I miss GTA Clones. The state of gaming is boring right now. The gaming industry is getting so big that fewer and fewer gaming experiments can get green lit. There's not much variety anymore, everything is starting to feel the same.
I am a big fan of Sleeping Dogs. I like how it’s more brawler combat than third person shooter, while incorporating the gta style gameplay loop. I also really love how it’s set in Hong Kong. Most games set in real locations are in American cities or London, so Hong Kong feels so unique and interesting. A sequel to that game would be great
If The Crew can do "all of the USA" then certainly, especially with today's hardware, there should be a game that can do all of Japan (but like, ACTUALLY all of it). That'd be a cool sequel, I think.
@@kamemesg2083 yeah, but just like GTA they could make another in a different location with a different story and characters. Maybe with a cameo or two of some minor character.
Too bad the sequel got canned because United Front got shut down. If you are interested I recommend you find a video or read about it. Real tragic outcome for a team who hadn't even started to tap into their latent potential. The story was basically gonna happen direct after the Cop ending and Wei was gonna have a new partner. That game was just GTA X Yakuza and it's one of the best small time games Square Enix ever backed but they are also the reason for the shut down. Game Industry has always been cutthroat. It's just that now it also produces over budget pos games as the norm and devs went from having insane creative freedom to having to follow the same trends because innovation doesn't make money anymore.
they were better tho. when a civilian car got in the way of your car it was due to a random civilian accidentally getting in your way. in the gta games it was a scripted event that you had to avoid on your next retries. also they had a barbershop quartet singing in front of a mall 😊.
I felt they were trying to differentiate themselves and thought for a while they did a good job. Never played 4 but I recall it underperformed but it did seem like it was trying to stand on its own and not just be a clone.
Mafia 4 is actually in development as of now, and based off the success that mafia 1 definitive edition had, its safe to assume they will have the same mechanics, graphics and gameplay of it but with a shit ton main story mission and side missions sprawled across its open world
It seems to progress chronologically. If so, I REALLY hope they don't skip the 70s. The car's/clothes/music. I want the 80s Mafia as much as anyone but I feel like there's potential in the 70s.
@@StaredownGamesI think it was leaked that they were going back in time to 1920s Sicily to explore how Don Salieri became a head mob boss. I would prefer 1970s but the licensing for the music would probably be so expensive
@@StaredownGames yes we really need that era ffs... the only games that had this era was gta vice city and driver parallel lines, both of them are too damn old now...
There's also an unmentioned impact of the "GTA clones" which is that it kept Rockstar working hard to give us new GTA games. What happened when there was no more competition to be concerned about? Well, Rockstar just milked the same GTA game for over a decade. It's no coincidence that the golden era (2000s) of GTA from a player's perspective also coincided with a time when there were decent alternatives to GTA. The clones had their place and we need them back now more than ever. My personal favorites were True Crime NYC, Scarface and the Getaway games.
Yeah sure if you just ignore Just Cause 3, the Watch_Dogs games, the 2 Mafia games that came out after GTA V, any of the BS Ubisoft released, or literally any of the other open world titles that game out between 2013 and now. So yeah, ignoring all the evidence that contradicts your comment heavily then sure, that’s why R* only made one GTA in 10 years and not, you know, shark card greed and them being able to capitalize off stupidity.
@@-SoonerorLater None of these games left enough of an impression in the 2010s to be genuine threats to R*'s sandbox design. Just Cause, Saints Row, Watch Dogs, Far Cry, and Assassin's Creed peaked in the early-to-mid 2010s and either suffered from quality decay into the late-2010s and 2020s or had no further games released. Mafia 3 was praised for its writing but also maligned for its simplistic sandbox design, and Mafia 1: DE, while well reviewed, does have significant downgrades from the original 2002 game and isn't talked about anymore despite the quality of craftsmanship, with 2K content with not even giving the game DLCs like its predecessors. I was especially bitter about Sleeping Dogs as it was an amazing revival of the True Crime lineage, but never even had the opportunity to shine past its first game due to mismanagement from Squinex. There's no direct rivalry like you used to see in the 2000s (think the jabs at GTA, Driver, True Crime and Getaway from 2001 to 2004). So while sandbox games are still release in numbers, all competing devs have been keeping to themselves and making more lighthearted tributes at best. It compelled no one to do better and as a result this style of sandbox stagnated throughout the 2010s and early-2020s, while Rockstar, well ahead in the race, comfortably falls back to a Bethesda-like business strategy milking one game for over a decade because consumers now have limited alternatives outside GTA. The only outliers are RDR2 and maybe Cyberpunk 2077.
Ohh True Crimes?? I remember playing that game I used to have both of them man those games were fun but now I got this game called Sleeping Dogs and it's like those games and it's fun
Half the reason this genre died is because everyone kept calling them "GTA Clones". Imagine putting your blood, sweat and tears into a passion project only to be discarded as a second fiddle to something else.
Ya’ll scared them off by naming them “GTA clones” never in my life was I playing saints row and calling it a clone. GTA did what they did and SR did what they did. People started to act like we couldn’t have more than one open world sandbox crime game and i hate ya’ll for it💀
😂 yeah publishers give a fuck what ppl call them and not only about sales. also how you going to name SR, the most clone ass game out of every fucking game of that generation.
@@mikenice215Congratulations. 👏 You've finally realised what I did about a decade ago; the worst thing for the gaming industry is gamers. Every negative trend in gaming exists because gamers supported it with their purchases, despite the vocal outcry online. DLC, Micro transactions, pre-ordering, pay to win online games, "cinematic experiences" in single player games, gameplay loops of mindless grinding, empty open worlds, etc, etc.
