pick them back up?