Games

Assassin's Creed. The actual gameplay is almost never as interesting as just walking around a meticulous recreation of ancient civilizations as a digital tourist.

Who amongst us hasn't played GTA at least once while trying to drive around and follow all the traffic laws for absolutely no reason at all

Like playing Gwent instead of fighting monsters as the witcher?

Minecraft. You think that there's no way to play Minecraft "wrong", right up until you accidentally fall into the 4-block wide valley that I've cut through the entire map or walk into the liminal space that I've mined out just above bedrock. Fuck cutesy cottages and Minecraft in minecraft- let's just build superstructures that disappear beyond the draw distance of the map. Fuck creative mode- let's do it while we're facing down mobs day and night. Fuck explosives- do that shit with a pick like a goddamn man. You haven't really seen confused rage until your child discovers hundreds of unexplained and unexplainable brutalist towers extending into the distance like the gravestones of alien gods when they thought you were building a farm over the next hill.

The only way to play NASCAR games is to drive backwards and see how many cars you can involve in a wreck.

I play heavily modded Elder Scrolls, where my character never touches the main story.

My favorite Morrowind run was a princess who ended up creating an agricultural baron, buying up every plantation and owning probably hundreds of slaves. She also got into the skooma business on the side (needed money for all of her dresses). Morrowind had a ton of wacky mods that were just fun to play in general - people made Star Wars and LOTR questlines. There’s also the work of Tommy Khajiit (RIP), which is something unique and which has never gotten the respect it deserved. (Or Lady Rae - she liked to recolor the game bright neon colors, and basically got bullied out of the modding community.)

Skyrim is a hunting/vagrant simulator for me. I usually play a Dunmer refugee and avoid the in-game quests entirely. Survival and economy mods to make the focus of the gameplay getting enough gold to afford a room for the night, tweaks to loot to make things more “mundane.”

The Sims for me is either 1800s Utah polygamous Mormons, post apocalyptic Handmaid’s Tale scenarios, or prisons.

I'm playing Overwatch but actually having fun while doing so /s

I used to only do something called "surfing" in the Counter-Strike: Source days.

There are dedicated servers that only run surf maps.

For a while, I played the MMO Guild Wars 2 as a music simulator. It has playable in game musical instruments that you can equip, and play with the number keys. A-G are represented with the numbers 1-8 with 9 and 0 swapping an octave lower or higher. Killing monsters? Doing dungeons? Raids and world bosses? Nah I'm just chilling on a beautiful forested cliffside near a waterfall figuring out an arrangement for the Lord of the Rings theme.

Horizon zero dawn and forbidden west. I just roam around and by accident find the missions I’m supposed to do. I also exploit all the enemies, there is a hard lock on where they can walk, so I just stand 10 meter out of the zone and start hitting big enemies for 5 minutes without taking damage.

I will blame Skyrim for this behaviour

I played the story in GTA a few times.

I like to play crusader kings II from the point of view of God. Using console commands, sketchy cheat mod, and knowing the right game mechanics you can make characters do all types of crazy stuff. Using the "observe" console command let's you play as a spectator, you can use the "play" command followed by a character ID and you will jump into playing as that character. I like to find a character, give them insane stats, and give them all of the best traits, make them immortal and then spectate for a few hundred years and see what my chosen one made the world into. I also like to try to determine before hand what I want them to do, like becoming emperor of brittania or whatever, and see how close I can get from just 1 or 2 interactions with them.

I did that with RTS like Starcraft or Age of Empires II. I would just build a city, develop every upgrade, build good defenses and basically play it like Sim City

I play Trailmakers which is like Legos where people mostly build planes and tanks to shoot each other, but I build cranes, forklifts, trucks and boats and fill them with the barrels and crates from around the maps and move them to other places. Very peaceful and rewarding to me.

The only way you can play soccer games is to see how many of your team can get red carded by end of match.

I was part of some exploration guilds in World of Warcraft with the aim to explore every inch of the Azeroth, get beyond every instance border and just climb hard terrain even if there was an easier way up.

The Ship. It's normally supposed to be a social deduction game, but some friends and I all get together in a private server and basically just play deathmatch. It's hilarious because most of fhe weapons are really hard to kill with and you still have to be sneaky because if you get caught, you go to jail (which is also full of shanks). It always leads to some great chaos, especially with more people.

There are a few mobile or web idle/incremental games I have used as a substitute for a Pomodoro timer. Oh, I am really into the game and it only progresses if this is the focused tab? I really want to make progress, but I am in a period of the game where active play isn't that rewarded, and just watching the screen while I wait to earn the upgrade is pretty boring? How about we just leave my phone with that as the active tab, and I check back when the upgrade should be earned? Keeps me off my phone and doing the actual things I should be doing instead. Somehow, "abusing" games like this works better for me than the Forest app which has the explicit intention of making sure you do not touch your screen for a set length of time and instead do something else off your phone.