The reason why Just Cause 3 was even made was because gamers on PC kept it alive, with a multiplayer mod. When modders were creating the multiplayer component for Just Cause 3, the company announced Just Cause 4, and they still refused to implement a multiplayer function, which pretty much killed the passion those modders had for the game. I personally believe that if Square Enix wasn't afraid to compete with GTA Online, we could have gotten an amazing multiplayer experience in the Just Cause series.
Actually JC4 doesn't have a fanmade multiplayer mod because JC4 is horribly coded and a nightmare to work with. It's also just a worse version of JC3 so nobody bothered. Not having multiplayer is missing the big picture as to why JC4 failed (or why the previous 2 games succeeded), sure it was 1 reason but nowhere near the biggest one. Avalanche's deceptive marketing tricked all of us into thinking JC4 would be revolutionary, instead what we got was a terrible game with mountains of missed potential.
I still remember seeing Gat hear you talk for the first time. That hepatitis line has been stuck in my head since before I had an idea of what hepatitis even was.
Thank you for eloquently Describing your childhood experience growing up with different games. You were so descriptive and point was certain things I felt like me. You grew up shoulder the shoulder in the video game world
You forgot to mention Scarface: The World is Yours, one of my favorite ones set in Miami. Also Bully somewhat a GTA type game as a school teens replacing cars with bikes etc.
Any other time I would probably say I decided not to include it, but the truth is, I *did* forget about Scarface. That game was so so good. I DID avoid Bully though, as to avoid licking Rockstar’s boot *too* clean.
@@CaptainGlack Great video either way but yes another game released 2006 lol , and since u mentioned Red Dead I thought I’d mention bully but I feel that lol
@srmafios Them doing a Sleeping Dogs sequel today will more than likely be another Saints Row Reboot experience. Gotta appeal to the "modern audience" as they always say.
@@samirm9097 cmon brother, you're taking the one example of game where the setting is hundreds of years before something a gta clone game would be set on, no whataboutism needed for an actual argument next time.
@@samirm9097that’s because it’s not even remotely close to the same thing besides 3rd person open world. AC is a science fiction story game mixed with a historical game. Gta is just a sandbox crime game
Nah, it's just most of these games couldn't offer much in comparison to GTA. Modern spiderman games are a GTA clone and they're doing alright, yakuza series is alive. If you make a gta BUT IN THE 50s of course this ahit gonna flop.
Saints row 2, Watch Dogs 1 & 2, Sleeping Dogs, Driver: San Francisco, Just Cause 3, and the Mafia series have got to be some of the greatest things to be produced by the gta clone fenomenon, and its truly a shame that the modern videogame landscape as a whole is just afraid of taking any risks, instead they choose to keep pushing out shallow and un-original videogames with no substance to them.
Umm…Just Cause is not a GTA clone. Why are all open world games considered “GTA clones”? This shit, calling every open world game a GTA clone, itself is a reason that these games went away. Nobody gave them the fucking respect that they deserved.
World's biggest Just Cause 2 fanboy speaking. Have you played the first Just Cause? It was pretty clear Avalanche were basing it heavily on the GTA formula. Some of the things they copied from GTA clearly didn't fit - like the safehouses, complete with save points you had to travel to and garages for cars you'd never bother bringing there. JC2 dropped a lot of that stuff - safehouses were removed, the weapon inventory was changed from the GTA style, the majority of the gameplay progression was moved outside of missions and, perhaps most importantly, a unique way of moving around the map was introduced, greatly reducing the importance of traditional vehicles (especially the autos that you'd have to grand-thieve). While the sequels definitely found their own identity, the original game was very much a GTA clone, which was probably also the reason why it never really gained much popularity. There absolutely were open world games out there that had nothing to do with GTA, but Just Cause was not one of them.
I loved and enjoyed having more varieties in this genre. Variations do not necessarily have to be a clone, and each managed to shine on its own. I especially miss Saints Row, it was the one I adored as much as GTA.
@Bunny-658i totally agree👍 they did something to the controls after AC2 which made it feel less badass . . I cant explain it but maybe you what i mean ? Ac1 and 2 made you feel like you were in control of a badass assassin . But the fight scenes after AC2 felt disconnected and more of a button mash with automatic fight moves
Avalanche is currently working on an open world coop game called contraband, a game that was teased 3 years ago and still nothing is known about the game, so im thinking just cause will come after that, which might still be years away
We technically did get somewhat of an evolution of the Driver series. The next installment of the driver's games was turned into Watch Dogs 1. Watch Dogs 2 even has a nod to Driver San Francisco. Some elements such as controlling vehicles, are present in Watch Dogs 2. And it's easy to see that sort of sandbox progression from one franchise to the other. Is it a perfect installment. No. Not really. But it's probably the closest thing to Driver we got in this universe.
@@HCS_Gengarr yeah, devs initially were developing new driver game, it turned to be a game with codename 'nexus' and then they picked name 'watch_dogs' for their new game. there's still unused tanner model in wd1, though it has no facial rigging (means his face is 😐all the time) and has few bugs on his model. you can see him in e3 2012 demo at the very end, there's two of e3 2012 demos, watch "11. Watch Dogs Ubisoft E3 2012 Press Conference" one.
Played and finished it. Nice game. Especially art and visuals particularly black and white at night, flying over the Paris. It really looked stunning. And what can we say about the game like Scarface The world is yours from 2006? Absolute masterpiece of a GTA clone. Many elements of that game were flat out better than any GTA game!
