Hello, in the recent years I find myself willing to spend much less time and energy on games, but I do still enjoy them. Oftentimes I end up quitting a new game I tried out relatively early on, because I’m encountering some block, grind, non-optional boring side quest, empty open world, uninteresting clutter or details that I have to manage, or similar. Like, I just wanna play the actual game play, see how the story continues, and visit those areas that were designed with care. Not worry where on the map I can sell the glimbrunses I collected so I can buy a 37% stronger glarpidifice that I’ll need to beat the next glutrey after which I’m allowed to continue the main story.
Sorry if this turned into some kind of a rant, but I hope it’s understandable what I’m looking for and what I meant by fluff. Some games that have fulfilled this for me during the last years:
- Stray
- Skyrim (there’s a lot of fluff you can worry about in Skyrim, but the thing is you don’t have to worry about it, you can also just walk in any direction and see what situation you wind up in, at least for the first 10-20h of a playthrough, which IMO is enough time for a game anyway)
- Life is Strange
- Some Pokémon ROM hacks where the difficulty spikes were not too harsh
Looking forward to hear your suggestions :) Games where there is some fluff but you’re allowed to just ignore it are also fine, but not having any fluff is preferred. Bonus points for anything on the Xbox game pass.
Hearts
Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
I only finished it for the first time this year, after about 20 years of giving it a go, getting part way through, then forgetting about it. ADHD is evil. Still, it was fun, there were no long boring parts, nothing was grinding or luck based, and it felt really tight as an experience. Very well thought out, honestly I would consider it a masterpiece.
Have you played any other loz games? They are all amazing like that
I have played a bunch of them, Twilight Princess was an absolute no for me for some reason, but I liked Ocarina and Majora when I was younger. I plan to play a decompilation of both of those soon, native resolution and performance etc. I enjoyed Link’s Awakening as well, finished that on my original Gameboy back in the 90s, and Windwaker looks fun though I have only recently gotten onto a computer able to render it nicely, so that is on my play list.
Alright not every game was 100. Twilight Princess was meh. Windwaker was pretty fun
Yeah, I think I will get Windwaker going soon and beat it. I love the cell shading look and the world is interesting.
Subnautica comes to mind. It’s a survival game with a heavy focus on exploring and a very structured story. Fluff text and the obligatory random documents and audio logs are mostly optional, though the game does have a mystery to solve so some of those you want to pay attention to. No real spikes in difficulty, it’s honestly an easy game.
And you can turn off some of the survival elements that some people find annoying. For instance, having to spend half your time early on hunting a specific type of fish for freshwater.
spoiler
I’ve done entire runs of this game only salvaging water. No bladderfish, no coral + salt, no stillsuit, no water reclaimer. You can easily make it through to the endgame on the water you spawn with plus what you find in wrecks.
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.
Fe
I loved that game so much. Haven’t had quite an experience like it since
OUTER WILDS!
- zero fluff. every piece of text and every setpiece is in service to the main story.
- no gating. you can go everywhere from moment one.
- no grinding. no combat at all, in fact.
- no time pressure. it may seem like it, but don’t worry.
- the big mystery requires understanding the world and the story, rather than fighting a difficult battle
- it will make you cry
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same. the trick is to float by doing literally nothing as slow as possible. it takes some trial and error to figure out when you can maneuver again but you do have to be a little patient.
You probably missed one entry that told you they were blind but not deaf
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Obvious spoiler ahead is obvious: Just let go of the controller when you enter that area, you’ll float peacefully (albeit very close to them) until the exit portal.
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That’s weird, that’s the solution, does your controller has some drift that could cause it to still be firing some thrusters?
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same! turns out you can make it a lot easier for yourself by observation. for example, there are only two of them you actually need to manoeuvre around. also, that entire section takes three to five minutes, but you have like twelve, so it’s fine to take it slow. finally, you can mark your destination from the log to get its location.
Adding to this one. Incredible game.
Just started playing the indiana jones game, for fans of the movies its a love letter to them and a great game
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Slightly old by now, but Portal and Portal 2 remain two of the best games I’ve ever played. Gameplay is intuitive and linear, and doesn’t require grinding or building up resources. I thought the difficulty increased appropriately as well.
Fun fact: Portal was originally a university student project called Narbacular Drop that got hired by Steam. In a sense from its limited narration and story, it felt a bit more like a proof-of-concept than almost a full-fleshed game to me at times, which, for me, was hands-down Portal 2.
They’re great fun to stream and watch, too.
The third party add-on levels are awesome too.
Oh, and I just remembered the old Thief games. They had pretty consistent difficulty. At least for the first two. I cannot remember if that was retained with the third because it was a little more open in terms of what you acquired in the hub world and took on missions. And we don’t talk about the fourth (which was a reboot nobody wanted, not even the dev team).
Let me offer a spin on this: the point-&-click adventure Technobabylon, which is more a staggeringly creative and massive series of escape rooms, and not that much of an open world to explore and revisit.
Perceptibly, it has zero grinding and is to the point with what you’ve gotta do. It is one of the only point-&-click adventure games that I’ve beaten; I normally dislike the genre, which speaks volumes to how incredible it is.
Super Mario Bros Wonder. Probably all the Mario platformer games. Those games are mostly just pure gameplay. Sure there is fluff in the beginning to setup the story and setting but than it gets out of your way
If you want more Skyrim, Starfield will give you lots of that. I know people give it a hard time, but it really is just more Skyrim in space.
I discovered Prey (2017) a few years back. It is so my shit.
It’s probably the worst named game of all time. It’s essentially a sequel to System Shock 2 and Bioshock. Should have been called Xenoshock or something because it’s generic name is nothing like the really original game underneath.
You are fully in the driver’s seat, with a crazy amount of freedom in how you want to get from one section of the space station to the next.
The opening scene, once I discovered the reality behind the scenes, I was hooked.
It pissed me off when I went through the intro cutscene, and after jumping into the helicopter blades, it started the whole cutscene again.
Baldur’s gate 3 would be my suggestion. It has difficulty settings from easy to insane. No quick time events. And the whole world was designed with care.
The combat system is very deep since it is based on DnD.
You can ignore side quests and still see the whole main game but even after 1500 hours in the game i was still finding new questlines and hidden caves to explore.
I loved BG3 but there are serious difficulty spikes. I couldn’t make it to the third act because the second act boss kept wiping the floor with me and I couldn’t adjust my party to make the fight winnable.
If you can get your hands on a misty step scroll, invis potion + longstride/jump spell, speed potion, or dimension door, you can free Aylin in turn 1 (provided you freed her). Granted, that doesn’t make the fight a free win, but she sure can eat a lot of hits. Also, putting sanctuary on a full healer is very useful.
Titanfall 2 is a great shooter and story game. Don’t bother with Titanfall 1 if you are only in for singleplayer as it is multiplayer only.
