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.

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.

In Super Sprint arcade, on the track below, once I get enough lead up on the 3rd or 4th lap, I would enter the red arrow 360 loop and then just keep spinning the steering-wheel left. This makes the car do 2-3 donuts around the loop, until going out of control backwards to explode into the barrier.

Always worth it.

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…

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

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’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 love just driving around doing nothing in Cyberpunk 2077.

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.

In Battlezone II single player, there is a custom map called “Moon 2000” that I love. It is a huge, open lunar crater, with a big flat ledge around the outside. It is difficult to get your recycler up onto the ledge, but I will take the time to do it. Then, I build a huge, sprawling base up in a flat corner. Absolutely surrounded with defenses. To the computer, an impenetrable fortress. To me, an experimental playground.

I have an area that I take enemy ships i have sniped the pilots out of, where I perform weapons and explosives testing. I have a whole series of nav points set up where I can go out and hunt for more enemy ships, and I can direct my tugs to come pick them up and take them back to base entirely by keyboard (they are dumb and will get stuck if you send them directly to base). It’s not a matter of beating the computer. That could be done easily. It’s purely the joy of collecting samples for my research. I have taken my findings, and have deployed them against my brother.

We would typically play X-Mod 3.3. That adds nuclear silos. We, as gentlemen, have an agreement not to use them. Same with APCs. However, naquada bombs were still fair game. Those have a 30 second timer, and give you a notification that shows their exact location so you do have a chance to destroy them. One thing I found that I was only able to use once, was my discovery that the X-Mod probe Droid could have its forcefield replaced with a naquada bomb. So, I made 50. Had to make 50 naquada bombs, too. It took forever. But, finally it was time to attack. The probes are so small and fast, they didn’t show up on his radar until it was too late. Their small size and speed helped most slip through his defenses. Suddenly, upwards of 30 naquada bomb notifications flood his screen. I can imagine the confusion then shock he must have felt. The horror that even if he destroyed one per second, it still wouldn’t be enough. One was enough to take out his recycler. The bombs went off. Almost all of them. It was a good sized base, with healthy defenses. The bombs detonated in quick succession, leveling it entirely.

That tactic was immediately outlawed. But I discovered other deadly weapon combos to unleash on him. I still have and play the same save game of my test site, decades later. For what was intended to be like, a 30 minute battle against the computer.

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.

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.

Oh man this made me dust off an old memory

There was a PS2 game my dad had called Dirt to Daytona. It’s a racing game where you’re supposed to play the career mode going from driving dirt track beaters to modifieds, trucks and finally becoming a pro nascar racer. You can tweak the cars, paint them, and try to get sponsors to fund you before your money dries up.

It was a cool game, but all I did was play the quick race mode. I would turn off all the caution flags and played it as a crash and pit manuver simulator lol

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.

Not sure if this counts, because I’m not sure if there is a wrong way to play Fallout. I am going through New Vegas again, but for the first time in years. Completely disregarding the main storyline. Just wandering the Mojave, helping people as I go. Like David Carradine in Kung Fu. Mostly trying to do things peacefully, and gain as much karma as I can. Completely opposite of how I normally play Falmouth game. I need all that karma to offset how many people I’ve eaten, which is tremendous. Don’t die around my character if you want an open casket. I gave myself lockpick and science skills via the command line, because this playthrough is about my interest in where the storyline take me, not about grinding to be able to open a lock.