Pretty difficult to compete with R*'s multi-billion-dollar prowess and decades long legacy of having the best criminal open world experiences. If there is someone out there to match them, they would need to be at least of the same calibre, or make this kind of game in a completely unique and creative way.
This is bullshit! Mafia 1 was developed by Illusion Softworks, Mafia 2 by 2K Czech and Mafia 3 by Hangar 13... None of these have anything to do with Rockstar.
Had it not been for THQ being in the red and deciding on how Saints Row 3 should be, the franchise would've been booming. Naw, THQ decided to call the shots and make Saints Row more lighthearted, make Volition kill off Gat, change the production team and so on... And then you find out recently that the Reboot dev team was split on how it should be. Devs on once side wanting to go back to how SR2 was and the other wanting to go the more over the top/modern audience/sitcom style route. It's a hot mess.
@@MerlautJones Technically, it was still under THQ as far as some of the development goes. SR4 was originally dlc for SRTT. THQ's president at the time, Jason Rubin, told Volition to use what they had for the dlc and make it into a full game instead, as they were keeping it over the top. Reason to make the dlc into a full game was due to THQ being in the red financially. So, they filed for bankruptcy and had handed the game over to Koch Media/Deep Silver after they acquired Volition. Koch Media (now known as Plaion) owns Deep Silver. Deep Silver let Volition ended up continuing from where they left off, while keeping the over the top gameplay and story.
I played Saint Row 3 and 4 on the Switch.. I played Saint Row 3, and it bored me to death.. I played Saint Row 4 and it is as hell.. I never played Saint Row and Saint Row 2 until one day I turned on my Xbox looking for something that was on sale and Saint Row and Saint 2 both were on sale for a $1.50 a piece.. I immediately bought both games.. They are both really good games..
I hate the "Gta Clone" term it's not clones it's Gta Competitors look what happened Saints Row series it lost that true identity of being a good gangster game all due to the people that were calling it a "gta clone"
Exactly what I am saying, the GTA community its just dumb. They see a game in the same category ( open world crime game ) and they say " uMhn ThAts A GtA CloNe , YoU shOuLdnT PLaY ThAt " They don't understand that if rockstar had competition they wouldn't milk the same GTA over 10 years , they would pay more attention to make their games better
@@orynx2835 very well said. They ruined competition and milkstar has monopoly for so many years. This is the result. We have nothing. Monopolized market is the worst kind of thing in capitalism.
@srmafios well why don't you do it? Honestly I really want something new from rockstar and I don't see so far any way they changed it . The only GTA that felt kinda different was GTA V with that movie like story. GTA 6 from the trailers to the leaks looks enough GTA to me .
I hate how people call anything remotely similar to an open world crime game a “clone”. This is why GTA will never have any competition, because of ignorant and shallow thinking groups of people who can’t comprehend that other games can exist in the same GENRE that “popular household” titles do. People fuel their own oppression, giving companies the power to have a monopoly over an entire genre, because they don’t want their ‘favorite game’ to have fair ‘competition’.
Same thing happened with Pokémon. There used to be dozens of monster-catching RPGs throughout the 90s and 2000s - most notably Digimon and Yo-kai Watch - keeping Game Freak in check and making great Pokémon games. Ever since those disappeared, Pokémon games have been on a very noticeable decline. Thankfully, the monster-catching genre seems to be making a resurgence - most notably Palworld and Temtem - So maybe we'll get a real Pokémon competitor again
I'm surprised "True Crime" wasn't covered. I remember being jealous of my cousin who had it. I always imagined it was a pre Sleeping Dogs but I never got the chance to play them.
Just bought Driver Parallel lines because of you. Played Driver SF in the past and enjoyed it. The great thing about "GTA Clones" is that there's a lot of overlap in the community. I loved SR2 as an older kid but I also liked GTA.
To me, Urban Chaos was the push towards 3D GTA style games. Came out in late 1999, GTA 2 was still topdown view, and here we have a 3D game where we play as a cop, commandeering cars and enjoying a map, walking around, smashing bad guys' faces or casually shake it at the club.
I just recently tried Urban Chaos out. Has to be one of the most impressive PS1 games. I really like the vibe it gives off and the gameplay feels really good for a game of it's time. I wish game devs could have that level of creative freedom again. What I'd really like to see is a sequel to State of Emergency. That would be sick.
Yeah Urban Chaos is an interesting idea for a GTA type game, I spent a fair amount of time running around in that game trying stuff out. It is very limited by the tech of the time and would have been better served if it had another year in development and then released on PS2, although that would have put it in the path of GTA 3 so that would have killed it anyway.
The people who unironically called these games GTA clones were so stupid. By their logic basically any game with their person driving and shooting was automatically a GTA clone. The worst part about those people is that they weren't just spreading harmless stupidity. They actually had an impact. It's because of those people that the creators of Saints row basically took a sledge hammer to the franchises knee caps and butchered it til it was completely unrecognizable and we see where that franchise ended up... I know there was more factors to that situation as well but honestly I put 99% of the blame on those people who perpetuated this ridiculous idea about saints row being a GTA clone. It had its own style and identity and did things GTA didn't.
The problem with saints row is it didn’t stick to being a GTA clone and became a cartoon. If it had made san andreas like content but with better graphics every 4 years it would still be around instead it decided to pump out games that appealed to only 13yo every 2 years as it got worse and worse. By 2 it was apparent where it was going by 3 it was just a quick crash grab without any thought to its own brand.
31 minute video by one of my new favorite creators, hell yeah! I am truly inspired by your recent success, looking forward to seeing the growth of your channel over the course of the year!
