Doing things in games because it simple felt good.

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?

TheOakTree,

By the time I started playing Forza Horizon 5, I had already completed a vast majority of the content in FH4. Once I started FH5 I found myself doing a lot less missions/races and instead just hopping in a pretty sounding or nicely handling or gorgeous looking car and seeing if I can drift some corner or launch myself off a ramp and land on a piece of road.

It just feels good.

interolivary,
@interolivary@beehaw.org avatar

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…)

massive_bereavement,
massive_bereavement avatar

Have you tried Cloudpunk?

interolivary,
@interolivary@beehaw.org avatar

I have not! I was actually just eyeballing it in Steam the other day thinking about whether I’d want to buy it, so I think I’ll take this as a recommendation

DebatableRaccoon,

Absolutely a recommendation. It’s extremely atmospheric. If you’ve ever wanted “drive” around in Blade Runner’s world, Cloudpunk is about as close as you’re going to get in terms of feel.

petenu,

Cloudpunk has really nice atmosphere but is highly linear, almost to the point of belonging to the “walking simulator” genre. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it, but just don’t go in expecting much in terms of gameplay.

massive_bereavement,
massive_bereavement avatar

That's probably why I recommended it. I spent more time with it going around aimlessly, hamging out in places than actually following the story.

I just want a Blade Runner sim so badly...

interolivary,
@interolivary@beehaw.org avatar

I just want a Blade Runner sim so badly…

Right‽ I just started playing Cloudpunk and I’ve really liked it so far, and I had this exact thought. Cloudpunk is close and it’s great fun, but I would commit light treason if it meant getting a (good…) 1st person Blade Runner game on the market

edit: oh and thank you for the tip, it’s exactly what I was looking for

interolivary,
@interolivary@beehaw.org avatar

Oddly enough I like walking simulators, even though Cyberpunk’s linearity irked me. I think it’s because I like my RPGs more nonlinear and with more freedom to decide how things go, but I’m fine with linear stories in games that don’t try to sell themselves as something else

Zozano,

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.

interolivary,
@interolivary@beehaw.org avatar

It’s absolutely got a lot of good things about it. While I don’t necessarily like it as such, I don’t dislike it either 😁 mainly the things that bug me are that the mechanics are a pretty generic sneak’n’hack clone and it’s very linear: nothing you do actually influences anything very big in the world except for some fairly inconsequential things, and you have no real choice in the larger picture of how things turn out.

I’m hoping the DLC, whatchamacallit, delivers on its promises of remaking some of the game to deliver more of what they originally promised.

GreneArwe,
@GreneArwe@reddthat.com avatar

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.

Guntrigger,

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.

hascat,

I enjoyed the ship battles in Assassin’s Creed 4 way more than the platforming and main story. I probably spent twice as much time at sea as I did on land.

Guntrigger,

This was such a good game because the sea stuff was definitely more interesting than the assassins creedy stuff. Letting the men finish their sea shanty before getting into something was always a personal pleasure!

DebatableRaccoon, (edited )

So long as you don’t care for graphics, Driver still holds up in the feel department. Get a PSX emulator, rip/“acquire” the game and you’re good to go.

For me, it’s any game moment where the player is given manual control over a function that is usually automated or simply blocked off. For example: any game that gives you control over sheathing/holstering your weapon instead of waiting for your character to do it for you (a boon for RP in RPG games) or in GTA V when the right d-pad(?) button gives control over the gun’s flashlight or a car’s headlights and convertible roof. I’m not sure about earlier games in the series but Test Drive Unlimited even let the player roll down the individual front side windows of the car you were driving.

Edit: screw ups.

reverendsteveii,

any game that gives you control over sheathing/holstering your weapon instead of waiting for your character to do it for you

I recently bought red dead 2 and that feature took some getting used to. Especially because the controls are context sensitive and the button that starts a conversation when your gun is holstered is the same button that points that gun at a stranger if it’s out. I’m used to it now and compulsively holster my gun as soon as the shooting seems to be done, but for a while there was a lot of “Howdy partner. Fine weather we’re having ain’t…no wait wait sorry I didn’t mean…ah shit” and suddenly I’m in a shootout with the law and out $50 for my bounty when I just wanted to buy a bottle of whiskey.

DebatableRaccoon, (edited )

I know the exact problem and unfortunately that’s just a staple of contextual buttons. I generally found I had a lot of problems with RDR2 so I can’t say too much inbiased and it’s not to bash R* (this time) but when button layout is handled well, it’s manual controls like I was talking about that make the experience feel that much better.

On the subject of contextual button commands, Gavin from Achievement Hunter made the joke comparison during a Hitman video (pretty sure it was Hitman). To paraphraae because it’s been so long, “Don’t you just hate it when you walk up to a window in real life and jump out of it instead of opening it because your angle was slightly off?”

reverendsteveii,

I used to like to get gently stoned, fire up GTA 5, put on FlyLo FM in the car and just drive around. My brother and I would sit for hours, and it was basically like we were in a real car. I didn’t drive super fast, took most reasonable precautions against wrecking and killing people. It was just…nice. A sort of cut-rate flow state where the thing I’m doing is something that I have to pay attention to, but not something I’m occupied by to the point of not being able to bs with somebody.

ricecake,

With the spiderman games, I almost always swing around instead of using fast travel. I’ll do the little tricks and stuff too.

They did such a good job making the basic traversal mechanism satisfying that it’s almost weird they included fast travel.

Kolanaki,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

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.

hascat,

While I do enjoy cheesing fights in BG3, I’ve run into a few which seemed impossible if I didn’t find a way to cheese it, which is kind of a bummer. Shoving the big bad off a cliff should be a strategy, but shouldn’t be the only one.

Kolanaki,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

I don’t even really want to push the BBG off a cliff. I can’t loot him if I do that!

Skua,

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

Kolanaki,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

That was what gave me the idea. I love Fromsoft games. :)

BigBananaDealer,
@BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee avatar

going from reverse into forward with a 180 turn in stuntman ignition felt so fucking good to pull off

beefcat,
@beefcat@beehaw.org avatar

Running over pedestrians and crashing motorcycles in Sleeping Dogs.

I completed every mission with an insanely low cop score because I killed so many civillians. This game is the poster child of ludonarrative dissonance in 7th gen AAA games.

The game tracks how many people you run over in a “combo” and assigns a high score. Mine is 647.

GrayBackgroundMusic,

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.

LoamImprovement,

Seconding the movement. Everyone wants at least one feather and a handful of hooves and energy drinks but if you stack up you can literally just fly around the map. It’s even more fun with movement utilities like the commando’s slide, you can launch jump like crazy.

Skua,

DRG has a whole list of things that just feel good:

  • Fucking obliterating one grunt with your biggest gun or explosive as you board the drop pod

  • 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

  • When building liquid morkite pipes that run parallel for a while, lining the support points up

  • Using a bulk detonator to kill a dreadnought

  • 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

snowbell,
@snowbell@beehaw.org avatar

Using the exterminator device event to kill a dreadnaught

NaoPb,

I never got through the first mission, sadly. It seems like there is never enough time.

seathru,

Red Dead Redemption 2. The guy in St Dennis selling his white supremacy books… The police look the other way. Just sayin.

dire_rhea,

traveling on horseback across the state also feels so good that I don’t use fast travel a lot

Callie,

Saving the animals in super Metroid comes to mind. There it little to no benefit from saving them, but it feels good to me to do so

brsrklf,

If that was possible, not saving the animals should get you a bad ending in Metroid Fusion.

jordanlund,

I spent an inordinate amount of time driving a forklift around in Shenmue, moving crates.

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