Hey folks! Back in the PS2 days I had Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and besides the quests and stuff I also loved just driving around and going on little road trips and stealing planes.
And then in the PS3 era I had Just Cause 2, and the voice acting was terrible, and the quests were kinda dumb, but wow was it fun to just drive around and go on little road trips and steal planes. And your dumb little hookshot was nearly immersion breaking it was so unrealistic, but instead it was a ton of fun zipping through the air from 150 paces to kick a dude off his motorbike…
Anyway, I’m wondering what people’s opinions are on these kinds of games these days! I know Cyberpunk has some driving, but I don’t know if people enjoy cruising in it. I really liked Breath of the Wild, which is not really the same but had some screwing around times. I know there’s a GTA 5 which I never played but it’s probably good, I think there’s a Just Cause 3 but I haven’t looked into it. Some people love Red Dead 2, which I mostly bounced off of but maybe I was wrong.
Do you folks have any favourites in this “genre”?
Things I should check out?
Stories of worthless hijinks?
Thoughts?
Older games, sure, but I like to mess around with games that had tons of customization. Examples include Guitar Hero World Tour (using the Definitive Edition overhaul mod), Need for Speed games (I like MW '05 and Carbon), and many others I can’t name off the top of my head. I know, older games for me, but I certainly know how that goes for the most part (I tend to play older games).
Anything Elder Scrolls kept me busy much longer than the main story, most notably Morrowind. Also, I replayed GTA IV (+ stories) last week, was heaps of fun, especially compared to GTA V which I played a few months back. Read Dead Redemption 2 is a good one for this list as well, I enjoyed that one immensely, but I mainly focused on the main quest during that run-through, so this is a good reminder to myself to pick this up again soon (sadly I fell back into the pull of Satisfactory so it might be some weeks/months/… before I get to it)
I just recently got Spider-Man on sale and I’ve not once used fast travel except in the tutorial because it’s too much fun swinging around the city. And there’s like 50 types of collectibles/ side missions to do while you’re fucking around.
Also you should definitely try Grand theft Auto v if you had that much fun in San Andreas
Yeah, I said in another reply I didn’t even think of Spiderman, but I actually have been playing the remaster of the first modern one, and I agree fully. It totally matches this vibe and it’s pretty great!
The saints row series is pretty good. It was kind of a GTA knockoff but was much sillier and let you actually keep and upgrade/paint cars. It really lets you make the game yours. In… Number 3 or 4 the player gets movement abilities that make using a car actually slower so that really killed the vibe, but the ridiculousness was higher than ever so it kind of balanced. I’d recommend playing them in order or at least watching YouTube videos because the story is sort of linear.
Someone else said morrowind which really is the ultimate “do whatever you want” game. You’re basically never locked out of anything by not doing the main quest, and nearly every npc is killable, even essential ones (though the game will tell you if you do this so you can reload a save). There’s no vehicles really so I don’t know if that’s the vibe you’re going for, but it really is a blast if you can accept the painfully outdated graphics and mediocre combat system.
Valheim is a survival crafter exploration game that can be surprisingly cozy, and sailing around is fun. Also not the vibe I think you’re looking for but I love it so I shill it when I can.
Cyberpunk is actually a damn decent game now, and the world has SO MUCH crammed into it you can just wander and do whatever activity you run into for ages without getting bored. Even the smallest side story has lore that illustrates a tiny piece of night city and I find that really cool.
I think saints row probably best matches what you’re looking for without being a sequel to a game you already mentioned. Cyberpunk too, probably.
If you enjoy driving games, I’d suggest Forza Horizon 5. Beyond the racing, you can just drive around in different cars and enjoy the scenic views. Plus they have a Hot Wheels dlc that’s a lot of fun.
Funny anecdote, one of Reddit server was named after that game : Untitled Goose Server. That was a pool on the gold only sub, I was the one proposing that name.
My four year old son cannot game get, but he’ll ask to put that on and he just honks at people. He also likes to be the hat in that Mario game with the hat, can’t remember the name. I Mario, he hats.
