These days, the open world can be considered its own genre. You can find accurate depictions of real-life cities or countries, vast imaginary expanses with their own landmarks, entire worlds to see – or even the entire galaxy, depending on where you plan to go for your next trip. Where do you want to go on an open-world gaming adventure?
The good thing about the best open-world games is that they can come in a variety of forms: the important feature is that they allow you to explore freely. As such, our list of top open-world games has everything from the best FPS games to car games.
SAINTS ROW 4
The Saints Row series is the perfect antidote to the traditional modern open-world game. Volition took the template set by Grand Theft Auto 3 and exaggerated the ridiculousness. Things were a lot of fun with Saints Row 2 and 3, with crazy missions like diving in front of traffic to make money off insurance, but Saints Row IV took it a step further and added superpowers.
While the city of Steelport hasn’t changed much since the last game, being able to jump tall buildings in a single bound or run faster than a speeding bullet puts an incredible amount of fun into the equation.
Pretty quickly you’ll find that you don’t need cars, helicopters, or even guns – why bother, when you can run to enemies at super-speed and sweep them off the map? These powers ensure that Saints Row IV makes the world feel separate from the main inspirations of the series, and makes it one of the most entertaining open-world games out there.
No More Heroes 1 And 3
When you think of No More Heroes, the first descriptor that comes to mind is probably not “open-world,” and that’s appropriate. NMH is more famous as a chaotically hilarious third-person character-action game than it might sound, but it’s still “technically” an open world. In any case, the open-world sections of both NMH 1 and 3 are at best serviceable, which is why NMH2 took the open-world out and replaced it with a location map.
That said, the open-world sections of these games serve as a respite from the endless hallways of grunts you’re hitting with your beam katana, off-the-wall events of the story, or simply because you One can process all the absurd lore stuff that was shown as a joke in the final cut scene. And, in serving that purpose, the open-world portions of NMH 1 and 3 are brilliant.
This is especially true for NMH 3 as the recently released third entry in the franchise vastly improves on everything that made the first game so memorable. So, if you love open-world games, but can’t find any that can hold up to amazing battles like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta, the No More Heroes franchise is your best bet. Plus, there’s no MC with as cute a craziness as a Travis touchdown.
Cloudpunk
Cloudpunk is an open world game that has slipped off a lot of people’s radar, and that’s a shame. Compared to the “scale” of most other open world titles on this list, Cloudpunk is relatively small, with a very short list of “things you can do”, but there’s still a lot of content packed within it. You spend all of your time in Cloudpunk controlling Rania, a new delivery driver for Cloudpunk, the fictional shadowy company the game is named after.
And this cloudpunk company is known for delivering their packages relatively quickly and without asking questions, which wraps up Rania in a lot of drama.
That said, delivery is what you’ll spend most of your time flying around this charming cyberpunk x Minecraft-esque voxel town in your HOVA car. There are a few other games that fall into this same “delivery category,” such as Elite Dangerous or even Death Stranding, but Cloudpunk manages to go toe-to-toe with them in terms of atmosphere and writing prowess.
Rider’s Republic
The tried and true Ubisoft open world format is one that a lot of people are tired of nowadays. There are just so many games made by Ubisoft itself or by other devs emulating its genre, that everyone ends up feeling the same because of it. But, Riders Republic 2021 is a breath of fresh air for Ubisoft, and there was also a very innovative genre-mix of open world racing that you don’t often see outside of games like Steep or Burnout Paradise.
In terms of gameplay, Riders Republic is a ton of fun. There are so many different races, events, and vehicles to try, each with its own moves and nuances. In the end, the cosmetics for this game are just as incredible as they should be, and a lot of them actually happen. manage to take advantage of. Dress for a racing character with things like a giraffe head helmet/mash that sways in the air with every turn or flip.
Just Cause 3
The Just Cause series is all about giving you as much equipment as possible so you can run around having a blast trying to pull off ridiculous stunts. It’s something of a “toybox sandbox” game where story and narrative don’t really matter, with the developers’ clear intention being for players to enjoy themselves with interesting systems and weapons stacked on top of each other.
Cause just 3 nails to a T. The whole draw of the game is playing with the physics system, just to see what you can come up with next. The game could have been boring, and if you’re not one to enjoy the raging destruction, it’ll probably still sound boring. But, for those of you who can destroy stuff in Raid Faction: Guerrilla all day just to see how the destruction system will adjust, then the Just Cause franchise is perfect for you.
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