I agree, a game can just be a “game”. It doesn’t need a story to be fun. My issue with the current trend isn’t that games “need” a story, it’s the bloat added to fun games to keep you in them artificially.
From battle passes and special currencies for multiplayer games to thousands of tiny, pointless collectables in single-player games that are there just to keep you busy.
Hell, Tetris is the most played game in the world (or close to it), and it has no story and no bloat.
Stray was a good one! There’s a tiny one called The Last Day of June on PlayStation Plus (I think it’s still there) that I liked too. It’s at most 4 hours, but the story guides it, if you like that kind of game.