Mortal Shell. It’s objectively a 5/10 game but I have no fucking clue why I finished it. There’s something about this game thar had me hooked and I do not know what it is. I’m serious, game is a 5/10 on it’s best day. Would not recommend you play it but I have and I’m doing a second playthrough no less.

The game is just that good. Really got nothing else to tell ya. Wouldn’t be playing it otherwise.

Any shit game that does something right. Think of the awesome combat or graphics in a game like Black Desert or the amount of good story telling in Genshin Impact.

Those are both ass tier games, like bottom of the barrel. But the sheer fact that they exist causes a precedent for what can be achieved. A comparison.

“Stand among the ashes of a trillion dead souls and ask the ghosts if honor matters.”

“Treat life and death with equal grace. If I was Death, I’d take offence of this place.”

“From a lowly birth in the Shadeshore ruins, who could ever guess I would fight among heroes.”

“From the first point was begat a line. From this line was begat a world. And that first point was one I made.”

“The mark of the Doom Slayer was burned upon his crypt, a warning to all of Hell that the terror within must never be freed. There he lies still, and ever more, in silent suffering.”

“And maybe all they needed was… I dunno. some good food, some bad laughs, some nice friends. But that’s ridiculous, right?”

“Experience teaches best, learn by doing, and similar cliches have merit. Take their advice.”

“Steps to enlightenment brighten the way, but the steps are steep. Take them one at a time.”

“Every picture tells a story, sometimes we don’t like the ending, sometimes we don’t understand it.”

Half Life 3. I want to believe.

Somewhat true but not entirely. The title that is. I can’t associate with the post. I sometimes get excited depending on the game/dev. Fromsoft and Valve are 2 good examples. They announce a game, I’m excited. Obviously there’s the odd game here and there. Like Judas for example. “From the creator of Bioshock”, I doubt anything short of a λ appearing on screen can get me more excited than that.

But otherwise? Not really. I’m stacked on games for life already. It’s like hearing a new Pizza has been made. Cool but there’s like 100000 others I haven’t tried yet. Hard to be excited for that. I think there’s 3 reasons people lose that good feeling you get when playing video games:

1. No variety. Because the pizza analogy only made sense in that context. In reality you’d get sick of pizza. Might wanna try different games not just battlefield, cod or assassins creed.
2. Doing nothing else. A job doesn’t count, adulting doesn’t count, sleeping doesn’t count. Do something different. Pick up more hobbies or try to do something different on the PC. I can exemplify how this is a reason because I’ve been there. You ever left the house to go to a party or meet with people and after just a short while there you start thinking of playing some game? Yeah, do that more often but also stick to it however long it takes. You might not even game that day but the next you’ll feel a lot more in the mood for it or you might give it up all together in light of finding something you enjoy more, nothing wrong with that.
3. Adults are just tall children. It’s easy to trick us, jiggle some keys before us and we behave like it’s magic. That’s how I see game trailers at least. Almost never reflective of the actual game. You look at it and you imagine it all wrong thinking it’s the greatest thing possible and picturing doing shit in the game that’s just not doable. Then the game comes out and it’s just a game. Nothing you imagined it being and now you feel bored again without realizing, that memory how the trailer looked in your head long gone.

My advice is: just don’t think about it. Variety, just do something. Doesn’t matter what just do it and if you don’t enjoy doing it you’ll brain will come up with something you will enjoy in the meanwhile. Bonus points if you can do something useful. That would be a neat story.

“When did you build a gazebo?”

“Well I was bored of gaming and wanted to get back into the mood.”

Killing games (games as a service not having an end of life plan, there’s no reason for it, in the case of single player games I’d categorize it as a fraud and would lobby for it to be a criminal offense on par with stealing)

Predatory monetization in online games

Single player games that require an online connection

Prioritizing graphics over things that actually matter, these include: literally everything else

Prioritizing balance over fun

Bad functionality on launch, “is ok, we fix later, thank you for $$$ though”

Pre-Orders and Pre-Order bonuses

DRM

Publishers

Catering to the skilled minority in a competitive game (you’re already skilled, the game shouldn’t be balanced around you, that’s like Chess changing rules because Magnus is winning too much)

Bringing current real world politics in video games

Overcommitting to stopping toxicity (which does the complete opposite, google the boomerang effect and see why Riot game who claim to be on the forefront of fighting toxicity currently own what is overwhelmingly considered to be the most toxic game on the planet by a wide margin)

Lying (No Mans SKy, more recently Tarisland)

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There’s a lot more but I’m too tired to think. Gaming is still in the best state it’s ever been in my opinion.

There’s not a single non-story game in the comments. You might have wanted to word the question better. As in: games where the story is not the selling point. Best non story game cutscene I can give you is fifa. It’s also the only non story game I know (but haven’t played) that also has cutscenes.

Path of Exile, I’ll die long before I run out of stuff to do.

Xbox has that great deal where you get access to all their games for a month via subscription. I think it’s like 10 - 15$