I’ve been thinking about the PS1 game ‘Driver’ a lot recently. It’s a game I spent a lot of time on during my youth, and whilst I’m sure it doesn’t hold up some 20 years later, it was still a highlight from my ‘gaming youth’.
As much as I know I enjoyed it however, I don’t remember all that much about it. Aside from pulling the perfect reverse hand-break-turn in order to leave the garage/lockup area and begin the game proper. I didn’t need to pull this manoeuvre of course, I could just, you know…drive out, but something felt so incredibly satisfying about it that I couldn’t stop myself.
Which brings me to this point of this thread. What’s something you do in a game for no reason other than it feels damn good?
I love to boot up Red Dead Redemption 2 and go on little hunting / fishing trips as Arthur. I play it as close to real life as I can, meaning I don’t just sprint across the map on horseback and get to my destination in five minutes or less. I have Arthur eat breakfast, ride the trails for a few in game hours, eat lunch, ride until dark, set up camp, eat dinner, brush / feed the horse, sleep, repeat. If I go through a town on my way, I’ll usually stop for a day to experience some entertainment or do a bit of gambling. It can take multiple in game days to reach a hunting / fishing spot. I’ll set up a camp once there, do some hunting / fishing for a few days, and then ride back home. It’s just super relaxing for me and helps me appreciate the little details in the game even more.
I never got anywhere near finishing the story due to this. Its a beautifully relaxing game if you just drink it all in and immerse yourself. I’m a big fan of the daily routine at the camp and if I don’t make it back one night, spend the return catching up with everyone and doing some chores.
Shooting out of a cannon with the wings hat and flying around in Mario 64 was such a pure fun experience for my kid brain. The switch in music and just soaring around a 3d level was really something special at the time.
Yeah, that was great! I always wished that you could fly longer.
That level in the clouds when you look up in the entrance was so magical. Always a little sad when it ended.
But yeah that and the slide behind the stained glass window were so awesome
Man, I have a buncha people giving me shit on my thread for BG3 asking if one of the encounters can be cheesed because the way it would be cheesed is hilarious. It’s a clone fight and I was curious if you could make the clone spawn naked and make the fight a non-issue. Now some people are upset and tell me I should just “play the game.” Is that not what I am doing? I was gonna do it anyway, I just wanted to know if I should save before hand if it fucked me over completely.
I like breaking games. It’s fun. I’ll play them the way they were “intended” once or twice; but after that I’m doing everything but that. Just to see what I can actually get away with. I thought that was the point of an interactive experience. Why the hell would I want to just do the canned ‘canon’ shit? I want to do all the things you can’t do in reality because they would hurt yourself or others. I want to test the limits of the game designer’s imagination. If I can think of it and they missed it or if they actually put that little detail in.
You may already know this because it’s a big and recent game, but you can do this exact thing to a clone fight in Elden Ring
That was what gave me the idea. I love Fromsoft games. :)
YOU COULD JUST LEAVE??? WE HAD TWO RENT IT THREE TIMES IN A ROW TO BEAT THAT TUTORIAL!!
Cyberpunk 2077 is purely an escapist game for me. The game itself sort of sucks, the side missions are mostly “go and kill this dude” or “go and steal this thing”, nothing you do has an effect on anything and it’s generally pretty uninspired and blah, but I bought it because I got it for under 20€ so I figured why the hell not.
It looks damn purdy though, and Night City is intricately built and has lots of small fun details. I love just wandering around the city, stopping at hole-in-the-wall noodle places (even though they might just be “window dressing”, and even if they’re not the restaurants in the game are totally pointless), or browsing the stuff at some market, etc. etc. etc. So even though I don’t like it as a game, I like the environment it provides (although honestly the constant in-your-face sexism gets pretty old…)
Have you tried Cloudpunk?
I personally really like cyberpunk, I wish the launch went better. Adding more features would have made it truly great.
I’m an achievement hunter. Normally once beating a game I uninstall and move on to the next game. But cyberpunk, I did three full playthroughs on very hard with different builds.
The story is really great the first playthrough, but for my second and third playthrough, I rush to level 14, grab the double jump, and just go exploring. I hit level 50 before talking to Takemura at the diner.
My favorite character is my third one, my corpo netrunner. Pre-patched contagion was just bonkers. You could walk into an enemy stronghold, look at someone, and command the whole building to die.
The game becomes a whole lot less fun when you’re that OP, but it felt like a reward, since the early stages of a netrunner build is the weakest build in the game.
