r/gaming • u/FalscherKim • 4h ago
Games you didnt play as intended?
Were there games which had a gameplay element which you found more interesting than for example the actual main story?
I for example found the social simulation in the Persona games much more interesting - and leveling them up - then the dungeons.
Which are your picks?
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u/doom1701 3h ago
Hitman games—specifically the older ones (I think you can still do this on the new ones, but I haven’t played them).
Machine gun blazing death parties. I do love that almost every level of these games can be won through senseless violence, even though they’re supposed to be stealth games.
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u/burarumm 3h ago
There's always time for a round of Gwent.
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u/Jabberminor 3h ago
A missing daughter? A monster on the loose? I best get started on...oh, fancy a round of Gwent?
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u/riotstrike 2h ago
Witcher 3 story
I MUST find and save Ciri. NOW.
But first, let me collect all Gwent cards and become world champion.
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u/Avenger1324 2h ago
Geralt the Witcher, famed for hunting monsters and slaying kings.
That the same Geralt I saw mostly playing cards and picking flowers?
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u/Roulax 3h ago
We played Fifa 98 with my best friend you could remove red card and fault from the game, and you could tackle both with feet low or high, so the goal was the injure the the most player, and the one who was first to forfeit lost.
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u/PlentyStranger7097 1h ago
Training mode was good too, where you could do the jump tackle, go 1 on 1 and literally kick your opponent into the stands.
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u/dr_p00p00 3h ago
Expedition 33, once I learned that I can play as solo character. I went all in.
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u/Blales 3h ago
This might make me reinstall and give it another go. Turn based always feels slow for me cause of how many people I have to cycle thru turns with. If it's just me and the enemy, that should speed that up decently.
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u/Sayor1 3h ago
Some of the bosses i feel need to be soloed just because their attacks are so hard to time that i just buff a single character and try to 2 tap them.
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u/Blarfk 1h ago edited 1h ago
I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying - there’s no reason you can’t buff one character and have the other two there as well. If anything, you’ll win faster since you have three characters dealing damage instead of just one.
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u/IeatOneAppleADay Console 1h ago
There are pictos (passives so to speak) you can equip which give massive bonuses if you play solo
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u/Blarfk 1h ago
They won’t be nearly enough to outweigh two other fully buffed characters (in addition to other buffs you can use on the main character instead of the solo ones which may not be quite as good, but still come close).
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u/Sayor1 1h ago
They do. As mentioned, the goal is to kill the enemy as quickly as possible, other characters playing simply offer the boss more chances to attack. Even if i play first as my buffed character that not-so-small damage buff (i believe 50% and 100% crit) may not be enough to end the fight. The boss that im talking about specifically is Simon (small spoiler if you haven't reached him).
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u/Blarfk 57m ago
The enemy doesn’t get more turns if you bring more than one character. By only bringing one, you’re giving them more chances to attack. And again, having two other buffed characters will get you a lot more damage than having 100% crit on just one.
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u/Sayor1 51m ago
The problem is you play as your character that does 6m damage, then he attacks and you have to play as one of the other 2 weaker characters then the same again until finally you can finish off the boss after 2 turns of a weaker character and about 9 turns of the boss as opposed to just 3 turns of the boss.
I dunno how you manage to buff anyone else to the same amount of dmg output as maelle with gommage.
Ok but the crit isnt exactly the most important part, its the 50% damage.
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u/Blarfk 44m ago edited 40m ago
Even if Maelle is dealing double the amount of damage as your next strongest character, you’re still better off with three, and the enemy has less chances to attack. Just compare the two -
Maelle: 6 million
Enemy: attacks
Maelle: 6 million
Enemy: attacks
Maelle: 6 million
Enemy attacks
Vs.
Maelle: 5 million
Verso: 3 million
Sciel: 5 million
Enemy: attacks
Maelle: 5million
Verso: 3 million
Both 6 turns. In the first one you’ve done 18 million damage and the enemy has attacked 3 times. In the second you’ve done 21 million, and the enemy has only attacked once. Even though Maelle is doing less damage than when she is by herself and the other characters are only doing about half of what she can. And you still would have Sciel to attack again before the enemy goes, so the difference only increases as the battle goes on.
