What is the exact opposite of Skyrim, GTA or The Witcher 3?
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00:00Ever since Grand Theft Auto 3 proved how much of an interest there was in sandbox experiences,
00:05every studio since has been trying to capitalise on the boom, resulting in over a decade of
00:10diverse, top-tier titles that continue to push the industry forward.
00:15With that said, in a genre as popular as this, where so many different releases have continued
00:19to innovate and push boundaries, there have been just as many stinkers acting as cautionary
00:24tales of how chasing the open-world dollar can go terribly wrong.
00:29Consequently, throughout the years, gamers have had to endure some of the most boring
00:32video games ever made, travelling through the same old sterile cities and repeating
00:37the same old missions over and over again.
00:40I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com, and these are the 10 Worst Open-World Games of All Time.
00:45Number 10.
00:46Vin Diesel's Wheelman
00:48While Vin Diesel has starred in some actually pretty damn good movie tie-in games, his 2009
00:53vehicle, oi oi, Wheelman, is not one of them.
00:57The main problem is that the title just doesn't really know what it wanted to be.
01:00It mixes bits of Need for Speed with Stuntman and, of course, a little Grand Theft Auto
01:04for good measure, but doesn't really know what made all of those games tick, except
01:08from the iconography and high-speed car chases.
01:12This lack of identity is present in the gameplay itself, as a lot of the missions are confined
01:16to a car, as players control a blocky Vinny D and drive around restricted parts of an
01:20open world, but a scant few do allow you to get out, stretch your legs and shoot people's
01:25faces off.
01:26Unfortunately, neither gameplay style is all that engaging.
01:30Like the movie itself, Wheelman could never quite escape the shadow of other better releases,
01:35but it is admittedly probably the best Fast and Furious game not to be called Fast and
01:39Furious.
01:40It's just a shame that it's more Too Fast Too Furious rather than Fast Five.
01:45Number 9.
01:46Risen 3 Titan Lords Enhanced Edition
01:48A series which has continued to chug on despite never releasing a game that's actually been
01:53any good, Risen 3 Titan Lords Enhanced Edition was the cherry on the shitty cake of this
01:58notoriously terrible pirate-themed franchise.
02:01While a lot of open world games on this list feel empty, Risen 3 is completely bereft of
02:05ideas and imagination in every department.
02:09Boasting combat clunkier than the ships you travel on, the very act of playing the sandbox
02:13title feels like a punishment forced on the player, while the fragmented story and repetitive
02:18enemies don't entice you to dig deeper into its admittedly grandiose world.
02:23Not only a technical disaster despite its enhanced moniker, Risen 3's RPG elements
02:28are some of the most needlessly complex the genre has ever seen.
02:31Just about every character has an ability they can teach you or something to sell, but
02:35the sequel never communicates which items and upgrades you can actually use or what
02:39you need to do to gain access to them.
02:42And that's if you can even remember which character had which thing in the first place.
02:46It's a right chew on.
02:48Number 8.
02:49Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 Despite having three attempts at creating
02:52a good Sniper Ghost Warrior game, developers at CI Games have never really made something
02:57worth playing.
02:582017's third title was their most valiant effort yet, but while the gameplay was more
03:03refined than ever, taking the series open world only introduced a myriad of new problems.
03:09Rather than offering anything new for fans of sandbox shooters to dig into, Ghost Warrior
03:13was content to just riff on the mechanics other games perfected years ago.
03:18Likewise, the shooter's entire selling point, adopting the role of a sniper and having to
03:21adjust for wind, distance and movement to line up the perfect shot, was far too similar
03:26to the superior Sniper Elite series, slow-mo, bullet time and all, meaning the sequel pretty
03:31much had nothing that allowed it to stand out from the crowd.
03:35Number 7.
03:36Saints Row IV got out of hell Although it started out in the shadows of
03:39GTA, over the years the Saints Row franchise proved that it was more than yet another copycat
03:44by doubling down on wacky open world design when the competition was moving towards more
03:49mature and self-serious experiences.
03:52That approach allowed the franchise to soar for a while, but by the time Saints Row got
03:56out of hell came around, it became clear that the series' over-the-top zaniness was papering
04:01over a severe lack of original gameplay ideas.
04:04In fact, despite literally going to hell, the latest sequel felt staler than ever, and
04:09instead of ripping off GTA, was content to riff on the likes of Crackdown.
04:13Even worse, the humour that propped up the previous game's simile started to get old
04:17and get out of hell, and despite a few creative flourishes here and there, only made the whole
04:21affair feel even more punishing.
04:23Saints Row could have gone anywhere after the release of the fourth game, but unfortunately
04:27the devs decided on the most lifeless option imaginable.
04:31Number 6.
04:32Two Worlds Drawing inevitable comparisons to Oblivion
04:35when it released back in 2007, the open world RPG Two Worlds showed players how bad Bethesda
04:41series could have turned out in the wrong hands.
04:44While the game featured all the tenants you'd expect from a release in this genre, boasting
04:48a huge world to explore, characters you could tailor to your choosing and a wide variety
04:53of beasts to fend off against, just about every one of these features was botched in
04:57some way.
04:58The map itself, while ambitious, became a chore to explore, thanks to some glaring bugs
05:02and glitches that made even simple movements a pain.
