I first got a PlayStation (1) when I was about 9 years old, and we got Road Rash 3D with it. Looking back the graphics were pretty shocking (though cutting edge at the time). But my main memory is how liberating it felt to leave the race route and just ride around aimlessly for hours and hours, exploring the countryside and the towns and cities you'd discover. I got a lot more out of that than trying to keep up with the race. Now I think I might try RDR2 some time if it offers a bit of that buzz again.
This is similar to what I remember from playing Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis. I wasn't very good at the actual game, but there was a post-credit sequence I would skip to where you could just walk, drive, and fly around quiet, rural, and sparsely islands. The simulation is pretty unremarkable by todays standards but being able to explore a huge open world at my own pace was incredible at the time.
One encounter that stands out in my memory was of driving along a remote road in the middle of the night and coming across a bad traffic collision where a truck had completely crushed a small car along with its driver. Something about the brutal and almost mundane nature of the encounter has stuck with me.
For you and the GP I would recommend picking up Horizon Zero Dawn. The environments are gorgeous and vast, with lots of "story" in the placing of props and such. The actual story of that game was prettt darn good too, but if all you want to do is roam around a beautiful landscape – and occasionally come upon murderous robots, but they can typically be avoided rather easily – it will certainly hit the spot.
Gosh, I wish that game had been popular enough to fund continued development. (Last time I checked in on it, it looked like it had stalled out.) I remember following the developer on Twitter and they had SO MANY good ideas. I bought the game and found it very fun, but:
- It felt like a 1.0, and really made me want a 2.0
- The difficulty ramped way too quickly. It started out as "Sir, you are being hunted.", but every time I played, after about 15 minutes, it seemed to ramp up to "SIR, YOU ARE BEING HUNTED!!!!!"
- Imagine the multiplayer possibilities. Like, if there were different teams being hunted. Some players are on your team, and some are your adversaries. Like imagine PUBG in this universe, but instead of a plasma wall closing in, there are ever increasing numbers of hunter robots spawning near the edge of a dwindling circle.