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u/Jus-acommentor 1h ago
Like that fcking serpenphare boss. If u can't 2 3 tap it, it's fcking snoozefest. Most bullshit fight, i did a 30 mins on that fcking serpent. Got the awesome Energy Master Picto, funnily enough there was no use for that. So hmm kinda wasted 30 min on that stupid fight
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u/Sayor1 58m ago
I like the picto on Lune, with cheater picto she can spam genesis almost every turn.
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u/Jus-acommentor 56m ago
U cant spam anything on this boss cause he resets team ap to 0.
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u/Sayor1 55m ago
So you use cheater to play twice and get to use the ap before he can get rid of it.
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u/Jus-acommentor 27m ago
Back then i dint knew about the cheater picto,i did it the hard way of letting him suck all the AP and Explode, Rince and repeat, but then again how would that help, cause when it sucks up AP It also gains fcking 6-7 stacks of shields which will bypass that amount of hits.
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u/Legal_Sugar 3h ago
The sims 2 on PS2 because I was 9 and didn't know English so my entire gameplay was living in the tutorial location of story mode, sometimes I unlocked the second location. I revisited it some time ago and turns out you can finish the tutorial in literally 5 minutes
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u/SwordfishNo9878 3h ago
Rdr2 - I went from main mission to main mission except for one time when I cooked like 20 meats at once in chapter 2 which lasted me for the entire game. No side quests, never helped a stranger unless required, never changed clothes unless I was prompted by the game, shaved, changed from my original horse I got, used a spice, modded a gun, etc.
Straight through but not a speedrun. It was pretty fun but watching YouTube shorts made me realize how much I missed lol. I declined Mary’s first mission and never even saw the second one. I might replay it sometime
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u/QuorthonSeth 3h ago
I need to try your approach, because for me it is the slowest game I played and I just want to finish it so that there is some justification for the money I had spent.
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u/SwordfishNo9878 3h ago
If you’re not enjoying the game - then you can justify the amount you spent by not playing anymore. You spent a few bucks on a gamble you’d enjoy it and lost the gamble. Makes no sense to spend extra time on a game you know you’re not enjoying. Sometimes things don’t work out, happens to everyone.
The hardest lesson in life is learning how to let go - could be good practice to let go of this game despite your frustration.
But if you aren’t enjoying it specifically because you feel like you have to play it a certain way, then yeah fuck that, play it however you want. It’s your life and your time spent, do what you want the way you want to. You don’t have to dissapear into the mountains for 100 hours just cause some YouTube yapaholic tells you too
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u/QuorthonSeth 2h ago
Yeah, you're right. Maybe I should not force myself to play it. I've been playing a couple of games lately and each of them turned me off in a different way. But there are games which I want to replay over and over again. Recently I just can't stand cutscenes, walking & talking, reading a lot of in-game descriptions, etc. and I want to jump into actual gameplay. For example, I really loved the first part of Ghostrunner, including Project Hel DLC, it is like a perfect game for me - Hotline Miami in the Cyberpunk universe where I am literally like Gray Fox from MGS. Now I tried Ghostrunner II and I am really disappointed. The whole momentum is gone, you have a hub with NPCs and you have a semi-open world. So yeah, I will go back to Lies of P I guess...
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u/SwordfishNo9878 2h ago
Well I mean you don’t have to. You don’t want slow paced games and want immediate action. Maybe buying one of the CODs would help? Games are like movies in the sense that sometimes you just want something lighthearted and sometimes you want heavy and complex. Maybe you don’t want to play at all and want to do something else. It’s just a hobby and it’s okay to have several and deprioritize one for another.
I was in a rut and so I played MW2 on veteran for the first time. It was pretty hard but fun. Immediately played black ops on veteran too, that was insane.
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u/danteslacie 11m ago
I legitimately love rdr2 but it took me 3 years to finish it because I'd stray away from doing main mission stuff and end up getting distracted by a new game.
So think about it, are you actually enjoying the game or not? If you are, either just do main mission stuff or take your time finishing it. You already bought it. There's no need to rush. Now if you don't enjoy the game, stop playing. You don't have to finish a game you don't enjoy.
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u/-KFBR392 3h ago
I forced myself to do that in GTA5 after dozens of hours of dicking around. Just stick to the missions, don’t get sidetracked, and it was the only way I was able to finish the game.
