After finishing Red Dead Redemption on Xenia, I have a weird itch to play some more of the open world games I've missed. I was just completely exhausted with sandbox games by around 2013 and avoided all of them, even the ones I heard good things about.
Some of the games on my "maybe check out" list:
Sleeping Dogs - Apparently a really good GTA clone. The Hong Kong setting and melee combat make it stand out.
Assassin's Creed 4 - The two additional Ezio games and Assassin's Creed 3 were big factors in why I got completely burned out on open world games but the ship combat is supposed to be really good- also pirates are cool. It should also predate the series turning into a singleplayer MMO thing.
Far Cry 3 - Never got around to playing this despite all the praise. I know the FC3 style got milked to death but there's probably a reason it became used as a template for Ubisoft games. Wasn't this also the game with the retrofuturistic 1980s DLC campaign with Michael Biehn?
Mad Max - From what I've seen this is a pretty generic open world game in the vein of the later Arkham games but it seemed like a pretty faithful recreation of the Mad Max world in video game form.
Black Flag was fun. Mediocre AC game but great fucking around being a pirate game.
The Blood Dragon mini-campaign for FC3 was hilarious if you're old enough to remember late-80s early 90s sci-fi action movies.
The Mad Max game was a surprisingly fun and well made game. The core game loop of driving around causing mayhem in your car is really well done. The on foot combat is fun. And it nails the Mad Max theme of hard, scarred people trying to fix the broken world they've found themselves in and make it a little softer. Good representation of disabled people. And just overall a lot of fun.
Mad Max can get grindy but otherwise a great game. It was also incredibly well optimized even for my old pc
Sleeping Dogs has surprisingly fun driving too. So much so that I actually 100%-ed the racing minigames, which I usually ignore in other games. I can come up with lots of small complaints, but overall it's a really good game.
Sleeping Dogs just feels like playing a video game version of a Hong Kong action drama in the best possible way. Besides the weird dating portions that you can skip the game is wonderful.
The Saboteur - play as an Irish race car driver turned partisan in nazi occupied Paris. Gameplay is mix between 1940s assassins creed and GTA with a cool art style that turns from stormy noir black/white/red to colorful and sunny as you liberate more of the city
That was a bit earlier, wasn't it? Wasn't that also the last game the Mercenaries studio made before they got shut down? Might put that on the list.
(The Mercenaries games being the ones where you blew up North Korea and Venezuela, respectively)
I have no idea what 7 and 8 gen mean (I'm not a very good gamer), however, I'm going to take this opportunity to shill for Pathologic 2, because it is (technically, ok, more than technically, it is, it's just a weird example of) an open world game, and it's amazing. It's not the power fantasy most open world games are, you'll never really feel like you're "winning", but it's an amazing, beautiful experience that I try to convince more people to play at just about every opportunity. Oh, also, it's not a sequel or anything. You don't have to (and, really, probably shouldn't) play Pathologic before playing Pathologic 2. It's more of a remake, but it's extremely stand alone and amazing. It's from like 2018, maybe? I'm not really sure and refuse to actually look it up.
7th gen: PS3, Xbox 360, Wii
8th gen: PS4, Xbox One, WiiU (not sure how the Switch fits in)
sleeping dogs is great
ac4 is the best pirate game since sid meier's
far cry 3 was ok, 5 is better imo5 is fun for killing white nationalists in montana, but the story is weak because ubisoft management are cowards and there are some real bad design choices that interrupt you when you're trying to play the game and the writing around those moments doesn't make up for the disruption imo.
Good game, but I've always thought Yakuza games are more like JPRGs than a typical sandbox. I guess it's because Yakuza games don't emphasis stuff like movement, transportation, finding novel ways around the map (except maybe in 4 where you gotta hide from cops). The sandbox stuff is deciding you wanna delay the main plot to go play mahjong.
That whole series is just magical though. I actually quite like Yakuza 3. The first two-thirds of 4 is good too. Finally getting around to playing 6 and I like how bittersweet it feels.
Aren't the Yakuza games the spiritual successors to the Shenmue games?
They're similar, yeah. Also made by Sega.
I've always thought Yakuza is heavily influenced by the Kunio-kun series too, known in the west as River City Ransom.
Assassin's Creed 4
do you want to be a pirate? you get to be a pirate. the combat can get a bit easy and repetitive, but there's a large amount of upgrading that can be done to the ship. it can be a pretty fun gameplay loop.
Not an old game but I've been playing the Spider-Man Remastered open world game on PC and enjoying it a ton
Saints row 2!
The PC port was poor enough that mods are necessary tho.
I recently picked up Mafia 3 and I've actually been enjoying it a lot. The setting, characters, and writing are all incredible and while the open world gameplay is a bit tedious it makes it a great podcast game.
