Stolen from myself 6 months ago at https://lemmyverse.link/lemmy.zip/post/35616522
I know I remember seeing some people talk about how nice some of the environments in Hitman were, and that they’d just walk around as a tourist from time to time, treating it like a walking simulator/virtual tourism thing instead of the stealth assassination game it is. Curious about other things like that, where you play a game totally differently than it was meant to be played.
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.
Not me, but there’s a great example of this in chess.
There’s an opening called the Bongcloud. You move the pawn in front of your king out for your first move, and then for your second move you move your king up a square. It’s memed as being the strongest opening possible, but it’s actually almost the worst 2 opening moves you can possibly make. Because modern chess does have a large online component and the current best players are young and like memes, it has been played in tournaments, which means that if you play it in an up to date chess programme the programme will name it as the Bongcloud.
A lot of people seem to think that it’s called the Bongcloud because you’d have to be stoned to play it. But almost all chess openings are named after one of three things: a person, a place, or an animal. In this case, the Bongcloud is named after a person - Lenny Bongcloud.
Lenny Bongcloud is a now-inactive user of chess.com. He would always open with the moves described above. That’s because, unbeknownst to them, Lenny wasn’t playing the same game as his opponents. They were trying to checkmate him. He was trying to walk his king to the opposite side of the board as quickly as possible. If he gets checkmated, he loses. If he gets his king to the other side of the board he counts it as a victory and resigns.
So, yeah. One of the oldest known games in the world has an opening the “official” name of which comes from a jokey alias adopted by someone who was deliberately playing the game wrong.
I knew about the Bongcloud but not that origin of the name!
remeember dueds, ghet KING LENNY, the mastir of chess to the othier side, dueds!
The Witcher 3 is just an RPG minigame you can play between rounds of Gwent.
Woman: My child! Please save my child!
Geralt: Care for a game of Gwent?
Woman: nodKingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is just a horse riding simulator in between games of Farkle. A beautiful deadly simulator.
Didn’t knights of the old republic have farkle in too? It’s a good game, and I guess just unfamiliar enough to bolt into a fantasy setting.
No it isn’t! ヽ( `д´*)ノ
Tap for spoiler
Jk, I suck at Gwent
Any game that has a fishing mechanic will be used as a fishing game.
This. So much this.
For me, the peak fishing game was Final Fantasy XV :D
Helps that it has some of the most absurdly hype fishing music ever. Sounds like a boss battle.
Even if you don’t want it to to be…
Currently got my Sonic Adventure playthrough on pause because I can’t for the life of me catch that stupid frog in Big’s fishing mini game!
Big has the most optional upgrades of any character in it. Try going back to his hut in the forest and picking up his bed for a better lure. There are more hidden around. I wouldn’t feel bad using a guide, as there’s not really any clues pointing to them like other character’s upgrades.
Ah yes, finally a break from this incessant combat to catch a weird fish.
(Speaking of Hades)
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)
That way of playing Stellaris sounds really cool! It makes me want to install Stellaris again
Don’t do it. It’s a turned base game that artificially stretches itself into an RTS in order to fool you into thinking there’s more complexity than there is. Each playthrough should take 30% of the time that it does because the devs are aware they’ve created a spreadsheet game and are trying to hide that fact.
Your way of playing Stellaris gives me similar vibes to this person on my original thread
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 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.
Reminds me of the beginning of the book The Ellimist Chronicles.
I spend a solid amount of time in RDR2 camping. I’ll go to town, gather some supplies, and head out in a random direction with no map.
Gather food as I go, hunt for game as I find it, craft supplies, and live off the land.
You can take multiple in-game days to get places and even better is choosing a mountain or similar in the distance and making that your destination.
You still come across plenty of side missions with this approach because of how much is going on in that game, but it feels quite genuine when you do.
I would argue this is an intended play style. They made camping and the natural world extremely detailed on purpose.
One of my coworkers who’s big on hunting and fishing in real life has almost exclusively been trying to 100% the hunting and fishing trophies on RDR2
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.
Yes. I did this with Monster Truck Madness and still remember the opening announcer guy.
