First true open world game

Shoot 'em up. Yoshio Kiya [56]. Panorama Toh [57]. Action RPG. Yuji Horii [58]. Portopia Serial Murder Case [59]. Open-world adventure game , Open-world immersive simulation. Adventure game , visual novel. Action RPG with dungeon exploration.

Cosmos Computer , Tokihiro Naito [60]. Courageous Perseus , [23] Hydlide. Hiroshi Ishikawa [61]. Brain Breaker [62]. Side-scrolling open-world. Open-world space simulator. Nintendo , Konami. Metroid , Vampire Killer. Role-playing shooter , action RPG. Taito , Canvas. Takeshi's Challenge , Miami Vice. Fully 3D open-world, open-world role-playing shooter.

Role-playing shooter , FPS. Vector Based 3D Fully-Scaled open-world, open-world role-playing game. DMA Design. Empire of the Petal Throne. Temple of Apshai. Nobunaga's Ambition. Panorama Toh. Portopia Serial Murder Case.

Ant Attack. Brain Breaker. The Lords of Midnight. Sabre Wulf. The Seven Cities of Gold. Zombie Zombie. Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Riglas: Tamashii no Kaiki [64] [65]. Star Luster. Alternate Reality: The City. Back to Skool. Takeshi's Challenge. Whether it's exploring the wild west, modern-day New York City, or a post-apocalyptic world, it's time to sit back and take a look at the highest-rated open-world games of the last five years on Metacritic.

Well, the answer to that is a resounding yes, even if you just watch the trailers for the game and never played it. Hideo Kojima is a brilliant mind and one of the more unique game creators the industry has to offer.

Death Stranding took plenty of design and gameplay risks, and love or hate it, it's hard to deny how unique of an experience it was. With a Metacritic score of 86 for the PC version, those who loved Death Stranding might feel that's too low of a rating, while the game's haters believe its higher scores were paid for.

The truth of the matter is that all four of those games are among the best superhero games ever made. The film side of DC Comics has been quite hit or miss, but Batman: Arkham Knight delivered on an incredible trilogy of games. Critics had their issues with the culmination of Rocksteady's Batman tale, but the level of quality was so good it still ended up with a Metacritic average of The moment people Google Assassin's Creed: Odyssey and realize the game has an 87 on Metacritic they begin to scratch their head in confusion.

According to loud voices on the internet, the Assassin's Creed franchise is nothing more than an annual cash grab. The truth of the matter is the series has shifted towards a focus on open-world exploration and role-playing elements, with Odyssey making Kassandra a beloved protagonist. Games like No man's Sky and Elite Dangerous exist.

RetroGamerX 7 months ago 3. Yes i would think so. Funny how certain people scoffed at the power of the cloud LandfillAO posted If you mean the first open world game that's the size of an actual liveable planet, then yes. BahamutBBob 7 months ago 6. Fury III in the mid 90s had levels that were an entire planet. A small planet, with very few topography changes, but a whole planet nonetheless.

Final Fantasy games before 10 were all open world, full planet games, and many JRPGs have had the same world map setup. BahamutBBob posted It had the player controlling multiple characters, beginning with the local militia commander as he tries to muster an army, then with some 32 recruits, each controlled for two hours of game time, in an effort to repel an invading force in a post-apocalyptic world on a massive supposedly , square-mile snow-covered island.

Or you could ignore that whole strategic component and find a way to destroy the enemy base single-handedly. Its world lacked the scale of GTA , but not the variety. There were multiple vehicle types cars, trucks, bikes, boats, tanks, helicopters, and so on , which you could hop in and out of at will and drive around like a maniac; buildings you could enter and leave instantly; guns; money; bonuses granted for killing; and an accelerated hour time cycle.

You could also bribe and interrogate civilians and soldiers, kill or capture wildlife, go swimming, assassinate a general, and do whatever else you could find to keep yourself occupied. It was a degree of freedom unheard of at the time, and even today there's a joy in tearing about Hunter 's flat-shaded, hilly polygonal-3D archipelago. Likewise little-known, The Adventures of Robin Hood skipped out on missions in favor of an overriding goal to turn Robin from villain to hero.

In the real world, people don't pop into and out of existence depending on whether they're in your field of view. They have things to do, places to go—a mind of their own. So too in Robin Hood , which filled its world with life rather than puppets and mirages.

Its people including Robin himself would carry on with or without your interventions. Much better known in America, though perhaps less clearly antecedent to modern open worlds, Nintendo's action-RPG The Legend of Zelda let you complete its objectives in any order and freely explore the overworld—except for a few chokepoints that required you to track down certain items.

Also by Nintendo, Metroid was one of the earliest examples of how to force an open-ended design onto core gameplay loops that are traditionally used for linear, rigid experiences. Metroid took Super Mario Bros and completely abandoned almost all of its core concepts. It was an action-driven platformer devoid of levels and scores, where you could not only go in any direction, but you were expected to do so—to explore and discover and to be ready to reshape your mental model of the game world at any moment as it gleefully defied your expectations.

Similarly, Sid Meier's Pirates! It was a high-seas semi-historical i. Here was a world that cast you as a small player, powerful and rich only on a relative scale and constantly at the mercy of the great winds of history. As a privateer, you were vulnerable to the ever-shifting allegiances of the huge empires around you—able to thrive by picking off individual ships while your local governor turns a blind eye, but always at risk of ruin if they should change their mind. You must login or create an account to comment.

Skip to main content Open-world video games bear the impossible promise—offering compelling, enjoyable open-endedness and freedom within the constraints of what is, by necessity of the medium, an extremely limited set of possible actions. Further Reading Headshot: A visual history of first-person shooters. Colossal Cave Adventure , in all its.