Any of the Naughty Dog games fulfill this criteria, especially the Uncharted games. They are mostly linear, all about exploration and combat, and very little fluff.

Indiana Jones & The Great Circle is pretty good too. You don’t unlock skills or abilities through experience but rather through finding books throughout the maps. The maps themselves are not too large and worth exploring.

BG3 is definitely one of those games with good (even great) voice acting. But there are more of them out there.

RDR2 has some of the best writing and acting performances I’ve ever encountered in a game. The Last of Us is in a similar vein. The Uncharted series has some of my favourite voice acting, especially Claudia Black (Chloe) and of course Nolan North (Nathan).

Claudia Black also voices Morrigan in Dragon Age Origins, which is chock full of stellar voice performances. I’d argue that Dragon Age 2 and even Inquisition had some memorable performances but The Veilguard sucked.

Just out of curiosity, how old are you now? I played the game when I was already in my 30s and I still enjoyed it, though some aspects of the culture and hipster lifestyle it depicts didn’t resonate with me. If it’s not hipster lifestyle that’s being depicted in the game, it just goes to show the age gap between the game’s protagonists and me, I guess.

Need for Speed 3 – the original hot pursuit has an amazing techno and rock soundtrack.

GTA V has an awesome soundtrack (listen to the original score, not the music they licensed)

The very first Hitman and Hitman Contracts had some killer techno/electronic soundtracks.

Any of these are great to play in the background while you work.

Me. I’m the idiot.

Football Manager

I played them long back. For some reason, never got around to playing black ops 2. I finished the campaign yesterday. Going to start black ops 3 today.

I’m currently playing COD Black ops 2 for the first time and it’s pretty good (campaign)