They've earned it. It's not like they kept buying studios making these type of games and just shut them down. They're not Disney. They're just making the best ones.
@@srmafios They have objectively earned it. It isn't R* fault that the competition kept getting tripped over by thier own shoes. R* never engaged in practices in hopes of getting a monopoly. They got it out of sheer dumbness of their competition. Ubisoft EA or Activision can make thier own crime Sand Box game they have the resources, so why aren't they doing it then. Because they kept fucking it up, only R* knows how to make a successful crime Sand Box game. Don't you think any of the previous publishers would kill for a chance to even have 50% of the success that the GTA franchise has? Of course they would. But they can't do it.
I do find it odd that people call them GTA clones when Drive released on PlayStation before GTA even touched the 3D scene, and Shenmue was a 3D sandbox RPG also before GTA went 3D after it. They weren't cloning something that wasn't a thing when they released, and the top down GTAs beforehand were commercially terrible sellers, not something anyone wanted to clone.
Rockstar deserved the monopoly because every other devs suck a$$ in developing crime-like open-world games!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 😤😤😤😤😤😤😤😤😤😤
Though Sleeping Dogs was a spiritual successor of True Crime series, the franchise can continue in two major ways- 1. The protagonist Wei Shen was an undercover cop from San Francisco Police Department who investigated the Triads in San Francisco before the events of sleeping dogs. So a prequel set in San Francisco featuring Wei Shen is possible. 2. Though the first game wrapped the story of Wei Shen, they can continue with a new protagonist following the aftermath of the first game and can include Wei Shen as a guest character.
Thank you for this video, just got done replaying sr2 on pc (holy game crashes even with the patches) and own most of these on pc as well (originally owned on xbox) ill be replaying most of these soon, great video! (Also i surprisingly enjoyed the new saints row, but 1 and 2 will always be my favorite)
Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven was made before GTA 3, the first 3D GTA, so its definetly NOT a clone. It was released later (i dont remember the exact reason), but the two games were developed pretty much at the same time. I am also shocked that you didn't mention the Mafia one Remake, its very well made. They used the base of Mafia 3 (engine and physics) and improved everything possible. I really recommend the game. Its usually on sale for like 15-20$ and even at full price its only 40$! Mafia always went for a more realistic style, both in gameplay and story. It also never played in the current era, always in the past. I think those two franchises kinda go hand in hand because they are both open world 3rd person gangster games, yet very different. I would recommend to all GTA players to play Mafia 2 and Mafia: Definitive Edition (Mafia 1 Remake) and i would recommend to all Mafia players GTA 4 and GTA V.
The first Mafia game was originally supposed to be a driving game similar to the first Driver game and was set to release in the year 2000 but plans changed along with the game engine being changed due to the previous engine not meeting the developer's requirements, both reasons led to the release date being pushed to 2002, a few months before the release of GTA Vice City. It's why the first Mafia game has such detailed driving physics (the first game can even be played with a force feedback wheel and pedal setup) and the first game was initially developed exclusively for PC which is why it has so many realistic details in it that the GTA games of the time didn't have (as they were developed for consoles first and then ported to PC).
I remember the time when there were Doom Clones. Then came the era of GTA Clones. Today we are in Souslike era. Rockstar is a money machine, but FromSoftware has been more influential over the industry, recently.
Funnily enough, Demon's Souls started as an Elder Scrolls Oblivion clone. During production trouble, Hidetaka Miyazaki came on and actively questioned industry tropes. Early on, many observers pegged Souls games as being hard for the sake of being hard, but that's not the intention. There are so many mechanics that are interesting in their own right. I love how influential Souls has been on the industry.
I'm a HUGE fan of this style of games as well. Very glad you mentioned the Driver & Getaway series! Those games are my top favorites over GTA, as is SR2! I just love a good, compelling story, with fun, passionate gameplay elements. Game studios nowadays might believe their "GTA clones" have to be bigger than the latest GTA, but that's not true at all! They can be small, short games, as long as they have great polished gameplay that's fun, and have compelling characters part of a good story! The Getaway & Driver 1 are examples of small, short games with fun core gameplay & compelling characters in a story.
Just Cause games just make me think of skies because everyone's always flying around when I see them playing. This video is making me think of buying the early Mafia games, because I like a story and I like the 40s and you said good things about Saint's Row 2 and Sleeping Dogs and I love those.
I happened to discover the Mafia series and man they were awesome. Mafia 3 was definitely my favorite setting. There’s something refreshing about how the game isn’t hesitant to show how awful racism was in the 60s down south, something that my grandparents had to live through. Definitely excited for Mafia 4 whenever it’s coming out.
Mafia 3 is so cold, my favourite of the three. I didn't play the first two until the remakes/remasters, copped those badbois hard copy with the special case. Three's setting and absolutely banging soundtrack really drew me in and it had some solid characters to boot. Lincoln Clay is too cold with it, taking that post Vietnam conflict PTSD to tear down the Mafia. What an experience!
The problem is calling them GTA clones. You don't call battlefield or call duty doom clones. Also driver 3 was a good game but the on foot gameplay was what made it a bad experience.
"Other attempts" being Mafia and True Crime, the truest and some of the most successful forms of GTA like (Sleeping Dogs still being acclaimed and "missed" to this day), with a tiny mention of Total Overdose as "having fun bits", and 2 sec for The Getaway, while having a dedicated segment for Just Cause which has barely anything to do with a GTA, this is all pretty funny. You are so impressively unserious my man, and I'm impressed that the algo still gobbles that up in the name of nostalgia.
