Doing things in games because it simple felt good.

Shooting out of a cannon with the wings hat and flying around in Mario 64 was such a pure fun experience for my kid brain. The switch in music and just soaring around a 3d level was really something special at the time.
- Yeah, that was great! I always wished that you could fly longer.
  
  That level in the clouds when you look up in the entrance was so magical. Always a little sad when it ended.
  But yeah that and the slide behind the stained glass window were so awesome

I love to boot up Red Dead Redemption 2 and go on little hunting / fishing trips as Arthur. I play it as close to real life as I can, meaning I don’t just sprint across the map on horseback and get to my destination in five minutes or less. I have Arthur eat breakfast, ride the trails for a few in game hours, eat lunch, ride until dark, set up camp, eat dinner, brush / feed the horse, sleep, repeat. If I go through a town on my way, I’ll usually stop for a day to experience some entertainment or do a bit of gambling. It can take multiple in game days to reach a hunting / fishing spot. I’ll set up a camp once there, do some hunting / fishing for a few days, and then ride back home. It’s just super relaxing for me and helps me appreciate the little details in the game even more.
- I never got anywhere near finishing the story due to this. Its a beautifully relaxing game if you just drink it all in and immerse yourself. I'm a big fan of the daily routine at the camp and if I don't make it back one night, spend the return catching up with everyone and doing some chores.

Man, I have a buncha people giving me shit on my thread for BG3 asking if one of the encounters can be cheesed because the way it would be cheesed is hilarious. It's a clone fight and I was curious if you could make the clone spawn naked and make the fight a non-issue. Now some people are upset and tell me I should just "play the game." Is that not what I am doing? I was gonna do it anyway, I just wanted to know if I should save before hand if it fucked me over completely.
I like breaking games. It's fun. I'll play them the way they were "intended" once or twice; but after that I'm doing everything but that. Just to see what I can actually get away with. I thought that was the point of an interactive experience. Why the hell would I want to just do the canned 'canon' shit? I want to do all the things you can't do in reality because they would hurt yourself or others. I want to test the limits of the game designer's imagination. If I can think of it and they missed it or if they actually put that little detail in.
- You may already know this because it's a big and recent game, but you can do this exact thing to a clone fight in Elden Ring
  
  That was what gave me the idea. I love Fromsoft games. :)
- While I do enjoy cheesing fights in BG3, I've run into a few which seemed impossible if I didn't find a way to cheese it, which is kind of a bummer. Shoving the big bad off a cliff should be a strategy, but shouldn't be the only one.
  
  I don't even really want to push the BBG off a cliff. I can't loot him if I do that!

Cyberpunk 2077 is purely an escapist game for me. The game itself sort of sucks, the side missions are mostly "go and kill this dude" or "go and steal this thing", nothing you do has an effect on anything and it's generally pretty uninspired and blah, but I bought it because I got it for under 20€ so I figured why the hell not.
It looks damn purdy though, and Night City is intricately built and has lots of small fun details. I love just wandering around the city, stopping at hole-in-the-wall noodle places (even though they might just be "window dressing", and even if they're not the restaurants in the game are totally pointless), or browsing the stuff at some market, etc. etc. etc. So even though I don't like it as a game, I like the environment it provides (although honestly the constant in-your-face sexism gets pretty old…)
- I personally really like cyberpunk, I wish the launch went better. Adding more features would have made it truly great.
  I'm an achievement hunter. Normally once beating a game I uninstall and move on to the next game. But cyberpunk, I did three full playthroughs on very hard with different builds.
  The story is really great the first playthrough, but for my second and third playthrough, I rush to level 14, grab the double jump, and just go exploring. I hit level 50 before talking to Takemura at the diner.
  My favorite character is my third one, my corpo netrunner. Pre-patched contagion was just bonkers. You could walk into an enemy stronghold, look at someone, and command the whole building to die.
  The game becomes a whole lot less fun when you're that OP, but it felt like a reward, since the early stages of a netrunner build is the weakest build in the game.
  
  It's absolutely got a lot of good things about it. While I don't necessarily like it as such, I don't dislike it either 😁 mainly the things that bug me are that the mechanics are a pretty generic sneak'n'hack clone and it's very linear: nothing you do actually influences anything very big in the world except for some fairly inconsequential things, and you have no real choice in the larger picture of how things turn out.
  I'm hoping the DLC, whatchamacallit, delivers on its promises of remaking some of the game to deliver more of what they originally promised.
- Have you tried Cloudpunk?
  
  I have not! I was actually just eyeballing it in Steam the other day thinking about whether I'd want to buy it, so I think I'll take this as a recommendation

Riding around in GTA San Andreas. Like taking a truck and making long trips while listening to K-DST radio.
- K-DST formed many of my current favorite musical genres lol.

In Minecraft I run in one direction for half an hour and build little forts. I don't sleep in the bed and when I die I die. There's a neat sense of satisfaction finding all the little things I've left behind.
I used to do pixel art too so I've run into giant glowstone Pikachus in the past
- More than ten years ago, I played with coworkers in a Minecraft beta server at a place I used to work.
  Recently I was told that the server still existed and one of my ex-coworkers still maintained and played actively on it being the only one left.
  He built around whatever others did, so I could (theoretically) still find all the cubic dirt houses we made.

I would always play AVP2 as an Alien. I loved the mobility of being able to traverse walls and the unique challenges/opportunities it presented. I played it a lot and got quite good at it (would easily be the top player in most games I played), but would more often focus on making use of those unique mechanics for novelty situations.
One map (the forge, or something similar) had high ceilings with ridges built in to it, perfect for hiding an Alien. Instead of running around the map tearing up victims and moving up the leaderboard, I would cling up on that ceiling and wait for an unsuspecting human to pass underneath. I would drop down like a spider, paralyze them with my tail, and immediately headbite them. The glee that I would get from perfectly executing that surpassed any MVP received from high scores. It was fun to just play an Alien like an Alien.
- I want to play that so bad right now. The cat like movement with wall-climb, plus the alien vision is easily one of my top 5 unique gaming experiences.
- Easily one of my favourite PvP games because of the species dynamics and the lobby options. Used to play it at LAN parties now and then, up to maybe 8 players. Once you had enough players it was great to have 1 Predator vs 2-3 aliens and the rest humans. Species were selected at random so sometimes you’d get a derpy predator or a one hunter killing machine. It always lead to interesting games that sort of naturally lead inadvertently to roleplay scenarios like the humans keeping an eye on vents and banding together.
  Oh and alien life cycle was always on for more challenge to the alien players. Trying to find a facehugger victim in and trying not to get blasted straight out of the chest as a chestburster to become the ultimate killing machine.
  Easily one of my top PvP games.

Drive all around the map in GTA V’s multiplayer (invite only session, of course) when the weather is nice. Or just walk around the city. Browsing tattoos or clothes etc. Just doing ordinary things instead of riding around on a flying motorcycle and whatnot.
- I kinda hate that I am targeted because what I have fun doing in GTA5 is stunting with the Oppressor Mk1. People see it on the map and immediately start trying to fuck with me when I'm just in the mountains doing flips and ignoring everyone. :/
  I don't even have the guns unlocked for it!

Risk of Rain 2: Get 5 to 10 movement items and just zoooooooom around.
Deep Rock Galactic: Drill thru the walls even when it's not the best idea, because I just like the idea of destructible terrain and navigating in 3d.
- DRG has a whole list of things that just feel good:
  Fucking obliterating one grunt with your biggest gun or explosive as you board the drop pod
  Going back to rescue your teammate that didn't make it to the drop pod even though it technically barely matters as long as one person makes it back alive
  When building liquid morkite pipes that run parallel for a while, lining the support points up
  Using a bulk detonator to kill a dreadnought
  Mining a crassus detonator gold sphere by drilling all of the surrounding terrain away so that the entire sphere pops at once and collapses in to a neat pile
  
  Using the exterminator device event to kill a dreadnaught
- Seconding the movement. Everyone wants at least one feather and a handful of hooves and energy drinks but if you stack up you can literally just fly around the map. It's even more fun with movement utilities like the commando's slide, you can launch jump like crazy.

So long as you don't care for graphics, Driver still holds up in the feel department. Get a PSX emulator, rip/"acquire" the game and you're good to go.
For me, it's any game moment where the player is given manual control over a function that is usually automated or simply blocked off. For example: any game that gives you control over sheathing/holstering your weapon instead of waiting for your character to do it for you (a boon for RP in RPG games) or in GTA V when the right d-pad(?) button gives control over the gun's flashlight or a car's headlights and convertible roof. I'm not sure about earlier games in the series but Test Drive Unlimited even let the player roll down the individual front side windows of the car you were driving.
Edit: screw ups.
- any game that gives you control over sheathing/holstering your weapon instead of waiting for your character to do it for you
  I recently bought red dead 2 and that feature took some getting used to. Especially because the controls are context sensitive and the button that starts a conversation when your gun is holstered is the same button that points that gun at a stranger if it's out. I'm used to it now and compulsively holster my gun as soon as the shooting seems to be done, but for a while there was a lot of "Howdy partner. Fine weather we're having ain't.....no wait wait sorry I didn't mean....ah shit" and suddenly I'm in a shootout with the law and out $50 for my bounty when I just wanted to buy a bottle of whiskey.
  
  I know the exact problem and unfortunately that's just a staple of contextual buttons. I generally found I had a lot of problems with RDR2 so I can't say too much inbiased and it's not to bash R* (this time) but when button layout is handled well, it's manual controls like I was talking about that make the experience feel that much better.
  On the subject of contextual button commands, Gavin from Achievement Hunter made the joke comparison during a Hitman video (pretty sure it was Hitman). To paraphraae because it's been so long, "Don't you just hate it when you walk up to a window in real life and jump out of it instead of opening it because your angle was slightly off?"

I used to like to get gently stoned, fire up GTA 5, put on FlyLo FM in the car and just drive around. My brother and I would sit for hours, and it was basically like we were in a real car. I didn't drive super fast, took most reasonable precautions against wrecking and killing people. It was just...nice. A sort of cut-rate flow state where the thing I'm doing is something that I have to pay attention to, but not something I'm occupied by to the point of not being able to bs with somebody.

With the spiderman games, I almost always swing around instead of using fast travel. I'll do the little tricks and stuff too.
They did such a good job making the basic traversal mechanism satisfying that it's almost weird they included fast travel.

I enjoyed the ship battles in Assassin's Creed 4 way more than the platforming and main story. I probably spent twice as much time at sea as I did on land.
- This was such a good game because the sea stuff was definitely more interesting than the assassins creedy stuff. Letting the men finish their sea shanty before getting into something was always a personal pleasure!

- If that was possible, not saving the animals should get you a bad ending in Metroid Fusion.

In the game Crackdown - you had to increase your agility and strength, and weapons proficiencies to be strong enough to move onto the next area.
You could get the xp by doing things like killing guys while jumping or whatever, or you could find "agility orbs" at the tops of a lot of buildings (and smokestacks, billboards, factories, etc.) and get extra xp from finding them. As you level up your agility, you can get to taller places. Eventually I'd just climb places because I could not because I saw an orb.
That and blowing shit up with a rocket launcher, getting a faction really pissed at me, and then quietly leaving the scene after I get ran out of rockets. ¯(ツ)/¯
- I don't even know what Crackdown is about or even what the gameplay loop is supposed to be because anytime I played it, my friends and I would play the mode that basically gave you cheats and just tore shit up

Red Dead Redemption 2. The guy in St Dennis selling his white supremacy books... The police look the other way. Just sayin.
- traveling on horseback across the state also feels so good that I don't use fast travel a lot

YOU COULD JUST LEAVE????? WE HAD TWO RENT IT THREE TIMES IN A ROW TO BEAT THAT TUTORIAL!!
- I don’t think you could. Maybe he meant after you passed the tutorial, if you load a saved game?

Flying around in the birdsuit in Pilotwings 64. I could do that for hours. Except I usually eventually try to fly through a cave and crash. Gosh I'd love a new Pilotwings
- I’d also love a new pilotwings in the N64 style. With the music it was so relaxing.

Anyone else play Airblade? It was like a Tony Hawk game but with a hoverboard.
With only six levels, it was quite short, but really fun. Eventually I started speed running it before I knew what speed running was.
If I recall correctly I was able to finish it in under twenty minutes.

Noita: building wands with horrendous recoil. I know it's going to get me killed when I launch myself in to something dangerous, but it's just funny to be able to fly by the power of destroying everything in a given direction

In Diablo 3, I always saved the NPCs in Act 2 while doing bounties, even though there was no incentive to do so. Dunno if it counts as feeling good, but could never bring myself to ignore their cries.

Activating the Super Sheep in Worms DC. It was always "argh, I can't control this, kaboom I've blown up one of my own worms", but it was fun to try!
- When someone played the sheep, you knew that they were either confident or desperate.

Running over pedestrians and crashing motorcycles in Sleeping Dogs.
I completed every mission with an insanely low cop score because I killed so many civillians. This game is the poster child of ludonarrative dissonance in 7th gen AAA games.
The game tracks how many people you run over in a “combo” and assigns a high score. Mine is 647.

I spent an inordinate amount of time driving a forklift around in Shenmue, moving crates.

When I was young (probably too young) I would always play as Kabal on UMK3. That spin attack plus the easy combos was great.
- Kabal also felt like someone bringing meathooks to a fistfight.

Threads of Fate. Shape shifting into the cool creature forms (esp the gargoyle) and running around.
Okami. Literally, the whole ass game lol.
WoW. Exploring, collecting herbs, and skinning mobs in druid forms.
LOTRO. Just riding around.
Witcher 3. Just riding around, taking in the views - and possibly being waylaid by random wolf packs and bandits, but then the cool music starts playing and Geralt says hilarious random shit while chopping heads so that's also fine.
Genshin Impact. Just running around doing random shit as Klee.

In CSGO I constantly switching guns andbinspecting my weapons. The animations and sounds are really satisfying to me
In Minecraft flying around in the Elytra feels really nice. I wish there was some sort of time trials minigame for the Elytras

By the time I started playing Forza Horizon 5, I had already completed a vast majority of the content in FH4. Once I started FH5 I found myself doing a lot less missions/races and instead just hopping in a pretty sounding or nicely handling or gorgeous looking car and seeing if I can drift some corner or launch myself off a ramp and land on a piece of road.
It just feels good.