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.
What I took away from your writing is that you like the freeworld aspect, and Subnautica has plenty to fuck around with. It has a main story line, but the game is so good, you can kinda forget about it and just build your underwater palace. No stealibg cars or planes, but you can craft pretty amazing vehicles and ‘fly around’ underwater with them.
I tried it once and bounced off basically right away due to needing water constantly.
Then years later I tried again and got into it for about 15 or 30 hours, and was having a great time, but then I hit a point where I lost immersion. I could feel what they needed me to do to get the resources I needed to progress, but I wasn’t into it, and then a big monster broke my favourite little sub and I was like “fuck this, I’m not going to grind around getting the resources to rebuild my sub, I’m out”
But there was some time where I enjoyed it in the middle there!
It seems you gave it a fighting chance! During my first playthrough, I went with the easier version of not needing food or water. There is a moment in there, when you have to go way down to get some resources, which can be tough if you’re not fully immersed.
I don’t want to send you back in there, cuz 15-30h gameplay is plenty enough to get to know the game, it just scratched my itch for wanting to discover a world so well (which I believe is what you crave), it’s hard to accept that it’s not for everyone. Hope you find something swell! Maybe that Detroit comes alive stuff? I never played, but that seems gta-like.
Sunset Overdrive is a fun little game to mess around. Very silly and has some laughs. There is a zipline and other movement options. I forget if you can drive cars tho. I want to say no but I don’t remember. Get it on sale and its a fun little 30 hours or so. I think about replaying it but haven’t yet.
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.
In the vein of driving, I’ll throw out Snowrunner as well. I think it’s the best of the three (I think) games of that series. Sure, you can dive into the missions, but I thoroughly enjoy just driving around. I also enjoy the missions.
To answer part of your question: Cyberpunk is a pretty good game for just wandering around aimlessly, but because of the balance, from my recollection, you can’t really just steal planes and blow everything up. You can make some fun builds to tear through enemies, and the world is gorgeous to drive around in, but there are some limits on your ability to cause total mass destruction.
I dunno how well crafting/building games fit what you’re looking for, but I can jump into Valheim and just screw around for hours collecting and making stuff. The world isn’t populated like a grand theft auto, but it’s fun to just explore and mess around/build stuff in!
I’ve played a bunch of Valheim with friends, but I can’t do it by myself. The openness is cool, but I can’t grind, so any kind of survival or crafting game becomes tedious so fast.
It seems like fun when other people do it, but it just doesn’t happen for me. Oh well!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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