Hey folks! Back in the PS2 days I had Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and besides the quests and stuff I also loved just driving around and going on little road trips and stealing planes.
And then in the PS3 era I had Just Cause 2, and the voice acting was terrible, and the quests were kinda dumb, but wow was it fun to just drive around and go on little road trips and steal planes. And your dumb little hookshot was nearly immersion breaking it was so unrealistic, but instead it was a ton of fun zipping through the air from 150 paces to kick a dude off his motorbike…
Anyway, I’m wondering what people’s opinions are on these kinds of games these days! I know Cyberpunk has some driving, but I don’t know if people enjoy cruising in it. I really liked Breath of the Wild, which is not really the same but had some screwing around times. I know there’s a GTA 5 which I never played but it’s probably good, I think there’s a Just Cause 3 but I haven’t looked into it. Some people love Red Dead 2, which I mostly bounced off of but maybe I was wrong.
Do you folks have any favourites in this “genre”? Things I should check out? Stories of worthless hijinks? Thoughts?
If you haven’t done GTA 5, that’s the one you really need to get.
RDR2 is a very good game, but it’s a slower pace that’s not for everyone.
GTA 5 is a masterpiece for dicking around. I’ve spent entire evenings just stealing a waverunner and racing through the canals, or the scuba boat and scuba diving, or stealing a bike and biking up and down the mountain, or taking a helicopter up to interesting places and jumping out and parachuting.
In particular, you’re going to want to check out “Director’s Mode.”
This is a mode where you can toggle things like turning off police reactions or giving access to guns or having a super-jump that lets you fly through the air to the roofs of buildings with one leap.
You can really enjoy some of the finer details in this mode, like shooting up cars to see the deformation physics and how the tires get flat or the specific gas tank locations for different cars where they start leaking and shooting the gas trail to blow it up.
Infinite ammo for the mini gun is also quite worth it.
Teleporting around the map is extremely convenient too for things like getting back to the top of the mountain to bike down it over and over.
And oh man — controlling the weather and time of day, and being able to freeze the time of day to exactly when you want? Keeping it at nighttime and rain for an entire play session? Hit the golden hour with an overcast sky and keep it there? Makes a huge difference too.
(The only negative of Director’s Mode is you can’t explore stealth mechanics and certain types of special NPCs like the mime don’t show up.)
There’s so much detail to the world. Get into the military base and see if you can find where one of the landing strip lights is on the fritz because the drain next to it is overflowing. Or some of the graffiti in the tunnels underneath the city.
For your specific ask, I really can’t think of a better game in existence.
(I’ve also spent hundreds of hours messing around in Cyberpunk 2077, which is an outstanding game and open world, but not quite at the level of polish and variability as GTA 5.)