I would say the champ is GTA; San Andreas. There was SO much to do in that game. Oblivion, Fable, Ocarina of time and mario 64 are also exceptional free roam games, or at least were for their time.
Crackdown was fun and could have been fuking epic but the entire city all looked the same.
__________________ "If you tell the truth, you never have to remember anything" -Twain
(sig by Scythe)
San Andreas had the most variety and fun...crackdown was ace because of the crazy morpheus style building to building jumps...and the fact that you could volley a truck into a bunch of bad guys to kill them has to be one of the most fun things ever
just out of curiosity, What games do you NOT find boring?
GTA San Andreas by far, there was so much to do in that game, but most of the time I played it, I was creating mayhem and seeing how long I lasted in a 5 stars wanted level
Isn't Mario 64 a platformer?
__________________
"When Gotham is ashes, you have my permission to die." -BANE
In most of the games listed, sure, you can go all over a city, maybe even do "normal" things like watch TV, or whatever. However, those games are boring as shit without the missions, which are usually linear.
Doing free-roaming stuff is fun for a while, but it gets boring SO fast because there really is hardly anything to do. The missions make the environment better, usually.
Crackdown had the most "freedom" of all of those anyway. Freedom of accessing areas in a large world, anyway. Not literal freedom of being able to go in any building etc.
As someone said when we were discussing it; the big attraction in say, Dead Rising, is the fact that you're running around this intricate mall, looking at all the various, independently designed sections, shows, secret paths, and wondering "OH MAN! I can go in all of these!", but you don't have time. It makes you appreciate it a lot more.
Then, in between missions when you actually have to wait for the next one, you do have free time, and it's just enough to not get bored.
Reading through this, I realized that there's no clear line between "free roam" and "not free roam."
It used to be that free roam was when you could do stuff in the game that didn't advance the story, since most games were very linear. Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall was an excellent example. But anymore, there are games that are very story-driven and have specific goals, but technically allow you to do "anything." Take Assassin's Creed. There's not much to do if you aren't going toward the story...but you can indeed wander and murder and such. Free roam? Linear? Or something in between? Because if we consider that free roam, a LOT of games come into play.
Same with Mass Effect. Stuff to do, but it's cursory stuff. It helps make the game world feel more real, gets you gear and XP and such, but if you aren't going toward the main story, or some smaller offshoot of the main story, you'll run out of things to do very quickly. I suppose it's technically free roam, but I don't like labeling it as such.
Anyway, Oblivion. Or Daggerfall for its time. Elder Scrolls does free roam like other companies only wish they could. Those games could stand alone without a main story. Hell, I played Daggerfall for dozens of hours, and couldn't tell you one thing about the main plot. How many other games could say that? For all the fun people have in the GTA's, Zeldas, and such, they need a driving motive.
KMC Community Forums
Oct 11th, 2008 11:51 PM
