I was going to recommend Borderlands (t's not strickly an RPG, but if you're looking for lots of combat with loot in an open-world with little story, it fits the bill) but you say you hate randomized loot systems and Borderlands is festooned with that.

Some of the modern Far Cry games (3,4,5) are pretty good for having plenty of combat in an open world with not loads of random loot.

Castle Explorer is one of several edutainment games from the 90s I have great fondness for. You got to learn loads about life in a medieval castle and at the same time, explore some 3D-rendered rooms and chat to characters while looking for pieces of the map. You got thrown in the dungeon if you got caught. I remember they stripped down the exploration angle for the "sequel" to this game, Stowaway!

Anyone else remember this game?

While it is rather funny, Prison Architect's page is showing the release date as December 2097.

The game fully released out of Early Access in October 2015.

Nicely argued. However, I feel Max Payne 3 as a poor imitation of the real Max Payne games of 1 and 2. 2 especially is my favourite; it manages to hit the right balance of excellent gameplay with an interesting and noir-esque plot, which is willing to make fun of itself at frequent intervals.

Max Payne 3 is a good game in it's own right, but it's not a Max Payne game, really. One of the things that really soured me on it was arbitrary time limits on doing things. I remember in the nightclub level, if you didn't move forward in the level quickly enough, you'd automatically fail as the game would say someone was killed. Also, Max Payne 3 neglected to have the trademark sense of humour Max Payne 1 and 2 had. I suppose that as Remedy wasn't developing it that was to be expected.

Also, I loved the graphic novel cutscenes from the first two games; the stylish in-engine cutscenes of 3 are cool but they can't beat a hand drawn graphic novel.

Well kinda sorta; I write for entertainium.org but it isn't something I do the whole time. :P Just kind of moved away from GS over time, alas.

Many congratulations Kevin; you have been a pivotal member of GameSpot for ages and your writing has always been incisive and enlightening. Very best of luck in your new job! :)

As you can see from my long delay in replying, not really "back" per se. :P Which website do you mean?

Apologies for intruding, just wanted to say that I was a GS Mod back when the site migration happened in 2013, and at that time the content of the old Hardware Forum, AV Forum and PC/Mac Forums was merged together, so any posts made before that time in any three should now be inside the PC forum.

Of course it may have changed since I left the team (I haven't really been active on GS since January 2014), so feel free to correct me! :)

@LarkAnderson: Cheers Lark; I knew if I left it long enough someone would spot it! :)

When Dead Rising came out in 2006, I think we could safely say "the zombie theme is overdone". I have no idea what it is these days.