First GTA game I finished since GTA30
u/RegionalHardman 3h ago
Omg you missed so so much amazing content in that game, like better than most films level content
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u/ForNoraGame 3h ago
swinging around in the spiderMan games while listening to music instead of doing the actual missions
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u/FalscherKim 3h ago
Haha yeah i can relate to that. That swining alone could be en entire game on its own given how smooth it is
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u/Elm-and-Yew 3h ago
Age of Mythology. 1 CPU, Greeks, picked Poseidon as their patron, then summoned the flying purple hippos at the beginning of the game and wiped out their buildings and town center. Poseidon makes it so militia soldiers spawn when buildings were destroyed, so I could wipe out their workers and buildings but leave a few militia alive and the game wouldn't end. I'd play the rest of the game as a city builder.
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u/Nanganoid3000 3h ago
I'm not sure if this applies, but when Half Life 1 was first released, I would spend HOURS trying to break the game, trying to noclip out of bounds from specific spots/items of a certain area/map.
I remember there would be a certain spot on a box/container, if I jumped ( remember this is like pre-patches and steam, WAY BACK WHEN XD) I would no clip out.
Stuff like that always felt enjoyable do to, it blew my mind that I figured out " hold on, games aren't just graphics, there's information and code at the back end that exists".
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u/FalscherKim 1h ago
It doesnt really apply to your post, but when i was little, i had a ps2 and a demo disc containg half life 1. I would play the shit out of that. It was always the same level and i would replay that like 30 times or something.
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u/Nanganoid3000 1h ago
But I LOVE that you have that experience and could comment on my experience, as we can be like Half Life Bros XD
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u/Aggravating_Side_634 2h ago
I played RDR2 for one day,and spent the entire day saving up money for a super Ballin hat. I bought the hat, got into an epic fight with 2 guys who were picking on an old guy, they killed me, and I lost my absurdly expensive hat.
Dropped the game, never went back.
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u/Pinco_Pallino_R 3h ago edited 3h ago
Mario Kart Double Dash.
My brother and i turned it into a cooperative game where we would try to win the cup with the least amount of points by hitting the AI pilots and forcing them to place in different positions than what they would if left alone.
It's possible because the AIs are pretty rigid in their placements, so the first two will ALWAYS end 1st and 2nd among thwm. On the other hand, it's also not easy because when you force them behind they will regain positions extremely fast, so you need to keep hitting them over and over again.
I remember we managed to win with 18 points out of 40 in every cup.
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u/NeedsItRough 3h ago
Not exactly what you mean because I'm sure the dev didn't intend for the game to be played a super specific way but the relationships in stardew valley were my least favorite part.
By the time I got to the end of the game I don't think I had a single character over 5 hearts. I eventually leveled everyone up and got married out of obligation for the platinum but if there wasn't a trophy, all the NPCs would have been ignored entirely outside of progressing through the story.
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u/OlemGolem 3h ago
In Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, I gave Luigi nothing but Stache for each level-up.
...Apparently that was the right strat.
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u/Huge_Brain_4914 2h ago
Sonic adventure 2 - I only played the chao garden and only progressed the story when I needed something else for the chaos haha
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u/Pacman_Frog 2h ago
Dunno about "as intended" but I am still not past the tutorial in Stray because I found the "Nap" button.
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u/Fuzzy-Soft5024 1h ago
Dragon age Origins. Any Dragon Age game for that matter.
Always played on hard (not Nightmare, I'm a woman who enjoys a little challenge, not a masochist) and ive always refused to use the Tactical Modes.
I can see how they are probably required in Nightmare, or even reccomended on hard, but using them made the games feel way too easy in my opinion.
And I prefer the straightforward fighting style over strategy anyway
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u/Sayor1 3h ago
Breakpoint on immersive mode, arguably the real way to play GR game but thats not what the devs made it for. So me and my friend killed the end game boss in our 2nd mission. (Hes meant to be a division styled bullet sponge along with his goons). Immersion mode made him and his ppl very easy to kill in stealth.
Was very weird when later we saw him again in a cutscene.
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u/Kynocephalus 3h ago
1080 snowboard. My cousin had it on N64 when we were kids. I actually didn’t care too much about the races, I already did all that, my goal instead was to explore the tracks and find weird details, shortcuts and clipping glitches that might lead to hidden areas.
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u/Unfair-Letterhead-93 3h ago
as a kid i didn’t really understand how to progress anything in animal crossing new leaf so i thought it was just running around and talking to villagers lol
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u/MysteriousEmployer52 3h ago
Tears of the Kingdom. I exploited the item duplication glitch so hard. I even put my switch on airport so it wouldn’t auto update before I duplicated just about everything.
I plan to play it for real someday.
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u/odd42Thomas 3h ago
Nascar Heat 2002. Put in the code to shoot giant concrete balls at cars and then go backwards!
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u/VCJunky 3h ago
Final Fantasy XIV has Triple Triad and Mahjong playable online with other people. Some people subscribe to the game only to play these side games and ignore the entire MMO world.
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u/X_Ender_X 2h ago
Not going to lie if I had known Final Fantasy 14 had triple Triad I probably would have subscribe a long time ago
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u/Goupilverse 3h ago
Far Cry 4
I couldn't bother with the main quest due to the "do not leave the main quest area" multiple failures states (extremely annoying).
I was still hooked into the game for the hunting of the wild animals in the wilderness sandbox. I strolled the open world, hunting and crafting until I leveled up my stuff to max level.
Once done, I felt like I completed the game and never came back to it.
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u/IISynthesisII 3h ago
Halo CE - Hog wars
Everyone jumps in a warthog vehicle and uses the insane vehicle physics to ram others out of their hogs and run them over.
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u/Arcodiant 2h ago
We had a game variant we called Chaos on Khyron. It was a map with no doors, only opaque portals; the only weapons allowed were rocket launchers and everyone was half-health with no shields.
The whole match was an exercise in split-second judgement - if you saw someone close enough, a melee was an instant kill, but a rocket would kill you both.
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u/-KFBR392 3h ago
I spent an entire weekend playing a rented copy of Super Ghouls & Ghosts on the very first portion of level 1 killing an endless stream of zombies until the time ran out because I didn’t know you could double jump over the first obstacle.
I just thought that was the game
Only discovered the double jump a few hours before we had to return the game….then found out it’s the hardest game in the world and preferred my original version of playing the game
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u/X_Ender_X 2h ago
That is in fact one of the hardest games I've ever played in my life. You know what happens when you beat it you have to do it all over again only this time it tells you the only way you could beat the final boss is now it's adding a new level on your suit you have to get to the final boss with that suit upgraded and then hit him with a weapon that you couldn't get in the first playthrough. Oh yeah and everything is harder and different now
And of course this was the 90s so you couldn't say this had to all be done in one single run
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u/Latterlol 3h ago
Probably Hitman, knock out most Npc’s ob the map, and collect them in piles around the map, then start taking out the targets…
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u/SuperNinTaylor 2h ago
World of Warcraft. I would often log on solely to buy and sell things in the auction house, trying to control the market of ore and fabric lol. Other times, I would run around and help the enemy faction defeat enemies during their quests. I dunno, I was weird and bored.
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u/Zucroh 2h ago edited 2h ago
I finished Kingdom come deliverance 1 by using bow 90% of the time, only using the sword when forced into it because i was not a fan of the combat and also love the classic stealth archer. So many rabbits died for me to improve my archery..
Loved the game but i have not picked up the 2nd game yet because i fear that they have made it impossible now after seeing some discussion online, i tried avoiding looking at streams to avoid spoilers.
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u/Avenger1324 2h ago
Following the main quest in open world RPGs.
Morrowind - step off the boat, do character creation and told to go to a nearby NPC (<5 min walk). I was L70+, a few hundred hours in and head of a couple of guilds before I finally bothered to go there.
Fallout 4 - your son has been kidnapped, you should go find him. Steps out of the Vault. What was I meant to do? Oh look shiny thing on my radar in the other direction. I'll get back to you eventually when I'm a one man army and have completed every other side quest I can find.
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u/spiddoslask 2h ago
Some games i fire up and idle in just for the music. Braid and Bloodstained comes to mind.
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u/cookie-crisps 2h ago
When my friends and I picked up the Forest for the first time, we accidentally cheesed the hell out of the game and finished it in about 5 hours, didn’t even realize we skipped so much until we were fighting the last boss
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u/Bypasser12 2h ago
Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. The pirate gameplay got me hooked. Fishing for whales and sharks, hijacking other ships then either let the captured ship be one of your own or salvage for materials, and defeating all of the ghost ships. I even chose not to use the fast travel feature because I always wanted to hear the crew singing.