Some ones you missed. EA's The God Father. CDPR's Cyberpunk 2077. Radical Entertainment's Scarface: The World Is Yours. Sony's The Getaway. Realtime World's Crackdown. Pandemic Studios' The Saboteur. And Betagames Group's early access 171.
I was gonna put up a comment about the ignorance of no Crackdown mention (considering SR 4 was definitely taking the superpowers from that and Hulk Ultimate Destruction) Crackdown 1 and Mercenaries 1 were brilliantly crafted games for their times, the sequels were absolute abominations unfortunately and killed those franchises, although Just Cause definitely took cues from Mercenaries 😊
This was a well informed and a great video! Im glad you mentioned plenty of games which seem to use the same formula from the gta series, but not specifically call them clones, like most would. Its cool to see how each and everyone of these games had their own go at becoming a masterpiece of a video game. GTA, which shaped the open world sandbox genre, seems to be the only game which I know of that is maintaing its title of that. Nonetheless, im glad this video explained what GTA clones truly means. Also, thank you for saying Just Cause 3 was a gem, as it is one of my favourite games, with the others being Titanfall 2 and, you guessed it, GTA 5.
The fans killed them all the talk of "GTA Clone" forced many studios to destroy gaming leaving the mess we have today and Ultimately giving the industry to rockstar on a silver platter
You can also than IGN with help on that, because they tend to have influentially bad takes in their game reviews and the ones who only shill the most biggest budget title of the time, as the standard over anything else. Then they tried to claim Saints Row 4, was one of the greatest Open World games of all time. Pff.
The problem is that no other game could really get close to the style and writing of GTA or RDR. It's not only the gameplay, it's the art, the way Rckstar embraces, includes and presents pop culture.
@@srmafios no I mean normal remake expanded and enhanced. That game would have massive potential. No one would be forcing you to play it ffs. You can play original anytime... thanks for your opinion. I didnt ask for it and I dont care.. but I get it you just needed to nag..
@@srmafios aint you a man of words. Mafia definitive edition was quite solid. It aint that black and white like you try to say. I didnt see anything woke there. The original is still there. People can play both. it has impression of nagging. Also I really aint in the good mood today. I dont worship anyone for me it's just one of the fictional characters. Im ending this conversation. Thanks for understanding. Have a nice day...
I LOVE Saints Row 4. I know most people hated it and I get why since they fell in love with a game about street gangs but I found all the super powers, flying around and even the story I thought was a lot of fun. And if I remember correctly it was only like $40 not $80 like a new game, it was priced like a big DLC so reusing the same map was acceptable to me.
I just think it sucked as a Saints Row game. As anything else it can be and probably is a good game. But it'd be like releasing GTA 6 as a card game. No matter how good of a card game it is, GTA 6 is not about cards. I hope I'm making my point here
I love GTA clones specially if they have some kind of unique setting like Mafia and Sleeping Dogs had, but I guess the idea of competing with GTA it's just too much of a risk for developers nowadays.
Don’t forget the infamous Vin Diesel’s Wheel Man, such a perfect mix between fast and furious action and open world aspects of GTA, I used to play that game for hours as a kid 🙌🏼
Found you through the 'Los Santos is Boring' video. Got into your channel and I've got to say, you have some high-quality gems hidden on your channel. I've gladly left a subscription, regards from Poland.
@@SonicAdventureEnjoyer The realism and details on that game was insane for a PS2 game. Even the story was awesome to play through. LA was cool though but New York City was incredible.
Stop it. They were clones. They tried to jump on the bandwagon but failed. The only one that made it was Saints Row. Until they put out that last crappy one.
Not any open world game. Didn’t mention Fallout, Horizon, the Simpsons Road Rage etc. for a reason. They are not GTA-like. What you’re doing is called “putting words in people’s mouths” Feel free to watch the video all the way through though, or to at least recognise the quotes around “GTA Clones” and figure out what I might mean by that.
That’s silly though GTA was a pioneer of that genre John Wick was not. There were plenty of action films before the wick films that could hold that title.
driver was a cherished game for me as well lol. I actually beat Driver 3 multiple times and enjoyed the hell out of it barely remembering any glitches playing. Part of it was probably due to the fact the game was rented from a rental company locally owned and the day my game was due, my dad showed up to the parking lot and it was the only section of the plaza that was attached to a publix and bells, was stuck by lighting overnight and burned to the ground. Kept that game till i was 19 when she finally stopped reading
The market killed them. All the gta fanboys calling any game that tried to enter the genre a ‘clone’ when many of them were fantastic games with their own thing going on.
‘GTA clone” is such a close minded term for games that feature an open world that also happen to feature guns and cars. Game could have such a great story that feature a unique set of characters while also having amazing customization options only for it to be called a clone. Ironically GTA 5 over the years became a saints row clone with all its ridiculous vehicles and online updates
Because they literally rip off GTA's formula. If the devs have imagination the series will stay alive like yakuza, spiderman, whatever whatever did. Rdr made by rockstar is a clone of their own game and it's cool. Most of these games just lack content, creative direction or replay value and that's why they're dead. Like many others before them.
It was fun waiting for the new releases of COD or GTA and in between the new releases you had great “clones” releases to keep us entertained until then!
Take just cause of this list... just cause is a chaotic open world sandbox shooter with like a million things you can do, gta is imo way more boring than just cause with way less creative freedom. But i personally miss gta "clones"... i want more chaotic Sandbox open world games, like just cause 3... good video tho!