Just Cause 3 is great for shenanigans. The bases are fun to blow up, but you can just shoot a couple of bad guys, anywhere, and the AI will fairly quickly start sending helicopters & tanks, which you can just grapple & steal for even more mayhem. JC4 adds a bunch of powers to the grappler and mines that seem like they’d make for fun adventures, but I could never get into it…maybe the pacing of skirmishes was wrong for me or something - it just wasn’t as fun as JC3
Saint’s Row - SR 4 adds superpowers which are just the right combination (for me) of ridiculous & overpowered. And the ‘store vehicle’ system basically lets you respawn any vehicle you’ve ever stolen at will. SR3 is more conventional but still fun.
These two indie games, both set in a nature park, are more about enjoying their worlds than actually completing quests. With no quest tracker or map, you’re free to roam around and talk to characters. Or just pick up sticks and swing them.
I guess it depends on how you want to screw around. In A Short Hike, you can go fishing, which has no gameplay function. Or gliding around in air currents.
BotW was a great exploration and movement game. I think the things that help are fun transportation methods and a big open world to use them in. So Tony hawk might be a lot of fun to just ride around but the levels are too small for any real exploration. Or daggerfall is a huge open world, but traveling feels pretty tedious. MMOs are kinda fun for this but the leveled regions means some places are very dangerous to move around in without a group or higher levels. Forza 4/5 were a lot of fun for this if you ignore the loot box casino garbage. The last couple Spider-Mans were really good for this & Burnout paradise was a good one too.
Saints Row 2-3-4 are great for this. 2 is the GOAT, but 3 and 4 are arguably better at providing the “screwing around” experience.
Sleeping Dogs is underrated and regularly goes on sale for like $5. There is not as much sandbox-ey stuff to do compared to GTA/Just Cause/Saints Row, but I loved jacking a nice car and cruising the freeway at night, or going on a murder spree and playing survival against waves of cops.
Elder Scrolls isn’t necessarily as wacky of an experience out of the box, but between mods and the sheer amount of freedom you have in the game, there is plenty of dumb random stuff you can get up to.
If you have Elden Ring on PS4/5 and know your way around the game, invasions have a ton of potential for shenanigans. Probably not what you’re after, and I imagine multiplayer activity is down since Nightreign came out, but it’s worth mentioning as such a unique experience.
Honourable indie mention: Mars First Logistics is a game where you build vehicles and use them to transport objects from point A to point B. The challenges are largely physics-based, with the objects often having unusual shapes or odd properties, and your vehicle needs to be able to self-load them in addition to bearing them across varying distances and terrains. It’s not really what you’re asking for, but I feel like it scratched the same sort of itch for me in terms of open-ended low-stakes gameplay.
If you haven’t done GTA 5, that’s the one you really need to get.
RDR2 is a very good game, but it’s a slower pace that’s not for everyone.
GTA 5 is a masterpiece for dicking around. I’ve spent entire evenings just stealing a waverunner and racing through the canals, or the scuba boat and scuba diving, or stealing a bike and biking up and down the mountain, or taking a helicopter up to interesting places and jumping out and parachuting.
In particular, you’re going to want to check out “Director’s Mode.”
This is a mode where you can toggle things like turning off police reactions or giving access to guns or having a super-jump that lets you fly through the air to the roofs of buildings with one leap.
You can really enjoy some of the finer details in this mode, like shooting up cars to see the deformation physics and how the tires get flat or the specific gas tank locations for different cars where they start leaking and shooting the gas trail to blow it up.
Infinite ammo for the mini gun is also quite worth it.
Teleporting around the map is extremely convenient too for things like getting back to the top of the mountain to bike down it over and over.
And oh man — controlling the weather and time of day, and being able to freeze the time of day to exactly when you want? Keeping it at nighttime and rain for an entire play session? Hit the golden hour with an overcast sky and keep it there? Makes a huge difference too.
(The only negative of Director’s Mode is you can’t explore stealth mechanics and certain types of special NPCs like the mime don’t show up.)
There’s so much detail to the world. Get into the military base and see if you can find where one of the landing strip lights is on the fritz because the drain next to it is overflowing. Or some of the graffiti in the tunnels underneath the city.
For your specific ask, I really can’t think of a better game in existence.
(I’ve also spent hundreds of hours messing around in Cyberpunk 2077, which is an outstanding game and open world, but not quite at the level of polish and variability as GTA 5.)
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Older games, sure, but I like to mess around with games that had tons of customization. Examples include Guitar Hero World Tour (using the Definitive Edition overhaul mod), Need for Speed games (I like MW '05 and Carbon), and many others I can’t name off the top of my head. I know, older games for me, but I certainly know how that goes for the most part (I tend to play older games).
