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Worst open world game of all time

Though not the worst game with an open world I've played RAGE 2 probably has the most useless open world in all of gaming, at least of the ones I've played. Just Cause, the first, is on my list of least enjoyable open world games (and the sequel on my list of BEST)
 

Tschumi

Member
From what I played it would be Far Cry 2.

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That's no fair the map is intended to be hostile to the player out of design.. :'( i love those maps.. played it just after watching blood diamond for the first time
 
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Bo_Hazem

Banned
Fallout 4, pushed myself for 4 days and still clunky and plays like shit with mediocre quests and missions.
 

Seyken

Member
I think what most people gloss over when talking about open world games is that they all have 3 or 4 pillars to stand on, which are traversal, interactivity, beauty and combat. Even if one of those pillars is not good enough, having another one of these 3 be AMAZING will make it so people don't notice the weak link as much. Spider-Man is a good example of this. The open world in beautiful, but the interactivity level is not that high or complex compared to something like GTA, and there's not a lot of variety in the things you do. The way you move around the city and the combat are the things that elevate that game and make it much easier to forgive the parts of the game that didn't get as much love.

Dragon's Dogma is also an example of this, and that is a game I also love. The combat just carries that game hard and makes me forgive a LOT that could've been done better.

By that metric, the worst open world in videogames, specifically for a high budget title, would have to be Final Fantasy XV, and I LOVE Final Fantasy. Few times have I ever been so disappointed by something. The world is not terribly interesting or beautiful compared to what we were promised, the levels of interaction with the world are non-existent besides fishing, combat is pressing circle to win and traversal is one of the worst in any open world game. Driving that car felt like driving a bathtub on-rails. It truly feels like a game that is fighting itself about what it wants to be.
 
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Though not the worst game with an open world I've played RAGE 2 probably has the most useless open world in all of gaming, at least of the ones I've played. Just Cause, the first, is on my list of least enjoyable open world games (and the sequel on my list of BEST)
Came here for this.

I recently played Rage 2 because it's on PS Now and the open world in that game is the worst I've played. Really boring, tedious and couldn't give two shits about the car combat.
The actual shooting combat is great.
 
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Bramble

Member
Valhalla. Deleted it after 2 hours. Awful sound mixing, dull floaty weightless combat, broken AI and boring AF.
 

Cyberpunkd

Gold Member
Fallout 4, pushed myself for 4 days and still clunky and plays like shit with mediocre quests and missions.
I would say bigger crime is the fact everything looks like a postapocalyptic wasteland, I just don't take pleasure of walking around ruins for 50 hours.
 

AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
L.A. Noire, because the open world is completely useless other than to run around in.
 
Fallout 4, pushed myself for 4 days and still clunky and plays like shit with mediocre quests and missions.
I think I have to agree. I wanted to love that game so badly. I remember returning from a business trip in Portugal and picking it up in my local game store on PS4. I think I even took a day off to play it.

Such a colossal disappointment.



:messenger_sad_relieved:
 

Hudo

Member
Nah, Max Max was actually quite decent, in fact it’s world feels and is 10 times more alive than the one found in Cyberpunk 2077.
Wouldn't that be the exact opposite of what you want an post-apocalyptic world to feel like?
 

Sentenza

Member
I started a thread barely days ago to point that to my surprise Conan Exiles turned out to be one of the best open world experiences I've ever had since Gothic 2.
Which is bizarre, given that it was supposed to be mostly a survival/builder with focus on the online portion.
In fact, before getting into it I wouldn't have bet a penny on it.

Instead, it stands on its own as one of the best designed "exploration games" I've experienced in years even in single player, and that's precisely because it refrains from doing what every other shitty triple A is doing in this "genre": no fucking omniscient minimap/GPS, no convenient fast travel in and out of any situation, a LOT of empty space giving a sense of scale to the world and a lot of mechanics that constantly reward in subtle ways people who go out of their way to travel afar and search for secrets.
 
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waquzy

Member
Wouldn't that be the exact opposite of what you want an post-apocalyptic world to feel like?
No, what I meant was, even the less populated world in Mad Max felt more alive than Cyberpunk, mainly because Night City is filled with brain dead AI and that pretty much destroys the whole game for me...
 

adamosmaki

Member
Worst one I played was Far Cry 2, I know that game has a cult following but I didn't like the constantly respawning enemies at checkpoints and I just overall didn't find the environment very interesting.
same boat. i dont get how that game has a cult following. Its repetitive as s**t and there is no story worth mentioning. all you do is drive get out shoot some enemies repair your car and then drive again. rince and repeat.
 

Vae_Victis

Banned
deadlypremonition2hhyrf_display.png


Deadly Premonition is my personal worst. I'm sure there is worse out there if I really wanted to look for it, but not that I have personally played.