I also "abuse" Pokémon Masters EX in a similar fashion. You're expected to level up with some combination of putting them through battles that cost stamina to play through, and some pretty easy-to-obtain level-up items. And although there is an Auto option I have a feeling you are intended to manually do the battles in-game. Instead, I start story mode battles which cost no stamina to play through, that still reward me with XP no matter how many times I repeat it, and have the game fight the battle for me with the Auto setting. I check back when the battle is done and restart it. I have essentially turned this into an idle/incremental game, albeit one with a pretty short time between waiting and checking back in on the game. Free level-ups! Even though it does take much longer than the intended way, which is why I suspect nobody tried to prevent this method from working. I like doing this for some reason, and it's probably the main reason I still keep this game downloaded despite my usual allergy to gacha games.

Battlefield One

I don't play it anymore, but when I did with a friend, I broke the healer mechanic.

I always stayed with my friend and our team, and instead of a weapon I was carrying a syringe.

In a Match I ressurected up to 70 people, making us pretty much an undying army.

I would always top the leader Board in any game Mode.

A couple months in I saw copycats, but nobody came close to my insanity.

The next Iterations of the game sucked for me because they nerfed the mechanic extremely.

I don't think this is super uncommon but in harder difficulties of Terraria, I just play the game as a fishing game. I pretty much exclusively fish for the first few hours of the game and gear up solely through fishing. Then I repeat for the 2nd half of the game as well. I'm also setting up huts in every biome location to do fishing quests.

Most of my time in Elden Ring has been 1) ogling at the landscapes going "Holy shit this is metal", and 2) bravely running away.

Factorio is fun for me until oil comes up.

I have managed to play further with the black market mod. I can make whatever item I want, sell enough of it and buy the things I want or need instead of making them myself.

Other mods add more powerful machines that make items much faster. I like to do manually stuff with one machine only, then swap to something else with the same machine and repeat the process.

Red Dead Online is almost always my go to Fishing Game with friends. It just does the fishing aspect really well. Bonus points when the camp is setup near a river or pond

Any of The Forest games become basically a zipline simulator once that is unlocked.

As in, clear fell the forest so we can build ziplines everywhere.

The original crackdown, the only movable object that was completely indestructible were the big yellow skips (don't know what Americans call them).

Would play in coop with one character fixed in a spot to stop them despawning and see how many I could gather from around the map and bring back. You could only carry them in your arms preventing you from driving and climbing the taller buildings, forcing you into unconventional routes through the city, often while being shot. Think I got about 20 as my record before having to sign off.

Most games I play that I don't plan on playing a lot of. I use trainers hacks and cheats on things I find grindy or just feels pointless. Or unnecessary hard games.

Some friends and I play multi-world randomizers together. Randomizers modify a game so that important items/unlocks are in different locations or are obtained in a different way. I usually play Ocarina of Time and a randomizer changes all the "treasure chest" items found throughout the world, so instead of finding the bow in the Forest Temple (where it should be in the game), it could be found behind a rock in a cave in the middle of the field. I constantly have to ask myself "What items don't I have yet?" and "What areas do I have access to that I haven't searched yet?" It turns the game into a kind of puzzle game. There is a website we use called Archipelago.gg that lets you connect randomizers together. I can play an OOT randomizer and my friend can be playing a Pokemon Emerald randomizer, and when I open a chest I can find items from his game and he gets a gym badge, an HM, or something else dropped into his inventory. And it works the other way when he beats another trainer, he could get one of my items and I get some rupees, or a hookshot dropped into my inventory.

Rocket League, apparently.

What a save!

I like playing games that incentivise stealth as Michael Bay films. Give me rocket launchers and c4. Yeah I don't have the high score for the level but I will kill literally every single non-vital NPC.

I mostly play according to the intended game design. The only exceptions that come to mind at the moment are:

• Open world games (GTA, Fallouts, Elder Scroll series etc) - I tend to act like a normal, civilian part of the world. I eat and drink, travel like a person rather than player (i.e. safely, without quick travel), avoid violence and do peaceful tasks when possible. I also go on trips and take screenshots of the scenery.
  Finally, if there's an equipment system I limit myself to "reasonable" amount of baggage (both in terms of weight and volume).
• Mirror's Edge and Portal - the only games I learned to the point of speedrunning. I'm nowhere near the level of being able to compete with professionals (nor am I interested in that) but I can get through both pretty quickly and without issues.

This is a very mild violation, but I like to play these puzzles: https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/
...except that I create a custom difficulty level which is quite a step below the easiest difficulty and then I almost rather speedrun the puzzles.

The Rectangles puzzle at 5x5 size has been my crack for the past months and I'm at about 13 seconds now (using my phone as input).

I mean, it's very casual speedrunning. No one cares about my time, so I actually never timed myself before just now. But yeah, I just like the different challenge of thinking fast rather than complex.

I often use cheats to remove grindy and boring bits beyond a certain point. Usually the difficulty curve is pretty bad and a game is only hard or challenging in the beginning. So I play as intended until I reach a point at which it's just a matter of time and not skill. So I just give myself a ton of crafting mats or currency or whatever so I can focus on the fun and interesting parts of the game.

I used to play Jet Moto solely to do tricks. I remember there being level geometry that could send you hundreds of feet in the air.