Games I’ve enjoyed in terms of shenanigans:
-GTA 3-5
-Just Cause 3 (4 too, but it’s not as good)
-Untitled Goose Game
-BOTW
-Read Dead Redemption 2
-Saint’s Row 2-4
-Cyberpunk 2077 (driving is kinda meh, motorcycles are a little more fun)
-Watchdogs
-Elder Scrolls
-Teardown
Also, I haven’t played it, but I heard the new Indiana Jones game is fun with high shenanigan potential.
Anything Elder Scrolls kept me busy much longer than the main story, most notably Morrowind. Also, I replayed GTA IV (+ stories) last week, was heaps of fun, especially compared to GTA V which I played a few months back. Read Dead Redemption 2 is a good one for this list as well, I enjoyed that one immensely, but I mainly focused on the main quest during that run-through, so this is a good reminder to myself to pick this up again soon (sadly I fell back into the pull of Satisfactory so it might be some weeks/months/… before I get to it)
I just recently got Spider-Man on sale and I’ve not once used fast travel except in the tutorial because it’s too much fun swinging around the city. And there’s like 50 types of collectibles/ side missions to do while you’re fucking around.
Also you should definitely try Grand theft Auto v if you had that much fun in San Andreas
This was my answer. The Saints Row games are great, but it’s a fantastic time just swinging around NYC playing SpiderCop.
Also… There’s a fast travel?!
I used it exactly once to go back to the apartment you get evicted from lol
Yeah, I said in another reply I didn’t even think of Spiderman, but I actually have been playing the remaster of the first modern one, and I agree fully. It totally matches this vibe and it’s pretty great!
The saints row series is pretty good. It was kind of a GTA knockoff but was much sillier and let you actually keep and upgrade/paint cars. It really lets you make the game yours. In… Number 3 or 4 the player gets movement abilities that make using a car actually slower so that really killed the vibe, but the ridiculousness was higher than ever so it kind of balanced. I’d recommend playing them in order or at least watching YouTube videos because the story is sort of linear.
Someone else said morrowind which really is the ultimate “do whatever you want” game. You’re basically never locked out of anything by not doing the main quest, and nearly every npc is killable, even essential ones (though the game will tell you if you do this so you can reload a save). There’s no vehicles really so I don’t know if that’s the vibe you’re going for, but it really is a blast if you can accept the painfully outdated graphics and mediocre combat system.
Valheim is a survival crafter exploration game that can be surprisingly cozy, and sailing around is fun. Also not the vibe I think you’re looking for but I love it so I shill it when I can.
Cyberpunk is actually a damn decent game now, and the world has SO MUCH crammed into it you can just wander and do whatever activity you run into for ages without getting bored. Even the smallest side story has lore that illustrates a tiny piece of night city and I find that really cool.
I think saints row probably best matches what you’re looking for without being a sequel to a game you already mentioned. Cyberpunk too, probably.
A few people mentioned Saint’s Row, and it basically wasn’t even on my radar as a series I knew about. I’ll check it out!
If you enjoy driving games, I’d suggest Forza Horizon 5. Beyond the racing, you can just drive around in different cars and enjoy the scenic views. Plus they have a Hot Wheels dlc that’s a lot of fun.
Untitled goose game. You can play it or dink around. HONK
Funny anecdote, one of Reddit server was named after that game : Untitled Goose Server. That was a pool on the gold only sub, I was the one proposing that name.
Thats great!
My four year old son cannot game get, but he’ll ask to put that on and he just honks at people. He also likes to be the hat in that Mario game with the hat, can’t remember the name. I Mario, he hats.
Just Cause 3 is great for shenanigans. The bases are fun to blow up, but you can just shoot a couple of bad guys, anywhere, and the AI will fairly quickly start sending helicopters & tanks, which you can just grapple & steal for even more mayhem. JC4 adds a bunch of powers to the grappler and mines that seem like they’d make for fun adventures, but I could never get into it…maybe the pacing of skirmishes was wrong for me or something - it just wasn’t as fun as JC3
Saint’s Row - SR 4 adds superpowers which are just the right combination (for me) of ridiculous & overpowered. And the ‘store vehicle’ system basically lets you respawn any vehicle you’ve ever stolen at will. SR3 is more conventional but still fun.
