Grand Theft Auto V - 8 Games That Messed Up Trying To Be Open World
Open worlds are massive, explorable alternate realities, and many of them are very good. Not all of them. That's what we're looking at today. Hi folks, it's Falcon and today's game ranks eight games that messed up trying to be open world. Starting off at number eight, it's Mafia 3. While the first two games in the Mafia series flirted with the idea of being open world, it wasn't until Mafia 3 that the series went all in after the amazing first few hours, which were actually very linear when the game dumps you into a fictional version of New Orleans and tasks you with systematically dismantling.
The frustrating thing about it is that, outside of all of the boring busy work, it's a solid game with a really interesting story and a very cool world, but all of the tedious. The stereotypical, open-world elements they added in this game really drag it down. If they just made this game linear like the first two, it probably would have been much, much better.
And number seven is Mirror's Edge Catalyst. The first Mirror's Edge game was absolutely awesome. It was a stylish parkour action game with a unique perspective. They managed to do parkour in first person pretty much for the first time, and it was set in this amazingly stylish, detailed It had one big problem, though; it's about a two-hour game, and then there wasn't much left to do but run time trials.
In the sequel Mirror's Edge Catalyst. DICE made the game an open world in an effort to make the setting bigger, and while the game has its fans, there are a lot of people, myself included, who believe it is a poor follow-up to the original. That doesn't mean I don't like it. I like it most of the time anyway, but a lot of the open world additions to the gameplay are awkward.
The best parts in catalysts are the best parts of the original, the linear levels that really let you let loose with the move set that you have, but another major issue it had, at least at release, was. There were a lot of rough edges for a game that has the word "edge" in its title, specifically, of Mirror's Edge's implied ability to be an incredibly straight, perfect edge.
No, they were rough. They were rough in this game's release, and the original didn't have those rough edges. It was kind of an experimental game that worked really smoothly, so it's kind of easy to chalk those issues up to the open world structure. Again. I want to stress that it's not a bad game, but it lost some of the charm that the original Mirror's Edge had in being such a well-done, polished experience, even if a little short, and number six is Mass Effect Andromeda.
The line between RPG and open world games is often a blurry one, but I feel like it's hard to call the three games in the original Mass Effect Trilogy open world; they're pretty linear and too mission-based to be called anything other than RPGs. While, on the other hand. Mass Effect Andromeda hits a lot of the open world boxes; there are massive open planets to explore; quests to take on from locals; and repetitive collectibles and objectives dotted all over the map; there's no singular world to explore; but each planet's big enough that it pretty much qualifies and I don't think any of that would really be a huge issue except that it's really, boring in some ways.
The gameplay is a little more interesting than the linear gameplay of the original series, and the addition of a jet pack makes the combat way better. It's more fluid, and it's certainly more action-packed. and varied, but the actual open world stuff you do is just really dull. The missions you get from locals are pretty much universally the same: hey, go get this thing and bring it back to me because I am a local who doesn't want to go out to the area that I would know better than you this random stranger.
Can you do this for me? You probably don't know anything about that area, but go ahead, please do this for me. It's like a flower or something, just like with Mirror's Edge Catalyst. This isn't a bad game per se, but it may contain a larger share of faults than Mirror's Edge Catalyst did. That did make it a lot less good than the originals, but I don't want to call it terrible.
It's just filled with a lot of boring content. And number five is Prince of Persia, from 2008. The Sands of Time trilogy was about as linear as they come outside of a little bit of backtracking and Warrior within, so it makes sense that Ubisoft would want to do something different when they rebooted the series back in 2008.
Instead of being linear, the new game is completely open-world. You could explore any of the four main areas in any order you wanted. And well, that wasn't all that changed. Time's powers were gone, which I mean, that was what Prince of Persia was about. The controls were greatly simplified, and the combat was entirely reworked as well.
You couldn't say the game was a massive departure from the originals; that would be an understatement. pretty much more open than the original games; the depth just isn't there. Pretty much all you do is go around collecting, lighting seeds, and healing all the fertile grounds. There are some bosses, but that's it.
So, while the world is beautiful and a lot of the dialogue is actually pretty charming, the game feels like bare bones. It really just feels like a collection of arenas that are strung together by climbing sections, and the environment really just doesn't even matter. After a while, there's stuff to like about the game.
The art design is top-notch, but the actual gameplay isn't really that engaging. And number four is Metal Gear Survive. It is not technically the first open world game in the series; Metal Gear Solid 5 is, but bear with me; five has a lot of open world elements. But it's kind of more of a hybrid.
The open world stuff is kind of there to enhance the mission-based gameplay, and that's the focus of the game. It's really about selecting missions from a screen and going to that place. It's not really a traditional open world game in the strict definition of the word; not that the world itself doesn't have its own vistas to explore and views to see, but surviving is a lot closer.
You're stuck on a map. You have to explore. You follow the markers to junk. You have to collect and build up your base. You know, to survive. I mean, it's a fine concept for a game. There are a lot of games that follow this exact formula and line of thought, but this game is heavily flawed and missing a lot of elements that make Metal Gear Solid.
For one, it has none of the classic characters; it's set in some alternate dimension with crystal zombies, and it's very boring. Like a lot of games on this list, the open world elements feel lazy and tagged on to drag the game out rather than because they thought an open world would give us a lot more possibilities and afford us the canvas to paint a much broader picture.
