Fallout 4

I've got a lot of mods installed (200-ish). The commonwealth in my version of the game is absolute hellscape with radioactive storms that kill visibility, pitch black nights, hoards of feral ghouls, and upgunned raiders. What it means is that I actually invest in building proper settlements now. I console command for all the resources because I can't be bothered picking through trashpiles. With all the mods, I have huge concrete walls surrounding my settlements which have comfortable bars and hangout areas. It can be very comfortable just chilling in a settlement while a storm rages outside.

When I do go outside I'm playing additional mod loaded content most of the time and doing my best to ignore that default story.

I beat X-COM: Enemy Unknown by sniping the final boss in the first turn with an 8% headshot through a door. In the process, I skipped what I discovered later was a room full of aliens you were supposed to fight before taking out that enemy.

Well, given that a lot of people in this thread are basically just saying " go sight seeing / abandon storyline and embrace roleplaying "...

I'm gonna go with basically "do anything" in Kenshi.

There is no thing you are supposed to be doing, beyond possibly 'don't die'.

There is no main storyline to follow.

You... just exist.

You can sure find a lot of things to do, places to see, and people to meet, basically quests to undertake... but that is all entirely up to you.

So there is no wrong, or right way to play Kenshi.

The world just kind of... happens to you, and then you react.

Or, maybe you have some notion of what you want to do, and then you try to do, and then the world happens to you during that.

Imagine either a single player MMO, or an immersive sim that focuses on an immerisive world of factions and individuals, which can play out many possible ways, which you can guide and steer those outcomes... but nothing 'has' to happen, there are no threads of prophecy that cannot be severed.

Theoretically, you could kill basically everyone... maybe?

You could build a city, run some kind of farm or mining operation, become a warlord, raise and command an army, wander as a trader or trading caravan, hunt for lore and artefacts, become the strongest warrior, best thief or assassin...

... or be eaten by cannibals or beak things, experience robot racism, be taken captive and forced into literal slavery at a prison camp, have your limbs peeled off, replace them with robot limbs, get incinerated by a misfiring orbital laser platform... or befriend a mentally challenged ... sort of bugmanthing who has been outcast from his hive, but is very endearing...

Or just be friends with a bonedog.

I have actually seen one Japanese youtuber basically just turn their playthrough of Kenshi into a kind of semi-improvised anime.

They'll have 15 to 30 minute episodes and write in some dialogue for their 2 person party, and then have a vocaloid type thing speak it, and they'll do like ren py visual novel framing / blocking, overlaid on top of the game, with more detailed drawn art of the characters.

Unexpected shit happens fairly frequently, and they just roll their characterization along with it, into a semi ad libbed plot/narrative.

That... is a 'way' to play Kenshi.

The Witcher 3 is just an RPG minigame you can play between rounds of Gwent.

Stellaris. I cheat and mod to put my empire in the middle of the galaxy and have extremely overpowered player-only technologies. Then I just explore the galaxy and guide the AI; usually picking a favorite and try to help them grow e.g. a peaceful uplifted species in a very hostile galaxy. I've also done this in multiplayer where I played a bit of a Game Master role. Built a quest line as part of my custom mod that had lore and let players slowly discover me and the galactic core (cut off from the hyperlane network; this was all custom scripted before mods like the birchworld existed on the workshop)

When I was a kid I would play driver 3 but I hated the driving part and would mostly walk. I also played a skateboard game and ditch the board, dress up like a spy or specops guy, and run around roleplaying various scenarios in my imagination (because I didn't have any games at the time that would let me stealth or run on rooftops, which is all I wanted)

Going back a while - Monster Truck Madness 2 was a great game of exploration if you just drove off in a random direction rather than doing that silly racing stuff :-)

The maps were big, and there was no time limit, so you could just go and do your own thing ... a favourite made-up mini-game was sliding around a frozen lake on the winter map.

Just Cause 3

I fire it up just to drive aound / grapple-hook float for an hour or more

GTAV. I don't care for the story or the shooting aspect, I just love to drive or walk around. I can't do either irl, so I love it when games give me the option.

New Super Mario Bros. (For the Nintendo DS), in the multiplayer battle mode.

There is a multiplayer mode where you fight over collecting stars in 6 different maps, using the main game’s mechanics and powerups.

In one of these maps, there are bullet bill launchers. One of the powerups is a mini mushroom that makes you tiny, and when you are tiny you just harmlessly bounce of enemies when you jump on them instead of killing them. That lets you ride the bullet bill, repeatedly bouncing off it. The multiplayer maps loop, so you do this indefinitely, and every time you get back to the launcher, it will add another bullet to your train.

My brother and I would deliberately avoid collecting stars, and instead try to make the longest bullet train and try to stay in the air as long as possible.

No Mans Sky exclusively in creative mode.

I don't care for getting resources or any of that. I just want to build stuff and explore. it would be 10x better if they made building regular ships as easy as the new ones and that's my only gripe, having to sit in a station to wait for a ship to show up with a part you want. It's an incredibly idiotic system for creative mode.

Not me but my friend. In any game that has a crafting component they will hone in, ignore the story, and just play the crafting. If it has a marketplace they will sell their creations and basically become an NPC shopkeeper for other people.

