Sea of Thieves
Waking up in a grog-induced daze on one of Sea of Thieves' ultra-refined, painterly islands for the first time is exhilarating. You and up to three other players have a ship waiting at the dock and very little direction as to what to do. Raise the anchor and unfurl the sails and slam into a rock if you want. As the water below deck reaches your neck, you'll either drown or discover that you have to equip wooden planks to repair holes, and then your bucket to scoop up and heave the seawater back to where it came from. It feels like you can do anything.
Sea of Thieves represents a technical maturation of multiplayer action games, which are complex enough now to throw four players on a galleon in a big sea of other player-controlled ships and let them all go at it, as opposed to the strictly-structured deathmatches of multiplayer classics. By yourself, it's either slightly ponderous and peaceful, or frustrating as groups of two-to-four hound you, killing you or sinking your ship just because they can. With random crewmates who silently drop your anchor in the middle of the ocean for no reason, it's obviously a complete wash. But with friends or a good group from matchmaking—I've been matched with a couple fun crews, though plenty of assholes, too—the first five or so hours of Sea of Thieves gush with discovery and surprise and jovial stupidity.
There is a light structure to Sea of Thieves, built around variations on the 'fetch quest.' Go find something on an island—a chest, a chicken, the skull of a wanted skeleton boss—and turn it in at an outpost for gold. Solving these treasure or bounty hunts is usually trivial, though fun for all the little moments of inspiration that occur on your first several trips.
Your only world map is on your ship, and your only sense of direction offship comes from your compass. There's nothing in the UI to help you determine where the red X on a treasure map is in relation to yourself, or how your sails work. Learning all of Sea of Thieves' little tricks and techniques—how best to orient myself, or where to find chickens or pigs for deliveries, or how to squeak between rocks safely—made my first several sessions wonderfully fulfilling.
What nearly justifies the simplicity of the quests—they do get boring—is that cooperative effort to traverse the sea, as well as Sea of Thieves' violent nucleus: Your loot does not disappear into an invisible inventory, and doesn't stay with you if you log off. It sits wherever you put it on your ship, protected only by your ability to avoid, or fend off other players, who can snatch it (or sink you and then snatch it) and turn it in themselves for the reward. The more loot on board, the greater the nerves as you book it to an outpost to sell it.
In the end, Sea of Thievs is a superb water park for four friends to splash around in, but progression is sluggish and there are too few surprises beneath the waves.