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Pissing in the sandbox: Open world games suck.
Flippy_D
Digital ConquistadorLondonRegistered User regular
Digital ConquistadorLondonRegistered User regular
You can go anywhere!
You can do anything!
You can be anyone!
It's just that... it'll mean nothing at all.
You can do anything!
You can be anyone!
It's just that... it'll mean nothing at all.
FUCK sandboxes. I'm playing through FarCry 2 and it is showing me exactly why I hate this type of game. No, scratch that. This type of genre.
Because sandbox is now a genre, really. An advanced hybrid of sim+x, it has laid down its identity like a petulant teenager, and established its own creed of gameplay elements and attitudes, to whit:
- A vast array of weaponary and/or items
- A huge, explorable world
- The ability to play the game however you want
- Real-time gameplay elements
Which sounds great. But then you realise, oh, wait, hang on... no it's not. Because 'sandbox' games face huge, irreconcilable issues with gameplay, the gradual emergence of which all too often reveal the void within, the surrounding empty sarcophagus splintering away into nothingness.
What does sandbox mean to me? Why you gotta be a hater, Flip?
1) Geographical fuck yous.
The openness of sandbox worlds should be a celebration of exploration, scenery and discovery. But it's not. You get x square miles of terrain, which is largely utterly boring. You have a few painfully pre-crafted areas, such as caves or waterfalls, which are kinda cool the first time - until you realise that said template then becomes cookie-cutter and all the caves in the world are the same. Even in the more modern games, where content can be shaped by powerful terrain engines to be organic, they are nonetheless fairly uninteresting.
Within said boring geography, discovery should be common. Except the game developers seem to think that just means dotting hidden packages or suitcases or... whatever in improbable places. Which, whilst again cool, is ultimately pretty lame. Some of the smarter ideas are putting things like awesome weapons and vehicles in hidden spots. Trouble is, do that often enough and it loses all sense of surprise. There's a dichotomy that exists between reality (lol, grass) and unreality (hey, a high-calibre rifle on this rock!) that cannot easily be reconciled.
Scenery is becoming less of an issue now that engines like Crytek are floating around (ew ew Morrowind, with your disgusting lighting and textures), where entire swathes of awesome-looking land can be generated at a mouseclick, but regardless of that, the fact is that it simply gets old. There's very little variation because unless you introduce microclimates, it doesn't make sense for there to be a glacier in close proximity to a desert. I don't care how pretty it is; once you've seen your sixhundredth tree, I doubt you'll stop to admire the texturing.
Lastly, and most importantly, 99% of the content is fucking pointless. Take FarCry. I was wandering around and came across a set of buildings built out over a lagoon. I shot the place up, poked around, discovered nothing of interest and left. I then navigated aaaaaaaall the way back to Pala (central town, mission hub), only to be sent right back to the place I'd been, because now there's a guy there I should greet. With bullets.
What the hell is the point of having an open world when there's nothing to do in it? Going to a place before it becomes important is pretty much pointless. It may as well not exist. So why does it? Why is having it that way any better than including it as a linear piece? You could argue that exploring it is where the fun is, but... no, no it's not. Exploration in sandbox games is often tedious, irritating and halting. Let me get to that now.
2) Repetitious, unsought-for combat.
Devs don't seem to realise that clearing out guard posts on the road is a bit shit if all the enemies rematerialise just because you've turned your back to piss on a tree. In FarCry, enemies now pursue you as well. Sounds great! But try maintaining that enthusiasm when your car has been disabled for the fourth time in a row and you have to get out, reload, kill the simpletons that had the audacity to chase you, fix the car, get in... only to be shot up again next time you pass one of these armed guard posts. What's the fucking point? Am I missing something here? Is it really that fun to not be able to go anywhere at all without being shot at every three steps? And because the enemies in FarCry are not only mindnumbingly stupid, but also hard as nails, and because vehicles slow to a crawl if you even light cordite near them, it basically boils down to stopping literally every minute to spend another minute playing kiss chase with Afrikaaners before getting where the fuck I want to go. Impediments are not fun. Oh, and I hope you don't lose your car.
Anyone remember those fucking mountain pterydactyl things from Oblivion?
Anyway, yeah. And the repetative combat brings me to my third point:
3) Ultimately, sandbox changes nothing.