05:06Combat didn't fare much better either, with clunky controls turning every enemy encounter
05:10into a scrappy wrestling match rather than a grand fantasy battle.
05:14Likewise, the story crumbled the longer the game wore on, with the abysmal, if noble,
05:18voice acting, accomplished by the developers rather than a professional studio, ruining
05:23any impact it may have otherwise had.
05:26Number 5.
05:27Fuel Back in 2009, Fuel's open world was the largest
05:30the video game industry had ever seen.
05:33While that scale was certainly enticing though, the empty arcade driving propping it up tanked
05:38EA's chances of Fuel becoming a smash hit.
05:40A predictable rubber-banding system meant that player-controlled drivers often took
05:44the lead early on, slowing down in the final stages to allow the player to edge in front
05:49of the competition for a quote-unquote epic photo-line finish.
05:53While that could admittedly make the occasional race an exhilarating experience, when it happened
05:57every single time you jumped into the game, it became tiresome.
06:01Likewise, the bland open world itself didn't do much to stop every race from blurring into
06:05one hodgepodge of last-minute victories and wonky driving mechanics.
06:09The brown smear over everything was supposed to evoke a strange, surreal post-apocalyptic
06:14landscape, but it only resulted in skid-marked environments to drive around in, and not the
06:19cool race car kind.
06:21Number 4.
06:22Driver 3 Although the Driver series actually got out
06:24ahead of Grand Theft Auto in creating a 3D open world, by the time the third game in
06:29the series rolled around, the latter franchise had completely outmatched it with releases
06:33like GTA 3 and Vice City.
06:36Driver 3, or Drive Threer, or Drive Thur, however you pronounce it, consequently was
06:41developer Reflections' dreadful response to the increased competition.
06:45Once again putting you in control of Tanner, the third game in the franchise attempted
06:49to ape Rockstar's open world formula, but only managed to create broken missions and
06:54a shooting system that always seemed to miss the mark.
06:57Endeavouring to create a dynamic open world by having NPCs react realistically to your
07:01actions and introducing a rather impressive damage modelling system for vehicles, the
07:06sequel's technical shortcomings compared to its technical ambitions resulted in a sandbox
07:10that always felt under threat of coming apart at the seams, rather than the cohesive and
07:15lifelike environment that devs had imagined.
07:18Number 3.
07:19Gangs of London Wanting to prove just what the PlayStation
07:22Portable was capable of, Sony released the open world crime game Gangs of London in 2006,
07:28but there wasn't exactly the ace up its sleeve the publisher thought it was going to be.
07:32There's something in the premise of letting you choose to pick a gang to join and wage
07:36war in London like you're in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels or something, but
07:40the gameplay itself was just so uninspired.
07:42Yay, you can shoot people, yay, you can run them over, yay, you can pelt them with baseball
07:47bats, yay, you can play pretend darts in a virtual pub and fall into an existential crisis
07:52over how you don't have anyone to do that with in real life.
07:55Oh, only me then.
07:57Obviously all of these faults were made even worse by the limitations of the console itself.
08:01The goddamn machine only had one thumbstick, yet players were expected to properly explore
08:05this 3D open world.
08:07And yeah, the devs did their best when it came to this aspect, admittedly, but the tech
08:12only exacerbated the already pretty crappy gameplay.
08:16Number 2.
08:17The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Hands down, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has one
08:20of the worst open worlds ever created.
08:23The drab grey city is barely any more lifelike than a cardboard cutout miniature, and the
08:28game even seems to recognise this, dropping the setting quite often in favour of tightly
08:33crafted levels.
08:34That somehow only makes the game worse, though.
08:37At least in the city you get to swing around and pull off high-flying spidey moves, but
08:40the repetitive objectives of the main quests, as well as the restrictive levels, suck out
08:45even that molecule of fun, add on top of that the fact that this sequel somehow looks worse
08:50than the original game, despite benefiting from a new generation of consoles, and you're
08:54left with the worst gaming outing the webhead has ever endured.
08:58And look, I bloody love Spider-Man games, and I'm even a huge fan of the tie-in to The
09:02Amazing Spider-Man 1, but this?
09:05This is just sad.
09:06This is just sad, man.
09:08Number 1.
09:09Superman Returns Creating a Superman game is no easy task,
09:13but EA's 2006 stab at bringing the character to life has become a textbook example of how
09:18a developer can completely fuck it up.
09:21Without any storyline to follow, the game has you flying across the same streets over
09:25and over again to fight the same old robots just so Metropolis' health bar doesn't run
09:29out.
09:30It's all busy work, and despite the game featuring a level-up system and upgrades, pretty much
09:34everything that the game has to offer can be experienced in the first 20 minutes.
09:39Despite how bad it is, though, there are good features that are completely squandered.
09:43The vast array of powers Superman has at his disposal, including a rather impressively
09:48executed ability that allows players to travel faster than a speeding bullet, are completely
09:52wasted on repetitive gameplay and unimaginative enemies, somehow making the superhero romp
09:57even more frustrating to play.
09:59It's all a shambles, and in an era where this kind of movie caching has virtually been abandoned
10:03by the major publishers, it seems even worse in hindsight.