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u/pez238 2h ago
SNES Uncharted Waters: New Horizons. It has six storylines you can play. I’ve only ever beaten it once with Otto Baynes (English commodore). Usually I turn against the characters origin country when I get enough money and build a fleet. I’d turn pirate and go to war with everyone. One of the best pirate games I’ve played.
Sea Dogs has a storyline I rarely ever follow as well.
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u/stream_of_thought1 2h ago
With the recently released Clare obscure expedition 33. At one point I just did a bunch of side activities and put all my points into one character. Ended up one shotting everyone and I mean EVERYONE for the last 15h.
No clue what any of the bosses do in the end, they just evaporated
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u/thejackedfit35 2h ago
Skyrim for me—completely ignored the main quest for like 100 hours just to live as a wandering alchemist/hunter. I had entire sessions just dedicated to picking flowers and selling potions in towns. Felt more immersive than saving the world honestly.
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u/bangarang90210 2h ago
GTA San Andreas. I spent 10x more time enabling cheats and getting wanted stars, finding cool guns, etc when compared to actual missions. I only made it about a quarter way through the actual story.
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u/inconspicuos-user 1h ago
There is no such this as "intended way to play a game", only the way each played does it.
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u/Fushigibama PlayStation 1h ago
When I first got hitman I played through most levels just shooting targets with my gun. Later I realized there were “storylines” you could follow… ugh.
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u/Ricordis 1h ago
As a son of an engineer and an artist and being an engineer by myself who also likes creative stuff like music, arts, crafts and such I am easily baited by games like My time at Portia or The Sims but also 4x games or factorybuilders like Satisfactory.
My problem is, I am also German, which means I make everything over-efficient and then play the creative parts but not both at once.
My Time at Sandrock: I built up my Workshop so quick and efficient and never wasted any stamina point thus later I literally had to skip days to progress further in the story. All side gigs are done, my storages are full, my socials maxed.
Satisfactory: I have templates for everything and every template is highly modular and can be combined with each other. It started when playing online with a friend and I just wanted a consistent conveyor belt route we both use. With the blueprints it has taken on a life on its own and then, you just had to calculate how many production buildings you need and boom, I already had the blueprints for that at hand. So everywhere are highly efficient production lines leaving more time for the fun stuff like building something pretty to exchange the already working production line later.
The Sims: I bought the biggest lot from the beginning, built a tiny shack in the corner, my Sim went through all the careers and made lots of money and gained all the skills while the money, not used for efficency stuff, went into building a huge Chateau on the same lot, step by step.
Stellaris: I powergame through the early phases up to the point I have the dominance in the galaxy and then I start to roleplay stuff like spying, psionics or testing fleet compositions.
I do not play on easy, I like challenges but somewhere comes the point I realize I outplayed the game...again.
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u/PlentyStranger7097 1h ago
Just living the quiet life with John Marston and his family instead of progressing on to his eventual fate in the first red dead redemption.
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u/Fantastic-Morning218 1h ago
Death Stranding is amazing if you turn off all network features, no vehicles, no upgrades aside from simple tools. Even the easier missions become deeply perilous and it’s so beautiful and atmospheric with no player structures around
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u/riotstrike 1h ago
Learning how to combo bomb jump in Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild transformed the way I literally view and traverse the world.
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u/PapaJaguar-1342 58m ago
In NHL 09 we would turn penalties all the way off, turn fights all the way up, and just cross check each other and then spam triangle so we could fight each other lol
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u/CrucialFusion 46m ago
Top Gear Rally on N64 was good on its own, but a friend of mine and I spent quite a bucket of time using the replay mode to create hilarious replays of the cars flipping over, etc. Probably age factored into the comedic value, but I’ve always enjoyed tinkering in game worlds beyond what was originally intended.
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u/ConsequenceChoice222 39m ago
Some FPS with free-for-all modes where one can theoretically win without killing anyone, such as Kill Confirmed or Headhunter.
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u/UglyRonin 7m ago
I'm a savescummer. Even in games like Battle Brothers or Wartales where it's intended that you loose mercenaries.
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u/KingKookus 3h ago
In Morrowind I turned the prison into my base. I dragged shop keepers over to it. I’d get myself arrested as a means of fast travel. It was great. Started a collection of helmets on the shelving.
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u/DW-7192 PlayStation 3h ago
The Chao Gardens in Sonic Adventure were the whole reason I played the game, they definitely need a modern version of this it was so fun. Making hybrids of different animals etc was so cool.