What is the point of open world games?

[Warachia]

Argh, I hate safe cracking in Saints Row. I think I've only been able to do it maybe twice. I played it on the 360 and turning the thumb stick is so imprecise. The slightest wrong movement and I had to start from the beginning, and 9 times out of 10, the cops were there beating down the door and shooting me point blank with a shotgun before was even halfway done with the combination.

I know it is realistic to make it like you are turning the safe combination nob, but I would have much preferred it to be just a sequence of letter bottom presses.

Come to think of it, I was almost two-thirds done with Saints Row, I need to get to completing it so I can get to Saints Row 2. I stopped with the first one because the last mission of the Westside Rollers story arch just pissed me off with that semi-trailer chase. If there ever was an example of artificial difficulty and "The computer is a cheating bastard" trope, that mission is it.

Honestly I really liked Safe cracking, but that's because I was good at it, so it was a quick way to gain cash and reputation (also on 360) and I could avoid those minigames which I really didn't like. By the way, pro tip for Saints Row 2, hunt down every single minigame you can possibly find and try to get the highest rankings in all of them, not only does this unlock stuff in the main game, but if you build up reputation enough you never lose it (the count shows infinity). Really useful as then you can just go through as many story missions as you want without having to grind ever again.
Most of the vehicle missions in the first game have some kind of trick, where the game can get a little bullshit, until you find something that does work, then you can pull the mission off no problem, unfortunately, I forget what it was with that mission. At least the dialogue after it is worth it.

 

[Ranorak]

To me, personally, I felt GTA IV had exactly the same problem as the Topic creator mentions.

The world, while looking nice, was empty and boring.
Maybe it was because I was no longer rolling on the floor laughing that I could shoot random people in the back, I've done that so many times before by now.

But the world was just empty, there was nothing to explore.
I really hope GTA V will feel more alive and actually give me something to do in the sandbox.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

It occurred to me while playing Sleeping Dogs that I don't think I've ever seen an open world game that was improved by it's open world aspect.

What exactly does having an open map add to a game? I suppose you could say it adds a certain degree of veracity. After all, the real world isn't arranged in a neat linear sequence. That's the only advantage I can come up with.

There's the "non-linear screwing around" aspect. But when does that ever amount to anything beyond killing random civilians or doing vehicle jumps?

I would have thought that the appeal of an open world was allowing the player to get into spontaneous unscripted situations and then having to find creative solutions to them. However, I've never seen an open world game with sufficiently complex or in-depth mechanics to allow the players actions to have any impact beyond the immediate. (The one exception is Dwarf Fortress, but I don't play that because the interface can go fuck itself.)

To me, an open world just means I have to bloody commute between missions.

So you want an open world style game that's just a big linear track?

Try Simpsons: Hit and Run.

It was for the last console generation but it's GTA style but without the whole 'massive world you can explore/loot/collect'.

It was my favourite game (due to strict parents) of the last generation and had everything you could want in a closed/open world.

It is also horribly horribly out of date and showing its age due to it's closed nature. You see no matter they tried to hide it the maps were just big closed circuits, and doing missions on them quickly resulted in boredom due to lack of variety in how to complete them.

 

[hazabaza1]

It's fun to fuck around in.
C'mon, Zhukov, you're supposed to be one of the smart ones, and you're really asking this?