@dereenaldoambun9158 yeah and that term died off and we still get FPS, this term is still commonly used and we don't get open world crime sandbox games anymore
And there were Battle Royals clones after PubG, Sandbox clones for Minecraft and Soulslike clones after The Demonsouls games. It’s happens with EVERY successful new genre type, don’t play like it’s only GTA that did this. As has been stated Doom made FPS and there were “clones” of that in the 90s but it also lead to games like Half Life and Deus Ex that innovated because they wanted to make something new with the genre. The reason as was made clear in the video, no has the money or resources of Rockstar, it’s a hard genre type to get right and make money on, when GTA had spent up to 5 years + in some cases on any one game. They craft each one so that on it’s release nothing is close to them tech and gameplay wise. Hopefully there is another Just Cause or Mafia game that can do something different, apparently at least one of the previous employees of Rockstar is working on a game in a similar vein. So maybe there’s more on the horizon….
Jak and Daxter is another clone to add to the list, considering that Naughty Dog literally changed the sequel from a light-hearted platformer to a mature, open-world game with guns to chase after GTA III's success.
Another thing we need in GTA 6 for the love of Sam and Dan Houser is bringing the gore into the game like how it was in rdr 2 except even more improved and crazy just do something to get Jack Thompson upset again Rockstar.
Except Dan Houser has left, so has Leslie Benzie and Lazlow Jones. They were the trifecta of what made GTA interesting, so not sure how good GTA6 will be. Also with the online mode being the big money maker, Take Two will be pushing for a lot of content to be in that mode.
Hey, very nice Video, thanks for the huge efford. Can somenone tell me, what the title of the music playing in the background in the part about Just Cause. I like it a lot.
A little surprized not to hear it mentioned but The Yakuza series, for me, is a great Open World series that some think of as "GTA from the East" and is really the only Open World series that has always had the best Hand to Hand combat we have ever seen in sandbox games.
It's crazy how if an open world game has guns and cars then its considered a gta clone but games like metal of honor and call of duty get a pass, even though they're competitors, overall the concept of gta clone has always been a dumb thing.
Godfather 2 was AWSOME. Taking over NYC, Miami, Havana, and assembling your own family at the same time, was so much fun. It's absolute tragedy it hasn't been remastered.
Let me save you some time. Driver: Dead in the water after DSF because the series can't compete with GTA. Saints Row: Went out with "not a bang, but with a whimper". SR4 was already bad and the Saints Row Reboot was the nail in the coffin. Dead in the water along with Volition itself. Just Cause: I have the most to say about this one as I am a huge Just Cause fan. The series peaked during JC2 and ESPECIALLY JC3. After JC3's huge success, Avalanche spent most of 2018 hyping up and marketing JC4 only for them to lie to our faces and turn that POS into one of the worst games released in recent memory. JC4 was a straight up downgrade in every single measurable metric from JC3, from the graphics to the gameplay, the story, map, weapons, vehicles, AI, sound effects you name it JC3 did it better. Unfortunately, you failed to disclose the fact that JC4 did in fact, not have positive reviews (unless they were paid off by the devs looking at you NerdCubed). The series did not just go 'silent' for no reason. It is no coincidence that after a disastrous game like JC4 the series completely died off as all hope was lost especially considering JC3 and JC2 were SO MUCH BETTER. Some random commenter years ago said it best "Just Cause 4 is not a game, it's a chore." I sincerely hope a JC5 will be able to usher in a new era for the Just Cause series if it ever comes at all. Unfortunately with GTA 6 around the corner, we will have to wait until at least 2026.
Whoa, I forgot this wasn’t a history of saints row vid. I didn’t have much as a kid, and missed out on a lot of trending moments that were otherwise monumental. My first exposure to saints row was definitely a later title. I forget what specifically I saw, but it was just too over the top for me. I’m glad I could learn more about the IP’s roots and I just might have to give the second and third a play through
I think Cyberpunk 2077 outshined GTA in some ways as it was a full blown rpg like Skyrim but with carjacking, a wanted system in a criminal world. (Something I wish Saints Row did instead of going whacky). Another way games can stand out is by making a retro crime game, going back to basics, giving us a more arcade experience. One where it's about blowing things up for money and plays like GTA 3 with modern graphics. There was recently a 2D open world crime game called Maniac which was a lovely letter to the original games, where it was all about open world chaos.
Cyberpunk in some ways reminds me of GTA San Andreas (and older GTA games), basically from the amount and variety of stuff to do, the best we get in modern GTA is just these Stranger and Freaks missions, and nope, these "details" don't count, i want content, writing, narrative, not to stare horse balls 24/7 or watch NPCs talking, I hope Cyberpunk stays for a long time, yeah it's not perfect, atleast unlike Ubisoft, 2K or Volition where they are too scared to even make these type of games.
Cyberpunk was an open world game masking as an rpg. Just because weapons have stats and you have (inconsequential) dialogue options doesn't mean its an rpg. And I say this as someone who really enjoyed Cyberpunk.
@@kamemesg2083 it has a ton of endings, different characters builds and even the story prologue changes based on life path (sure it's just dialogue options after that, but it mixes repeat play throughs up) to be fair, the middle section of cyberpunk is pretty much the same story wise (only you can romance different characters). I just wish GTA had dialogue options and built on SA's body building and melee style mechanics. Even the stats such as respect and six appeal added to the immersion. Cyberpunk now let's me buy different homes for V to live in and so on. It's an RPG lite akin to Fallout 4 then. Just wish Saints Row added these things. SR2 had crib customisation on top of car and character editor. I want the Sims meets Skyrim in a modern day crime setting and Cyberpunk is the closest we ever got.