I'm sorry, but it really doesn't. Yes, you have a larger world to move around in. Yes, you can choose to go somewhere completely fucking irrelevent (more power to you!). But really when it comes down to it you are Shooting Gun At Man, and the fact that the game makers have ingeniously found a way to waste your time in between getting to the good parts (which aren't even always that good, Assassin's Creed) has little bearing on this.
Okay, so the genre-typical way in which you can acquire a multitude of weapons is neat, but again - ultimately means jack shit. Because the enemies are always the same, with the same health, the same reactions, the same tactics and weapons, it doesn't matter if you're using a boy scout sniper rifle or something that fires bullets of pure space-time. Enemies are not there to challenge you and they're no fun to kill. They're just things. Things in the way.
And the ultimate payoff?
4) Nothing.
Sandboxes offer almost no cinema, little drama, and pretty much zero sense of achievement. There's barely any sense of progression, and what there is is almost always artificial. Furthermore, because one part of the sandbox world is very much like another when it comes down to it (in terms of AI, geographic possibility, available combat options etc), you ultimately sacrifice that very quality which makes the best games. Sandbox games swerve away from invention and uniqueness in order to become one big, homogenous blob of an experience. Hey, look, you can find and use lots of different weapons! In fact, you can use so many different weapons that you completely negate any personality of gameplay!
Seriously, think about it. Especially when it comes to FPSs, what has been one of the fundamental themes of the best titles (Half Life, Call of Duty etc)? If you said Set Pieces, congratulations, you'll make a better developer than 99% of people out there. Games ought to be providing a cinematic experience, and the scope at which that's possible in an unscripted environment is simply reduced so much that any attempts at it are made transparently obvious by their own inadequacy. Immersion and direction, and drama and action are just simply absent in 90% of the gameplay of sandbox titles. Which is ironic, as they're meant to be involving the player the most.
The way I see it, sandboxes are a fad offshoot, an unfocused, immature exploitation of the power of modern gaming, wasting potential on cookie cutter worlds that provide no real thrill, instead simply executing the same simplistic gameplay of yesteryear on a grander scale - and adding a 10 mile, oft-impeded hike in between those simple objectives.
The caveat to this is GTA, but GTA knows how to use its tools. Perhaps it's because it's set in a city, but GTA - despite the earlier criticism of VC - knows how to create drama on a stepwise level. Additionally, most little fireballs you start have a sense of escalation and their own little narrative drive. They become microcosms of set-pieces, and perhaps that's the way to go.
But frankly, until they make AI good enough (both on world and individual levels) and realise how to reconcile reality with interest, FarCry has convinced me that I can happily pass on most of these other games, failed experiments in form, with empty rewards and by-the-numbers gameplay, their insistance upon open-endedness the very cause of their insubstance.
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Pokemon Safari - Sneasel, Pawniard, ????
Fable 2 would like a word with you.
XBL: Torn Hoodie
@hoodiethirteen
Morrowind is awesome and you suck.
I just recently started playing Mario Galaxy again. I know, not a sandbox, but it has attributes that carry over to several genres.
Anyway, so after playing for a bit, I realize, that except for the stars, I have no purpose to explore the worlds. Why should I? Star bits? have those... Extra guys? Last I looked I had 34 by accident.
Same with Zelda... what did 99% of random caves have inside? Rupees! oh... but my wallet is already full, guess we'll put this back.
Pokemon Safari - Sneasel, Pawniard, ????
The answer is no, sandbox games usually just have a high profile.
The example of going to an area, returning to Pala, and going back there again to take out a target... well, that's called backtracking, and it was frustrating gamers in linear titles loooong before the sandbox craze.
There is one huge factor that keeps me from really enjoying the sandbox games that I've played. Multiplayer. I don't mean MMO multiplayer, either. Oblivion, Mount & Blade, Elona...I would probably still be playing one of these games if they would just let me play with even a second person. Is it really too much to ask?
AC is the only one I've played that I've really liked to.
Of course, that's because I basically became a Middle Eastern Batman with a face stab.
Sandbox games are still one of my favorite genres.
Thanks for typing all that though, I guess. I mean, you have valid points, but I'm usually too busy having fun to care.
Solution : Don't play them.
