Open world sandbox style games. They’re my favourite – I love the freedom to roam around doing (almost) whatever the hell I like. It occurred to me recently, though, that for my favourite type of game, I actually play very few of them. Odd, no? Why would I not play my favourite genre more? I can answer that in two (or is it three?) words: Rockstar Games.
In a phenomenon I’m sure many of you understand – only maybe not with Rockstar or even games of the same genre – the open world game has been spoiled for me by Rockstar being just so far above and beyond the competition. The title of this blog post, for those not into late 80s indie rock, is from James’ “Sit Down”, and sums up the way I feel about other open world games perfectly:
If I hadn’t seen such riches,
I could live with being poor.
I’m quite sure that recently many of you have been playing and enjoying Mafia II. I was excited when I saw it was coming out, as I usually am, whenever another sandbox title hits. I always think, like a dog waiting for its owner to return, that the next knock at the door will be the one. I even got hold of the Mafia II demo a little early (and auto-downloaded) as one of the perks of my new Playstation Plus membership. Excited, I fired it up and played through the demo.
I’m not going to say I hated it because that would be a huge lie. It was fine. I quite enjoyed the demo. As a game, it was pretty good. Nothing wrong with it. Fine. Compared to GTA IV or Red Dead Redemption though, it just didn’t have the end to end, wall to wall quality that you come to associate with Rockstar, and this left it lacking in my eyes. It didn’t grab me by the balls and refuse to let go.
This is my experience with almost all open world games these days, this slight tinge of disappointment just slightly ruins it for me every time, and that’s a shame.
That being said, I have been playing The Saboteur recently, and to my surprise, I’m actually quite enjoying it. Partly this may be down to the bargain basement price (there aren’t many other places you can see lots of tits for just £11) but it also has a strange X factor to it. It shares the same problems as many non-Rockstar open worlds, dozy AI, in-game loading screens, but there is something undeniably fun about it. Maybe it’s the fact that in GTA you feel a bit guilty about running over or shooting policemen – but with Nazis in occupied Paris, you can go nuts with impunity. Maybe it’s the fact that you control a comedy Oirishman who uses expressions like “air-biscuit” and “knobjockey”. But it’s still not perfect. In the words of Catchphrase’s Roy Walker: “It’s good, but it’s not right.”
(As an aside; I wonder why I thought of Roy Walker just one sentence after the expression ‘comedy Oirishman’…)
So come on, other game developers, we know you can do it. Let’s see a really really high quality open world game that’ll make GTA IV look like Barbie’s Horse Adventure. Someone step up to the plate, take Rockstar by the balls and knock them out of the park – and when you do, my gaming money is right here waiting for you.
And if not, well, I’ll spend it on GTA V.
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