@@NewOrderOfAlexandria Wasn't they added crib / safehouse customization in 1.5? you can buy 4 ownable houses and customize it with 10 different color scheme.
@@kamemesg2083 As the guy above me said, it's closest thing to a modern day game with RPG and sandbox elements, yes i know there's Deus Ex, but it's not open world, modern day city crime RPG is still and quite literally uncharted territory, hell even crime RPG itself is uncharted territory too, most of RPGs only goes as far as "you do anything for the greater good", i want something like robbing king's palace or raiding villages.
You left out GTA's real and only modern competitor. Lego City Undercover.
Obviously Lego City Undercover is such a huge deal that I had to save it for Part 2.
I miss GTA Clones. The state of gaming is boring right now. The gaming industry is getting so big that fewer and fewer gaming experiments can get green lit. There's not much variety anymore, everything is starting to feel the same.
play some indie titles
there's still variety dude you just gotta have to look for them
His point is you shouldn't have to look for them...
@@gazuhiramilleri think he means no variety in terms of triple A games . And i agree to be fair
play Evil West if you want a newer game that feels like its on 360
I am a big fan of Sleeping Dogs. I like how it’s more brawler combat than third person shooter, while incorporating the gta style gameplay loop. I also really love how it’s set in Hong Kong. Most games set in real locations are in American cities or London, so Hong Kong feels so unique and interesting. A sequel to that game would be great
Man I wish they part that game for the Nintendo switch I have it for PS4 great game
Albeit it was one of those games that didn't really need a sequel, the story was wrapped up pretty well.
If The Crew can do "all of the USA" then certainly, especially with today's hardware, there should be a game that can do all of Japan (but like, ACTUALLY all of it). That'd be a cool sequel, I think.
@@kamemesg2083 yeah, but just like GTA they could make another in a different location with a different story and characters. Maybe with a cameo or two of some minor character.
Too bad the sequel got canned because United Front got shut down. If you are interested I recommend you find a video or read about it. Real tragic outcome for a team who hadn't even started to tap into their latent potential. The story was basically gonna happen direct after the Cop ending and Wei was gonna have a new partner. That game was just GTA X Yakuza and it's one of the best small time games Square Enix ever backed but they are also the reason for the shut down. Game Industry has always been cutthroat. It's just that now it also produces over budget pos games as the norm and devs went from having insane creative freedom to having to follow the same trends because innovation doesn't make money anymore.
I love how saints row was a actual good street game that was getting to the level of GTA then they went nah we need aliens 😂😂😂
they were better tho. when a civilian car got in the way of your car it was due to a random civilian accidentally getting in your way. in the gta games it was a scripted event that you had to avoid on your next retries. also they had a barbershop quartet singing in front of a mall 😊.
Saints Row 4 was wild, still love it though and currently trying to 100% it
I felt they were trying to differentiate themselves and thought for a while they did a good job.
Never played 4 but I recall it underperformed but it did seem like it was trying to stand on its own and not just be a clone.
Saints row 4 was great ...
Reboot on the other hand
@@vivekkparashar The reboot was woke hipster s***
Mafia 4 is actually in development as of now, and based off the success that mafia 1 definitive edition had, its safe to assume they will have the same mechanics, graphics and gameplay of it but with a shit ton main story mission and side missions sprawled across its open world
I hope they improve the shooting and death animations, Vehicle physics are perfect though.
It seems to progress chronologically.
If so, I REALLY hope they don't skip the 70s. The car's/clothes/music.
I want the 80s Mafia as much as anyone but I feel like there's potential in the 70s.
@@StaredownGamesI think it was leaked that they were going back in time to 1920s Sicily to explore how Don Salieri became a head mob boss. I would prefer 1970s but the licensing for the music would probably be so expensive
@@StaredownGames yes we really need that era ffs... the only games that had this era was gta vice city and driver parallel lines, both of them are too damn old now...
if mafia 2 got the treatment mafia 1 had it would’ve been way better than mafia 1
There's also an unmentioned impact of the "GTA clones" which is that it kept Rockstar working hard to give us new GTA games. What happened when there was no more competition to be concerned about? Well, Rockstar just milked the same GTA game for over a decade. It's no coincidence that the golden era (2000s) of GTA from a player's perspective also coincided with a time when there were decent alternatives to GTA. The clones had their place and we need them back now more than ever. My personal favorites were True Crime NYC, Scarface and the Getaway games.
Yeah sure if you just ignore Just Cause 3, the Watch_Dogs games, the 2 Mafia games that came out after GTA V, any of the BS Ubisoft released, or literally any of the other open world titles that game out between 2013 and now.
So yeah, ignoring all the evidence that contradicts your comment heavily then sure, that’s why R* only made one GTA in 10 years and not, you know, shark card greed and them being able to capitalize off stupidity.
Godfather also competed
@@-SoonerorLater None of these games left enough of an impression in the 2010s to be genuine threats to R*'s sandbox design. Just Cause, Saints Row, Watch Dogs, Far Cry, and Assassin's Creed peaked in the early-to-mid 2010s and either suffered from quality decay into the late-2010s and 2020s or had no further games released. Mafia 3 was praised for its writing but also maligned for its simplistic sandbox design, and Mafia 1: DE, while well reviewed, does have significant downgrades from the original 2002 game and isn't talked about anymore despite the quality of craftsmanship, with 2K content with not even giving the game DLCs like its predecessors. I was especially bitter about Sleeping Dogs as it was an amazing revival of the True Crime lineage, but never even had the opportunity to shine past its first game due to mismanagement from Squinex.