In Minecraft I run in one direction for half an hour and build little forts. I don’t sleep in the bed and when I die I die. There’s a neat sense of satisfaction finding all the little things I’ve left behind.
I used to do pixel art too so I’ve run into giant glowstone Pikachus in the past
More than ten years ago, I played with coworkers in a Minecraft beta server at a place I used to work.
Recently I was told that the server still existed and one of my ex-coworkers still maintained and played actively on it being the only one left.
He built around whatever others did, so I could (theoretically) still find all the cubic dirt houses we made.
I would always play AVP2 as an Alien. I loved the mobility of being able to traverse walls and the unique challenges/opportunities it presented. I played it a lot and got quite good at it (would easily be the top player in most games I played), but would more often focus on making use of those unique mechanics for novelty situations.
One map (the forge, or something similar) had high ceilings with ridges built in to it, perfect for hiding an Alien. Instead of running around the map tearing up victims and moving up the leaderboard, I would cling up on that ceiling and wait for an unsuspecting human to pass underneath. I would drop down like a spider, paralyze them with my tail, and immediately headbite them. The glee that I would get from perfectly executing that surpassed any MVP received from high scores. It was fun to just play an Alien like an Alien.
I want to play that so bad right now. The cat like movement with wall-climb, plus the alien vision is easily one of my top 5 unique gaming experiences.
Easily one of my favourite PvP games because of the species dynamics and the lobby options. Used to play it at LAN parties now and then, up to maybe 8 players. Once you had enough players it was great to have 1 Predator vs 2-3 aliens and the rest humans. Species were selected at random so sometimes you’d get a derpy predator or a one hunter killing machine. It always lead to interesting games that sort of naturally lead inadvertently to roleplay scenarios like the humans keeping an eye on vents and banding together.
Oh and alien life cycle was always on for more challenge to the alien players. Trying to find a facehugger victim in and trying not to get blasted straight out of the chest as a chestburster to become the ultimate killing machine.
Easily one of my top PvP games.
Riding around in GTA San Andreas. Like taking a truck and making long trips while listening to K-DST radio.
When I was young (probably too young) I would always play as Kabal on UMK3. That spin attack plus the easy combos was great.
Kabal also felt like someone bringing meathooks to a fistfight.
Risk of Rain 2: Get 5 to 10 movement items and just zoooooooom around.
Deep Rock Galactic: Drill thru the walls even when it’s not the best idea, because I just like the idea of destructible terrain and navigating in 3d.
DRG has a whole list of things that just feel good:
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Fucking obliterating one grunt with your biggest gun or explosive as you board the drop pod
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Going back to rescue your teammate that didn’t make it to the drop pod even though it technically barely matters as long as one person makes it back alive
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When building liquid morkite pipes that run parallel for a while, lining the support points up
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Using a bulk detonator to kill a dreadnought
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Mining a crassus detonator gold sphere by drilling all of the surrounding terrain away so that the entire sphere pops at once and collapses in to a neat pile
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Anyone else play Airblade? It was like a Tony Hawk game but with a hoverboard.
With only six levels, it was quite short, but really fun. Eventually I started speed running it before I knew what speed running was.
If I recall correctly I was able to finish it in under twenty minutes.
In the game Crackdown - you had to increase your agility and strength, and weapons proficiencies to be strong enough to move onto the next area.
You could get the xp by doing things like killing guys while jumping or whatever, or you could find “agility orbs” at the tops of a lot of buildings (and smokestacks, billboards, factories, etc.) and get extra xp from finding them. As you level up your agility, you can get to taller places. Eventually I’d just climb places because I could not because I saw an orb.
That and blowing shit up with a rocket launcher, getting a faction really pissed at me, and then quietly leaving the scene after I get ran out of rockets. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I don’t even know what Crackdown is about or even what the gameplay loop is supposed to be because anytime I played it, my friends and I would play the mode that basically gave you cheats and just tore shit up
Drive all around the map in GTA V’s multiplayer (invite only session, of course) when the weather is nice. Or just walk around the city. Browsing tattoos or clothes etc. Just doing ordinary things instead of riding around on a flying motorcycle and whatnot.
Flying around in the birdsuit in Pilotwings 64. I could do that for hours. Except I usually eventually try to fly through a cave and crash. Gosh I’d love a new Pilotwings
Noita: building wands with horrendous recoil. I know it’s going to get me killed when I launch myself in to something dangerous, but it’s just funny to be able to fly by the power of destroying everything in a given direction