I also did this with Big Red Racing, Diddy Kong Racing, and Rallisport Challenge.
Also did this with the first Monster Truck Madness and Big Red Racing. And Motocross Madness. Seems these games were just built for that. Only had demo versions though, so just the one stage to explore.
Shareware!
Are you saying you can still find these titles?
Carmageddon was really good for it, too.
In modern gaming I’ve clocked up about 400 hours on Snowrunner, half of the game is intentionally exploring with trucks (albeit a lot slower, lol)
Ah yeah Carmageddon! They definitely encouraged exploration. I remember never winning by racing, but instead killing the other drivers.
Oh yeah, that was often the easiest way to progress.
I used to be a bit of a Carmageddon nut, I think I have original copies of all the games (1 with the Splat Pack expansion was the best for exploration) … but my old PC can’t run the latest version at more than 1fps unfortunately :-/
Have you played Mario kart world?
I haven’t, can’t say I’ve ever heard of it!
(I’ve got Mario Kart 8 on the WiiU, that’s about it!)
Haven’t played it, but the concept is being able to drive around after, between, or even during races to do exploring and side adventures
Sounds nice, provided you’re in the Nintendo ecosystem
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.
Cyberpunk 2077 is also good for this IMO. Sometimes I deliberately avoid fast traveling and just drive to my destination to take in the sights on the way.
The driving mechanics also just feel so satisfying. Superjumping off a bike in a slide and throwing a knife, slowmo, clean headshot. Cooler than I will ever feel IRL.
I like to autopilot it so I have time to grab a beer/snack or go to the bathroom.
I’m not sure I’ve ever fast traveled in Cyberpunk or Spider-Man
Flying. In san andreas it was so cool, and then later in gtav I just boggled at how the old ‘fog’ trick wasn’t needed. Every time I got on, trying to steal the military jet was the first thing I’d do.
I haven’t really played V, but other GTA games I just treat like arcade games where I start by stealing some car and try to stay away from the cops and steal bigger/cooler shit for as long as I can without getting caught
Just Cause 3
I fire it up just to drive aound / grapple-hook float for an hour or more
I like car surfing, for the scenery.
I also enjoy firing tethers to wreck other cars as we go along, for the entertainment.
Or tow a few, that’s fun too.And if you have the DLC that gets you the jet powered wing glider it gets really fun to just try to glide as close to the ground as possible!
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.
Yeah, we can basically just put every speedrunner of every game into this topic. “Man, I love this game so much. Let’s see if I can break it so I can 100% it in under a minute!”/“This is the best shooter ever made! Let’s see if I can complete it without hurting anybody!”
Q3Defrag vids still blow my mind. I can strafe jump somewhat consistently, but then I watch stuff like the team trick jumping in the “Event Horizon” series and it’s just humbling. I tried some simpler strafe maps recently (there’s surprisingly still a couple active Defrag servers out there) but I’m still awful at it - and rusty now to boot. Couldn’t maintain speed to clear the larger hops, or when I did then I couldn’t air strafe well enough to be heading the right way for the next. Air strafing was a lot easier to do in CounterStrike & Source.
I’m pretty sure the “bhop” and “surf” maps in CS/S directly benefited from the same physics quirks, being descendants of id’s engines. I was a surf_skyworld addict for a while. Just the same it was easy to throw on some tunes and lose a few hours surfing with friends on some of the 24/7 servers, back when CS:S was in its prime.
I was a CS player first and a Quake player second. VQ3 movement never really hit me the same because of my CS background, but CPMA movement got me into defrag.
There is also a game called MomentumMod. Free on steam and it has all those quake and source engine movement minigames.
Rocket jump, bhop, defraq, surf and others. It has lobbies to play with other people and keeps leaderboards. Highly recommend checking it out when you next want to play any of these gamemodes.
Booting up the old defraq mod has its nostalgia tho, with the rabbit and all 😄
I hadn’t heard of Momentum. First video I load up has Apex’s “Just One Second” for the background music and now I’m gonna end up on a Hospital Records binge. It looks really cool. I can’t find any videos on how they handle tricksurf (maybe not implemented yet?) but I like seeing that they have intentions to support it. I just need to finally build that new gaming rig I keep putting off.
