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.
Yakuza 0
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.