Games worth discovering
My favorite games to play while traveling
2K View2023-05-146 games listedAny kind of travel imposes some limitations on what I can play, of course. On the unstable Wi-Fi available on planes and in most hotels, for instance, big battle royale games like
Call of Duty: Warzone
and
Fortnite
are basically out of the question. If I’ll be spending time in an airport terminal or waiting for a train, I want to make sure that whatever I’m playing doesn’t demand my undivided attention, and that I can put it down at a moment’s notice. That rules out a lot of narrative-heavy games with lengthy cutscenes, because I want to be able to pay close attention to these stories and, you know, lose myself in them a bit.
I also try to be conscientious toward my fellow travelers, so when I’m on a plane or bus, I don’t want to be playing something that’s going to shock or alarm a passenger sitting next to me—I once realized this could be an issue when I fired up
on my Switch during a packed cross-country flight.
There’s another criteria for good travel games, and it’s much more difficult to nail down to specifics because it’s essentially vibes. A game has to have the right mood or evoke the right feeling while I’m in that weird transitional period between where I was and where I’m going. It’s not that the games themselves have to be about liminal spaces, they just have to make crossing it a bit more pleasant.
0 Want
Turn-based games lend themselves naturally to the demands of travel, and Slay the Spire is itself about a journey that’s forever being interrupted by devious monsters and traps. Each card-based battle only lasts a few minutes, and I can track my overall progress on the branching map of each dungeon area. Now that Slay the Spire is available on Switch, iOS, and Android, it’s an easy game to pull out and play during brief bus trips or longer cross-country journeys.
0 Want
Any Hideo Kojima game is going to break my self-imposed rule about lengthy cutscenes, but Metal Gear Solid V’s midgame lets me ignore the narrative for as long as I like. The freeform mission and side ops selection system allow me to focus on whatever strikes my curiosity in the moment, saving the key story elements for when the journey’s over. On the Steam Deck, Metal Gear Solid V performs well—just remember to disable half-rate shading in order to make Snake’s iDroid text legible.
0 Want
I’ve written before about how nice it’s been to come back to No Man’s Sky now that it’s matured over the course of dozens of significant updates. During a flight to California last year, I had the pleasantly magical experience of booting it up on my Steam Deck as we took off, exploring several different planets for a couple of hours, and then walking off the plane in a completely different place—it made me feel a bit like Little Nemo, waking up from another adventure in Slumberland.
0 Want
A handy replacement for the paperback crossword puzzle books I used to favor for travel, Knotwords came out just as the Wordle craze was hitting its fever pitch last year. Puzzles range in size, and the goal is to arrange letters into cells in a grid so that every row and column forms an actual word. Imagine a cross between Scrabble and Sudoku, and you’ll have something very close to Knotwords in mind.
0 Want
Monster Hunter World introduced a whole new generation of console and PC players to Capcom’s long-running hunting series, but that was years after it had already won its loyal fanbase on the PlayStation Portable. Monster Hunter Rise scales the visuals and scope back to fit comfortably on the Switch, and it’s once again a terrific game to play in any passenger seat. One thing I like about Rise in particular is how quickly I can handle mission prep, and once I’m on a hunt, the action can get right underway. It just feels much faster overall than past Monster Hunter games have to me, and that makes it easy to commit to a hunt even when I need to pay attention to train stops and boarding announcements. It runs beautifully on the Steam Deck, too.
0 Want
Like most people, I try to save money when I travel, which means taking economy flights and staying in inexpensive lodging. Fortunately, Agent 47 has an effectively limitless travel budget, and Hitman: World of Assassination sees him jetting off to some of the world’s most lavish locations. Strolling around the fictional Burj Al-Ghazali in Dubai while I’m holed up in a Motel 8 just makes my own trip feel more refined, and Hitman’s languid pace means I don’t have to shut out the real world to have a good time.
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