These two indie games, both set in a nature park, are more about enjoying their worlds than actually completing quests. With no quest tracker or map, you’re free to roam around and talk to characters. Or just pick up sticks and swing them.
A Short Hike was fantastic! I don’t know that it necessarily lends itself to screwing around though.
On a semi-related note, Donut Country is also a lot of fun.
I guess it depends on how you want to screw around. In A Short Hike, you can go fishing, which has no gameplay function. Or gliding around in air currents.
Gliding is definitely my favorite, but that about sums it up. Still, I hope it gets a sequel or an expansion or something.
BotW was a great exploration and movement game. I think the things that help are fun transportation methods and a big open world to use them in. So Tony hawk might be a lot of fun to just ride around but the levels are too small for any real exploration. Or daggerfall is a huge open world, but traveling feels pretty tedious. MMOs are kinda fun for this but the leveled regions means some places are very dangerous to move around in without a group or higher levels. Forza 4/5 were a lot of fun for this if you ignore the loot box casino garbage. The last couple Spider-Mans were really good for this & Burnout paradise was a good one too.
Oh yeah! I didn’t even think to mention it, but I did really dig just swinging around in Spiderman!
Saints Row 2-3-4 are great for this. 2 is the GOAT, but 3 and 4 are arguably better at providing the “screwing around” experience.
Sleeping Dogs is underrated and regularly goes on sale for like $5. There is not as much sandbox-ey stuff to do compared to GTA/Just Cause/Saints Row, but I loved jacking a nice car and cruising the freeway at night, or going on a murder spree and playing survival against waves of cops.
Elder Scrolls isn’t necessarily as wacky of an experience out of the box, but between mods and the sheer amount of freedom you have in the game, there is plenty of dumb random stuff you can get up to.
If you have Elden Ring on PS4/5 and know your way around the game, invasions have a ton of potential for shenanigans. Probably not what you’re after, and I imagine multiplayer activity is down since Nightreign came out, but it’s worth mentioning as such a unique experience.
Honourable indie mention: Mars First Logistics is a game where you build vehicles and use them to transport objects from point A to point B. The challenges are largely physics-based, with the objects often having unusual shapes or odd properties, and your vehicle needs to be able to self-load them in addition to bearing them across varying distances and terrains. It’s not really what you’re asking for, but I feel like it scratched the same sort of itch for me in terms of open-ended low-stakes gameplay.
far cry 3 is fun for this. steal a car, beat the shit out of its engine til it catches fire, ride it into a camp and jump out before it blows up
I quite liked Watchdogs. Dicking about a city causing traffic problems and steaming cash from people’s accounts.
Far Cry 5, especially coop.
Just Cause 3 definitely.
If you haven’t done GTA 5, that’s the one you really need to get.
RDR2 is a very good game, but it’s a slower pace that’s not for everyone.
GTA 5 is a masterpiece for dicking around. I’ve spent entire evenings just stealing a waverunner and racing through the canals, or the scuba boat and scuba diving, or stealing a bike and biking up and down the mountain, or taking a helicopter up to interesting places and jumping out and parachuting.
In particular, you’re going to want to check out “Director’s Mode.”
This is a mode where you can toggle things like turning off police reactions or giving access to guns or having a super-jump that lets you fly through the air to the roofs of buildings with one leap.
You can really enjoy some of the finer details in this mode, like shooting up cars to see the deformation physics and how the tires get flat or the specific gas tank locations for different cars where they start leaking and shooting the gas trail to blow it up.
Infinite ammo for the mini gun is also quite worth it.
Teleporting around the map is extremely convenient too for things like getting back to the top of the mountain to bike down it over and over.
And oh man — controlling the weather and time of day, and being able to freeze the time of day to exactly when you want? Keeping it at nighttime and rain for an entire play session? Hit the golden hour with an overcast sky and keep it there? Makes a huge difference too.
(The only negative of Director’s Mode is you can’t explore stealth mechanics and certain types of special NPCs like the mime don’t show up.)
There’s so much detail to the world. Get into the military base and see if you can find where one of the landing strip lights is on the fritz because the drain next to it is overflowing. Or some of the graffiti in the tunnels underneath the city.
For your specific ask, I really can’t think of a better game in existence.
(I’ve also spent hundreds of hours messing around in Cyberpunk 2077, which is an outstanding game and open world, but not quite at the level of polish and variability as GTA 5.)