The Witcher 3 is just an RPG minigame you can play between rounds of Gwent.

Any game that has a fishing mechanic will be used as a fishing game.

Stellaris. I cheat and mod to put my empire in the middle of the galaxy and have extremely overpowered player-only technologies. Then I just explore the galaxy and guide the AI; usually picking a favorite and try to help them grow e.g. a peaceful uplifted species in a very hostile galaxy. I've also done this in multiplayer where I played a bit of a Game Master role. Built a quest line as part of my custom mod that had lore and let players slowly discover me and the galactic core (cut off from the hyperlane network; this was all custom scripted before mods like the birchworld existed on the workshop)

When I was a kid I would play driver 3 but I hated the driving part and would mostly walk. I also played a skateboard game and ditch the board, dress up like a spy or specops guy, and run around roleplaying various scenarios in my imagination (because I didn't have any games at the time that would let me stealth or run on rooftops, which is all I wanted)

I spend a solid amount of time in RDR2 camping. I’ll go to town, gather some supplies, and head out in a random direction with no map.

Gather food as I go, hunt for game as I find it, craft supplies, and live off the land.

You can take multiple in-game days to get places and even better is choosing a mountain or similar in the distance and making that your destination.

You still come across plenty of side missions with this approach because of how much is going on in that game, but it feels quite genuine when you do.

Going back a while - Monster Truck Madness 2 was a great game of exploration if you just drove off in a random direction rather than doing that silly racing stuff :-)

The maps were big, and there was no time limit, so you could just go and do your own thing ... a favourite made-up mini-game was sliding around a frozen lake on the winter map.

GTAV. I don't care for the story or the shooting aspect, I just love to drive or walk around. I can't do either irl, so I love it when games give me the option.

Just Cause 3

I fire it up just to drive aound / grapple-hook float for an hour or more

In Rust you can host your own server, and if you do that on your own local network with nobody else connected, then you have a very large world, with only like a couple of things that can kill you, and you can have a very fun, laid-back, relaxing, you know, builder, simulator, survival thing.

And also Skyrim. I have been trying to complete every single side quest and every single add-on side quest that I can, while basically not advancing the game at all. My current game is easily 40 hours in, and I only recently defeated the first dragon that you can kill as part of the main quest.

No Mans Sky exclusively in creative mode.

I don't care for getting resources or any of that. I just want to build stuff and explore. it would be 10x better if they made building regular ships as easy as the new ones and that's my only gripe, having to sit in a station to wait for a ship to show up with a part you want. It's an incredibly idiotic system for creative mode.

I've never finished FF7 because there is a snowboarding mini game that gave me SSX vibes so good I put like 15 hours into it and then stopped playing FF7. No idea what happens in the story but man that Bits and Chitz style mega arcade was fun.

Playing the Tony hawk pro skater demo and trying to hurt ourselves as badly as possible.

I enjoyed playing Baldur's gate 3 as a rogue, playing it like a assassin's creed game. Nothing but stealth attacks and running away. Never get into a full combat if possible.

In Kingdom Come: Deliverance, I used a mod to allow unlimited saving. I will do the same for the second game if I ever find time to play it.

This probably isn't what you mean, but I usually only make like, 3 or 4 military units in Civ 6 and play entirely peaceful, zero war games. And yes I play on deity difficult

Speaking of Hitman, my buddy said Hitman has a club level that is somewhat popular as a place to chill

Yes! Action RPGs and I ignore all the RPG because, despite my thorough research, I've been bamboozled by COMBO MAD videos.

Fuck you, NieR:Automata—I'm not collecting 5 mushroom and 3 pyrite or whatever else you want me to collect. I paid for an action game and I'm getting one!

I make custom maps in Civilization that essentially turn it into a tower defense

I just remembered another one - the original Car and Driver game (way before Need for Speed 1) was a vector 3D affair that ran at full speed on a 386.

One of the courses was the San Dimas Mall parking lot - I worked out that I could use the "drop camera" command in one spot, and then it became a radio control car simulator since the 'dropped' camera followed the car being driven :-)

Civilization VI, I usually make "multiplayer" games so that I can set every AI's team and difficulty, and I'll make a somewhat large map with way too many players, each on teams of two or three, and then one AI will be the god-emperor-king that we all have to band together to defeat.

Beamng drive.

I don't actually know the point of this game but it's awesome.

Back when I first played Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, I spent way too much time atop some stairs and jump-kicking an orc down, who'd ragdoll down, get up then come back up, only to get another jump kick to the face. I spent several minutes laughing

When I was ~7 years old, I had a Nascar 94 demo for PC, my main mode of play was running the wrong way and crashing as hard as I could on another car, watching all the pieces flying was fun

I also wonder whether there's a "wrong" way to play dorf fortress, since I've tried a lot of stupid shit (it's only stupid if it doesn't work, so...)

Lastly, there's Skyrim with, uh, specific mods

I won't do the main quest in Starfield. I don't want any special powers, and those Foundation guys are lame. I'm like level 58 and I've never found an artifact. I do enjoy killing people and stealing ships tho. Miner character, exclusively Cutter, Arc Welder, and Rivet Gun.

I won't stick the chip in my head in Cyberpunk. Nope. I know its got a virus on it. Just seems like a really really bad idea. That leaves me stuck in the first part of the game, because you can't break out of it anymore since the patches. I might mod it someday. (Any mod suggestions are welcome, plz!)

I grew up with Zelda Ocarina of Time, so now every time I feel like playing it I use a randomiser to put all the items in random locations. It makes every playthrough more unique and interesting.

In osrs there is a PvP mini game "soul wars" that I love playing absolutely incorrectly.

I follow teammates around and rapidly use kits on them to heal them, use weapon specs to stun whoever they're fighting, that kind of thing. I don't usually try to attack anyone.

While osrs does have some healing mechanics and spells, almost no one uses them, which I find really sad.

I'm fact, in soul wars they actually blocked the healing spells from working at all, a fact I learnt only after getting level 94 to cast them.

After all these years, no one had ever tried I guess, I had to have a friend edit the wiki so no one else would be surprised.

Anyway, a friend looked me up and apparently I was pretty high in the high scores for someone who doesn't kill anyone.

Money generated from Community Chest/Chance goes to Free Parking and players can buy Jail.

Quake / Quake World was really the epitome of "not how it was intended to be played". It introduced zigzag, wallhug and bunny jump through some clever exploitation of game mechanics, and completely changed its game play plus that of future fps games of the time. And people would just come up with stupid maps where you could do fps-parkour. I often did it myself for hours on end, just jumping around a map alone or with friends while chatting or listening to music.

A very short demo of how crazy it could get, speed indicator top right. 320 was the default movement speed.

Any ImmSim games, where I basically try to pull of moves and finish the game with the most unlikely approach for combat.

Also, open world racing games like Carx Street. I just drive around with wheel and VR and drift for fun. I have 200 hours and barely finished the forced tutorial lol

Persona 3 FES, rush each block of Tartarus, then hyperfocus on the social sim side of the game for the next in-game month. Rinse and repeat.

Final Fantasy XII, go out of my way to powerlevel, but then mix up multiple powerleveling methods in one. Also spending an excessive amount of time reading the in-game lore and accidentally triggering the eternal delay glitch in the game by trying an unrelated cheese against a superboss.

I remember doing the warthog jump an awful lot in Halo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGQIQljaAc0