If I had ever gotten past the opening section of KH, maybe I would agree with you (I do like a good building ships in silly block-by-block interfaces). 
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I canât point to a specific vehicle for this, but Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts allowed for some truly imaginative vehicles. I still recall the three-engined, winged monstrosity with a sail that I made that somehow was stable enough to hop its way through a good portion of the game.
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My favorite mech has to be the Kodiak. Nothing better than that massive 100 ton beast.
I had also forgotten that in Pokemon Lets Go you can cling to a snorlax like a baby marsupial. Lets Go letting you ride a bunch of different Pokemon was so great!
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Iâm trying my best to think about vehicles but all of my brain space is taken up by EDF 4.1âs Walking Fortress Balam. I love this awful, awful robot. Absolutely useless for most missions (because itâs so damn big) but damn is it fun to punch things with it
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I was thinking about this and Kentucky Route Zero kept coming to mind. This surprised me a bit, because I didnât think too much about the vehicles in the moment and I can go back and forth on whether I think they change my relationship with navigating the environment. From a mechanical standpoint most navigation is done by clicking to move (person, car, etc.) and clicking prompts which show up, but what seems lodged in my brain is the variety of transportation types and their ties to specific areas of the narrative.
Also the hum of driving on the Zero is v. good
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I prefer (and did consider mentioning) the giant bird as the transport medium in KR0, but yes to this.
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The Acro Bike in Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald is maybe the best bike in the entire series and deserves mention.
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The trusty Halo Warthog is firmly the greatest videogame car ever made, to me.
Itâs a big daft pig of a jeep with a minigun strapped to its back. But itâs mostly just a hell of a lotta fun to drive. Itâs weighty in all the right places, drifting with a proper satisfying fishtail motion, but itâll also bounce and jump off bumps like the sci-fi monster truck it aspires to be.
You could just drive around an empty multiplayer map in a warthog and itâd still feel phenomenal. The best campaign missions in the Bungie games were always the ones that gave you a wide open road. I wonât forgive Halo 4 for making the Warthog feel like a toy.
(Tangentially, the best bit of Forza Horizon 4 was for SURE getting to drive the big halo car around my hometown.)
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I havenât played it, and it is not without a ton of baggage, but gotdamn, the vehicles in Death Stranding are cool, and I love the way you have to be hyper-conscious of how and when to use them.
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I genuinely cannot tell whether this pun was intentional but either way, itâs fantastic. It also reminded me that the customization colors in DS were just right for me to make this.
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Xenoblade Chronicles X has a beautiful world that feels great to roam and race across with a Skell - a mech that can transform into a vehicle. Especially being able to swap between modes freely while moving. Leaping from motorcycle to mech form to scale difficult terrain feels very satisfying. And once you unlock the ability to fly, the track that plays as you soar over the world is incredible.
I also love a chocobo just based on design. Always a fan of an interesting creature, and the funny bird mounts are very cute and cool.
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i wish it was intentional because goddamn thats a good pun
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The Blackwagon from Pyre is my sincere and straightforward love for game vehicles as storytelling mediums.
My guilty pleasure, âyes, i know itâs shit but itâs my shitâ vehicle is⌠the Mako, from Mass Effect. I know everyone says itâs terrible, but I donât know what a good driving game looks like, so I thought it was fine and I stand by that to this day. That thing had to have an ebrake. I spent so much time driftingâŚ
Does anyone remember the name of those little purple hoverbikes in Halo 2? I remember being obsessed with those as a kid.
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Oh my god, I canât believe no oneâs brought it up, butâŚ
The intrepid little spaceship from Outer Wilds. Buddy, you went through so much.
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Seeing the shout out of hover vehicles in Halo reminds me: I have to give a nod to the king, Kirby Air Ride. The machines in that neither look like vehicles nor control much like any other video gameâs. My fave was one that had no speed but could boost like hell, and it looked like a surfboard with a boat engine crystal and a zipped up vest.
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I genuinely love how shitty the truck is. Itâs so easy to fishtail it and slide halfway back down a hill. In other games, that would be annoying, but since DS is entirely about traversal and trip planning it actually works really well to have your vehicles betray you when you take them outside their optimal terrain.
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Kiryuâs taxi in Yakuza 5 is probably the only time Iâve played a game and enjoyed being made to follow all the traffic safety laws. And then you get to race it while some Eurobeat plays and itâs very silly and fun. Big fan of all that.
When I played No Manâs Sky, I found some great lookinâ spaceships in that with this particularly tall wingy boi being one of my favorites.
And one last one is Phobos the horse from Assassinâs Creed Odyssey but specifically this unicorn skin I bought from some random blacksmith in the world. Phobos is a good horse friend and looks fabulous.
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