Quake / Quake World was really the epitome of "not how it was intended to be played". It introduced zigzag, wallhug and bunny jump through some clever exploitation of game mechanics, and completely changed its game play plus that of future fps games of the time. And people would just come up with stupid maps where you could do fps-parkour. I often did it myself for hours on end, just jumping around a map alone or with friends while chatting or listening to music.

A very short demo of how crazy it could get, speed indicator top right. 320 was the default movement speed.

I enjoyed playing Baldur's gate 3 as a rogue, playing it like a assassin's creed game. Nothing but stealth attacks and running away. Never get into a full combat if possible.

I was never a fan of how StarCraft 1 is supposed to be played.

It had a map editor that allowed scripting and people used it to make tons of other games inside of StarCraft like tower defense games, drawing party games like you would see decades later on mobile, and RPGs of every franchise imaginable. There's literally thousands of unique games out there on archive websites.

I love just driving around doing nothing in Cyberpunk 2077.

I've never completed the main quest line in any Elder Scrolls game.

The majority of my playtime in Oblivion was spent breaking into NPC houses and stealing their shit. I'd stalk targets based on who had the most valuables in their pockets when I'd see them wandering in the cities. I basically played the game as a stealing simulator, only ever completing the Thieves guild quest line and the Dark Brotherhood line when I wanted to be add some murder to my thieving.

I don't think this is uncommon with the Elder Scrolls games.

I won't do the main quest in Starfield. I don't want any special powers, and those Foundation guys are lame. I'm like level 58 and I've never found an artifact. I do enjoy killing people and stealing ships tho. Miner character, exclusively Cutter, Arc Welder, and Rivet Gun.

I won't stick the chip in my head in Cyberpunk. Nope. I know its got a virus on it. Just seems like a really really bad idea. That leaves me stuck in the first part of the game, because you can't break out of it anymore since the patches. I might mod it someday. (Any mod suggestions are welcome, plz!)

Picking up taxi passengers in GTA V is fun. Especially when I drive them off a cliff.

Sorta along the same lines, but, I love how differently my husband and I play Rust. He's on his official server doing what the game is meant for, and I'm just on my pVE building a villa/farm.

We need the farm update on console. I need pies and chickens. With the jungle update, my Lenovo Go can no longer handle Rust at all, so I'm back on console. It's missing some of my favorite features for farm build. I want to chase a chicken for that elusive egg fresh after wipe! And the flowers! Oh...

I grew up with Zelda Ocarina of Time, so now every time I feel like playing it I use a randomiser to put all the items in random locations. It makes every playthrough more unique and interesting.

The Bongcloud chess story reminded me of the StarCraft 2 player printf. Theoretically it is intended play, but he will start every single game with a cannon rush.

A cannon rush is when you attack your enemy's base with immobile cannons that are actually meant to be used defensively. When the enemy doesn't know that they are being cannon rushed it can be devastating, especially for inexperienced players. But when you halfway know what you're doing and spot it quickly enough it is easy to defend.

But printf plays at a level where he's not likely to encounter inexperienced opponents. And anyone who has any interest in the game is very likely to know who printf is. And he never hides his identity and he always opens with a cannon rush. And he's still super successful with it.

He's played it so often with so many variations he can probably (maybe he does) teach the top players a few things about that strategy. And although it's always the same it's still interesting to watch him play.

Yes! Action RPGs and I ignore all the RPG because, despite my thorough research, I've been bamboozled by COMBO MAD videos.

Fuck you, NieR:Automata—I'm not collecting 5 mushroom and 3 pyrite or whatever else you want me to collect. I paid for an action game and I'm getting one!

Back when I first played Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, I spent way too much time atop some stairs and jump-kicking an orc down, who'd ragdoll down, get up then come back up, only to get another jump kick to the face. I spent several minutes laughing

When I was ~7 years old, I had a Nascar 94 demo for PC, my main mode of play was running the wrong way and crashing as hard as I could on another car, watching all the pieces flying was fun

I also wonder whether there's a "wrong" way to play dorf fortress, since I've tried a lot of stupid shit (it's only stupid if it doesn't work, so...)

Lastly, there's Skyrim with, uh, specific mods

This probably isn't what you mean, but I usually only make like, 3 or 4 military units in Civ 6 and play entirely peaceful, zero war games. And yes I play on deity difficult

I used to just drive around in GTA: Vice City with an appropriate 80s soundtrack.

Edit: drop some recommendations if you're of a mind for "appropriate 80s soundtrack". Note: Crockett's Theme and In The Air Tonight are already locked in the playlist.

I wanted to play a Mass Effect game, but I suck at cover-shooters. So I put it on easy and ran around punching my way through the game.

I doubt it. I can say I played a ridiculous amount of blitzball in final fantasy 10. Like I very well may have spent more time playing blitzball than the main game.

Civilization VI, I usually make "multiplayer" games so that I can set every AI's team and difficulty, and I'll make a somewhat large map with way too many players, each on teams of two or three, and then one AI will be the god-emperor-king that we all have to band together to defeat.

I make custom maps in Civilization that essentially turn it into a tower defense

I just remembered another one - the original Car and Driver game (way before Need for Speed 1) was a vector 3D affair that ran at full speed on a 386.

One of the courses was the San Dimas Mall parking lot - I worked out that I could use the "drop camera" command in one spot, and then it became a radio control car simulator since the 'dropped' camera followed the car being driven :-)

I like to look for secrets in Action Half-Life maps