10 Video Game Side Missions You MUST Complete

You're missing out if you don't play these.

Horizon zero dawn
Guerilla Games

It's fair to say that the quality of video game side missions can vary wildly, with some serving as acceptable yet hardly essential diversions, while far more tend to end up as repetitive copy-paste time-wasters.

Then there are those rare games which actually dare to put an over-the-odds - and, frankly, baffling - amount of effort into their side quests and optional missions. As such, some of these peripheral sorties ended up being at least as entertaining and worthwhile - if not more so - than even the mandatory main content.

If most side missions aren't much more than "good enough" asides, these 10 side quests all demand to be played, because they're the sure cream of the crop.

Whether gut-bustingly hilarious, totally unexpected comic relief missions, unexpectedly deep and well-written side stories, or brilliantly enigmatic feats of sly world-building, they're all enormous credits to both the games and the digital worlds within which they reside.

Though you'd be forgiven for missing some of these quests, they're all absolutely worth seeking out, because the B-plots don't come much more nuanced or unforgettable...

10. Passport To Pizza - Yakuza 0

Horizon zero dawn

The Yakuza franchise is absolutely jam-packed with deliriously insane, highly entertaining side missions - aka "sub-stories" - so picking just one out of the literally hundreds on offer is quite the agonising task.

An easy fan favourite, however, is Yakuza 0's "Passport to Pizza," in which Kiryu must acquire a pizza for a pronunciation-impaired woman named Samantha.

Cue an hilarious outing where Kiryu visits a burger shop and forces the poor woman working behind the counter to phone a pizzeria and order him a pizza.

After finally receiving your order, you've got just 90 seconds to get the hot, doughy goodness back to Samantha.

In that time, however, Samantha has been working hard on her pronunciation, and reveals she actually wanted a visa, so she's rather miffed when you present her with a giant pizza pie.

Samantha's pimp then shows up, whose ass Kiryu consequently kicks, leading to a gut-busting twist ending where the remorseful pimp proposes to Samantha.

She accepts, and all three of you eat the pizza together in celebration, as Kiryu signs off with the immortal one-liner, "Good pizza's like a new marriage. Enjoy it while it's hot."

Like the best Yakuza sub-stories, this is an unforgettable combination of dementedly funny and weirdly sweet. It doesn't amount to much more than talking, running around, and briefly fighting, but it's so damn entertaining.