Umm... Isn't Sim City a... umm... City Simulator? I don't think it qualifies as a sandbox title.
Similarly... isn't LittleBigPlanet a Platforming editor?
Pokemon Safari - Sneasel, Pawniard, ????
The levels aren't really limited to platforming, though. There were quite a few puzzle levels even in beta where very little platforming actually took place.
The editor in LBP is diverse enough that I think LBP should be considered a type of sandbox game.
edit: Even if Sim City is focused on city building, you're still given quite the "sandbox" to play around with and do whatever you want.
... I had a huge post typed up about how Burnout: Paradise is trash compared to Burnout: Revenge, but I think I will have to save it for later because I am ready to get to sleep and I'd like to defend my claims while awake!
For example: gta3 is an open world game but not sandbox
https://medium.com/@alascii
You mean Burnout 3: Takedown instead of Revenge, right?
Because Revenge was pure shit compared to Takedown. And then Paradise blew both away, but I can see why some would hate it.
Re: Fable 2, I have yet to play it. I know next to nothing about it.
Djiem: I don't think LBP/SimCity are sandbox games. But I contend your point about random outcomes. Crysis I think is the best example. Crysis is not at all sandbox, but it is big-world. You can do a lot of shit in a lot of different ways in Crysis, and I myself have actually typed considerable defences of it using that very random element as a virtue. The thing is, you're falsely tying random outcome to open-world - or, more exactly, disallowing non open-world games that luxury. Yet because all encounters in all games exist on a macroscopic level, and do not (as of yet) affect the game world at large, I see nothing that binds those things you laud specifically to FarCry et al. And again, case in point: Crysis.
And now you've opened the doors for a semantics discussion. Might as well relocate this thread to D&D while the 100 page discussion on how sandbox and open world are different takes place.
Thank you for your attention.
but then you would be flat out wrong because simcity is one of the first sandbox games.
EDIT:
sandbox: ability to play with various characters, toys or settings that have an effect on the world.
Open world: ability to travel to a variety of places in an order of your choosing and complete segments of the game in an order of your choosing.
The two are often combined, but are not the same thing
https://medium.com/@alascii
I'd mount your blade.
It's true, though. I was quite displeased to hear that Fable 2's co-op is neutered... but at least it's there in some form.
Seriously.
But Simcity has an overall plot, and final goal.
Actually, whats your definition of sandbox? Because I don't think its the same as mine? and possible quite a few others.
edit: I saw that ninja edit. :P
So how is this Simcity?
Pokemon Safari - Sneasel, Pawniard, ????
Perhaps as a followup you can make a thread about how shooters suck because they have guns, or RPGs suck because you need to level up.
Don't like a genre? Don't play it. You see, some people like different things than you do.
The real problem with sandbox games is they don't excel at anything they do. They just mush together a bunch of half-assed mechanics hoping you'll be to busy doing absolutely nothing interesting to notice. I would rather a good racing/action/shooting/fighting/adventure game than one game that does all of those things to a degree that's just decent, at best.
Besides that, even JRPGs have (mostly) moved beyond random encounters. Why would other genres want to pick up that torch?
I much prefer a 10 hour, linear game that offers extremely good gameplay and a bunch of different difficulties or secret missions, or whatever, than a 70 hour grind-fest. Short and linear with a lot of options means more replay value than long and pointless, in my opinion.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
stream
lol wut
https://medium.com/@alascii
Cogratulations on election to mayor (we wont ask you live hundreds of years)!
Now make this chunk of land into a metropolis, and step on it!
Pokemon Safari - Sneasel, Pawniard, ????
Have you ever played Sim City?
Hate to rock the boat on this one, but Ultimate Destruction would have been a much better game if there'd been more concise level design and consistent, rewarding challenges. The combat system was there, but the game itself just didn't deliver.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
stream
Its called internet lingo, and plenty of us are here paying attention without throwing fire balls around. Personally I dont' care for current sandbox games, they can't hold my attention. So why can't I comment on how I'd like a Sandbox game that more typically holds my hand than most others. Who knows!? Maybe I'll find some obscure Sandbox game I hadn't heard of and fall in love with it!
OR!
I could just make a horrible blanket statement and say... well if you don't like the thread you don't have to read it.
Pokemon Safari - Sneasel, Pawniard, ????