You can argue there are some good things in this game, but everything in any way related to the open world aspects is absolutely atrocious. The driving is broken to the point of being unserviceable, and you need to drive a lot. 90% of the map is empty and pointless. Side missions are annoying to find/trigger, most of them add zero to the plot of the game and the rewards are useless. When enemies spawn at night there are so many that going anywhere is a complete pain in the ass. and you might as well never even bother with moving at all during the night.
 

Turnstyle

Member
The Driver series is up there. For whatever reason I was more into Driver than GTA back in the day, and although I loved the series, I spent a lot of time trying to convince myself that it was just as good as Rockstar's games. Clearly I was wrong.

In the first Driver you can't even get out of your car, and when you try to drive into a crowd of pedestrians (you know, for fun), they just dive out of the way. I guess it makes sense from a story point of view, as you're an undercover cop, so massacring innocent bystanders probably wouldn't be a good look, but still. Sleeping Dogs handled this well - you could kill civilians, but you'd lose XP at the end of the mission.

Driver 2 let you actually get out of your car, but there was literally nothing to do. You could swap cars, and that was about it. You couldn't even use your weapons.

During this time the GTA games were crammed full of side activities and a variety of missions. Playing Driver was like being stuck in a boring church service on a Sunday, and you can see kids outside jumping on a bouncy castle and spewing jelly and ice cream all over themselves, laughing and having the time of their lives.
 

Hudo

Member
No, what I meant was, even the less populated world in Mad Max felt more alive than Cyberpunk, mainly because Night City is filled with brain dead AI and that pretty much destroys the whole game for me...
Ah, I see what you mean. Hmm, that's a bit unfortunate but many open world games suffer from that. Maybe that's something they'll work on with future DLCs.
 

GeorgPrime

Banned
Open world games seems to be hottest trend in video games for a long time now. There has been a lot of good ones and really bad ones. In your opinion what was the worst open world game you have ever played. Not only in terms of it being buggy or broken, but also if the game itself is mind numbingly boring. Imo AC Unity is by far the worst open world game I have ever played. The map was so filled with clutter, main story was bad and cliche, side stories were hit and miss, characters were uninspired, and gameplay was clunky. It just felt so boring. I know it's not the worst game of all time but it's definitely the one I hated the most. There are even worse games like Raven's Cry that are broken but I never played it, and atleast some people had a fun time exploiting glitches.

Every game that follows the "Ass Creed" open world formula including games like "Breath of the Wild" *lol*
 

kuncol02

Banned
Red Faction: Guerrilla.
The only fun part was the high level of environmental destructibility.
Only if you started playing games in last 10 years and don't know anything about games outside of big budget ones.

Every game that follows the "Ass Creed" open world formula including games like "Breath of the Wild" *lol*
Is AC most influential game ever? It basically redefined term "open world".
 

Magog.

Banned
Well that's disappointing. I was considering buying it for PS5.

Buy it. The world is the opposite of lifeless. The thousands of NPCs all have names, back stories, routines, and relationships to each other. The world is the most alive of any I've ever played. You can fire a guy and run into him as a guard in a different area. If you kill someone's uncle or doctor it will affect their opinion of you. It's the only game I've played where the random NPCs actually seem "alive" to me and I go out of my way not to kill them while driving through the city. It's also really funny and you can play as a hacker, stealth, full combat or a combination and they all work well and are fun.
 
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EverydayBeast

thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
Skyward-Sword-World-Map.png
Skyward Sword.
The game's open world problems are solvable you can make the game less of a chore, you can limit the backtracking, traveling from providence to providence. You might have noticed but there's a lot of backtracking from region to region, a controversial decision in the Zelda community.
 

Magog.

Banned
Hard one, the only thing that came to mind was not worst, but most overrated which is easily Horizon for me

Boo, hiss, boo. It was never meant to be a traditional open world game. It was an action game that necessitated a huge map because you're fighting whole clans and giant dinos.
 

Nankatsu

Gold Member
Driver 3 comes to mind.

And more recently, at its current state (either we like it or not, it was the state CD Projekt decided to launch it's game) - Cyberpunk 2077.
 
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Roufianos

Member
Not objectively the worst but Mafia III is the textbook example of how open world busy work can ruin an otherwise enjoyable narrative and solid core gameplay.

Fuck all of those who bitched about Mafia II not being GTA.
 
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BigBooper

Member
Is this graded on a curve? Because Gothic 1 is pretty terrible when compared to almost all of these, but it's low budget and old.
 

Sentenza

Member
Is this graded on a curve? Because Gothic 1 is pretty terrible when compared to almost all of these, but it's low budget and old.
Shut your stupid mouth.

Gothic (and especially Gothic 2) still shits over the overwhelming majority of the open worlds around.
 
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