When I used to play Roblox, one of the games I would frequent was Apocalypse Rising. The premise was simple- travel from town to town, collect supplies, find vehicles, go to more difficult locations, find better loot, etc. It wasn't repetitive at all, as you'd spawn in a different small town every single time and, based on that, have completely different playing experience. The world was really interesting too- The towns were empty, cars a rarity- It was almost as if everyone had packed up and left a week ago. It wasn't an apocalypse, but rather an apocalypse in the making. I'm surprised nothing like this has been really tried- all the apocalypse games I've heard of put the player into a quickly deteriorating, Chernobyl-Esque cesspit. In Apocalypse Rising, you can hear the birds singing. Everywhere else, the birds have probably turned green and fallen out of the sky.
Weirdly enough, in Hitman Sniper (came prior to Hitman 2016) there was actually a map where you'd had to snipe zombies while a guy works on his car to escape. It's kinda strange though, especially when Hitman was a more grounded in reality kind of series (not including Absolution, since that seems to be it's own timeline presumptuously). But at the same time, it does propose a interesting mode as well...
I used to play that game all the time. Playing with my friends was always hard because the game would spawn you in in completely different areas which made it impossible to find each other. Then you finally do and get killed and have to find each other all over again.
Well there is The Long Drive, but that seems to be WAY before Y2K. Hey @Nathan24™, it's pg. 1933 now.