Yeah I checked the discord and they plan on supporting it but it is as the devs put it “very low priority right now so will be a while before its added”.
This is definately one of those projects I hope will bring the community together and preserve and group up people playing these more niche game modes.
But im sure there will always be the HC players that say if a record is not surfed on KSF servers in source its not considered a record.
But im not a wr player anyway so im cool with that. And the good players seem to dominate the momentum leaderboards all the same so they are definately playing momentum as well.
Forgot to mention, back then we would optimize fps for refresh rate. 120Hz CRT monitors with 120 fps constant was the sweet spot for a while (until people started playing in multitudes of 60 fps on LED-based displays). It’s entirely possible that if your fps is not optimal, you can’t clear larger gaps or gain as much momentum in QW/Q3/CPMA or similar.
I’ve never played HLDM or CS, so I’m not that familiar with derivatives in those games.
In Rust you can host your own server, and if you do that on your own local network with nobody else connected, then you have a very large world, with only like a couple of things that can kill you, and you can have a very fun, laid-back, relaxing, you know, builder, simulator, survival thing.
And also Skyrim. I have been trying to complete every single side quest and every single add-on side quest that I can, while basically not advancing the game at all. My current game is easily 40 hours in, and I only recently defeated the first dragon that you can kill as part of the main quest.
The only thing with Rust is you need to pay for your own server on top of paying for the game. I want to play it, I want to try it because I like survival crafting games; but I’ve also seen and heard all the horror stories about Rust players, so I really wouldn’t want to just jump into any server
Many computers have enough spare compute power to run the server in addition to the game all on the same system.
I know I’m coming from a position of privilege because I was playing it on a 5950X with 64 gigs of RAM and a 3090, but even so, like it barely even broke a sweat.
Many games that have multiplayer and singleplayer options run singleplayer by hosting a server and then joining it.
And then you’ve got the new Battlefield 6 which requires you to wait your turn to connect to their remote server so you can pay the Singleplayer campaign.
Back in the early Sim days (~97?), I lived with a bunch of friends in a duplex and shared one house computer (always on, seeding, etc.) that had a perpetual session running. Any housemate at any time could pop down to check on their Sims, some more than others. Me, though? Not at all.
It took them months to talk me into it, and even then I gave in, exasperated. So, I decided to be the weird house. Started with a second floor on stilts/pillars and made the first floor a hedge garden & statuary promenade with a pool out back. At first, it was funny to see the random burglars have no idea what to do with a front door that opened directly to stairs —and that’s only if they found the front door before wandering into the hedge maze. IIRC, they despawn eventually (environmental effect, not actual Sims), but I didn’t expect the neighbors to wander over and into that maze…
Quite a while went by before I logged in again to check on my crime family, and it was really only inspired by a few housemates complaining the game was losing their Sims or something. When I looked in on my house, I soon found their Sims… A couple of them had yet to succumb to their neglect, but most died of starvation and/or fire inside the unintentional maze under my house.
Oops 😅🥹
There seems to be one or two Sims channels on YouTube where the people running the channel have little or no interest in playing the game and instead just build and furnish houses/shops.
I thought The Sims started out as an architecture/interior design game and the social/life simulation stuff we all know it for came later.
I’ve seen it said in several places; this was the most credible-looking spot I could find on the first page of my search.
It’s actually really fun to do interior design and architecture with it.
I’m half convinced the folks who mod in new furniture and decor are already architects…
I’ve never finished FF7 because there is a snowboarding mini game that gave me SSX vibes so good I put like 15 hours into it and then stopped playing FF7. No idea what happens in the story but man that Bits and Chitz style mega arcade was fun.
I almost forgot about the storyline for FFX because I played so much blitzball.
Basically the rest of the game is all about the snowboarding game. One character does so bad at it she actually gets stabbed by another and tossed in a lake. Anyway snowboard kids for the n64 is good too
Picking up taxi passengers in GTA V is fun. Especially when I drive them off a cliff.
I have spent days up on days of irl time looking for bigfoot in that and san Andreas.
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.