There's no direct rivalry like you used to see in the 2000s (think the jabs at GTA, Driver, True Crime and Getaway from 2001 to 2004). So while sandbox games are still release in numbers, all competing devs have been keeping to themselves and making more lighthearted tributes at best. It compelled no one to do better and as a result this style of sandbox stagnated throughout the 2010s and early-2020s, while Rockstar, well ahead in the race, comfortably falls back to a Bethesda-like business strategy milking one game for over a decade because consumers now have limited alternatives outside GTA. The only outliers are RDR2 and maybe Cyberpunk 2077.
Ohh True Crimes?? I remember playing that game I used to have both of them man those games were fun but now I got this game called Sleeping Dogs and it's like those games and it's fun
The watchdogs series of games came and went during all that time 💀
Half the reason this genre died is because everyone kept calling them "GTA Clones".
Imagine putting your blood, sweat and tears into a passion project only to be discarded as a second fiddle to something else.
That's not why, they just didn't sell enough. Nobody cares about that nonsense if it makes money.
@@JukaDominatorgeee I wonder why they didn't sell enough, surely because people dint give R* the ability to make a monopoly with that one phrase
@@talpatv512Unlikely
should have called them GTA-likes , right ? because now everything is called something-like
Thats just stupid, everyone called fps games doom clones back in the day, and we got plenty of fps games today
Ya’ll scared them off by naming them “GTA clones” never in my life was I playing saints row and calling it a clone. GTA did what they did and SR did what they did. People started to act like we couldn’t have more than one open world sandbox crime game and i hate ya’ll for it💀
😂 yeah publishers give a fuck what ppl call them and not only about sales. also how you going to name SR, the most clone ass game out of every fucking game of that generation.
You were tricked into thinking that😂
Nope.
^ Im guessing GTA the only sandbox free roam crime game ya’ll ever played. You don’t qualify here sir🙏🏾
@@mikenice215Congratulations. 👏 You've finally realised what I did about a decade ago; the worst thing for the gaming industry is gamers.
Every negative trend in gaming exists because gamers supported it with their purchases, despite the vocal outcry online. DLC, Micro transactions, pre-ordering, pay to win online games, "cinematic experiences" in single player games, gameplay loops of mindless grinding, empty open worlds, etc, etc.
Fun fact: Ultor from Saints Row is also the same Ultor from the Red Faction games.
Did you figure that out all by yourself. Congratulations you must be quite smart
The reason why Just Cause 3 was even made was because gamers on PC kept it alive, with a multiplayer mod. When modders were creating the multiplayer component for Just Cause 3, the company announced Just Cause 4, and they still refused to implement a multiplayer function, which pretty much killed the passion those modders had for the game.
I personally believe that if Square Enix wasn't afraid to compete with GTA Online, we could have gotten an amazing multiplayer experience in the Just Cause series.
Actually JC4 doesn't have a fanmade multiplayer mod because JC4 is horribly coded and a nightmare to work with. It's also just a worse version of JC3 so nobody bothered.
Not having multiplayer is missing the big picture as to why JC4 failed (or why the previous 2 games succeeded), sure it was 1 reason but nowhere near the biggest one.
Avalanche's deceptive marketing tricked all of us into thinking JC4 would be revolutionary, instead what we got was a terrible game with mountains of missed potential.
@@aircraft2 You're not wrong, I just pray they don't miss the mark with the 5th entry.
Just Cause 4 was also nowhere near Just Cause 3.
Fuck multiplayer
@@KingJohnMichael ua-cam.com/video/pWdd6_ZxX8c/v-deo.html
I still remember seeing Gat hear you talk for the first time. That hepatitis line has been stuck in my head since before I had an idea of what hepatitis even was.
Thank you for eloquently Describing your childhood experience growing up with different games. You were so descriptive and point was certain things I felt like me. You grew up shoulder the shoulder in the video game world
You forgot to mention Scarface: The World is Yours, one of my favorite ones set in Miami. Also Bully somewhat a GTA type game as a school teens replacing cars with bikes etc.
Any other time I would probably say I decided not to include it, but the truth is, I *did* forget about Scarface. That game was so so good.
I DID avoid Bully though, as to avoid licking Rockstar’s boot *too* clean.
@@CaptainGlack Great video either way but yes another game released 2006 lol , and since u mentioned Red Dead I thought I’d mention bully but I feel that lol
damn, i hope they release this game to gamepass or remaster it!
@@eleasxrresu8394The Godfather deserves mention, also 2006.
how can a R* title be a gta clone ffs, LA NOIRE is a gta clone too then smh
Sleeping dogs was such a good game. Shame it didn't get a successor
The combat is so badass
The fact that it actually released was almost a miracle.
@srmafios Them doing a Sleeping Dogs sequel today will more than likely be another Saints Row Reboot experience. Gotta appeal to the "modern audience" as they always say.
Right !!
There are a lot of returning series' and remakes happening so there's a little bit of hope
Yall killed it by calling every open world game a Gta clone
no one called assassin creed gta clone
@@samirm9097They're not even remotely similar you inbecile
@@samirm9097 cmon brother, you're taking the one example of game where the setting is hundreds of years before something a gta clone game would be set on, no whataboutism needed for an actual argument next time.
@@samirm9097that’s because it’s not even remotely close to the same thing besides 3rd person open world. AC is a science fiction story game mixed with a historical game. Gta is just a sandbox crime game
Nah, it's just most of these games couldn't offer much in comparison to GTA. Modern spiderman games are a GTA clone and they're doing alright, yakuza series is alive. If you make a gta BUT IN THE 50s of course this ahit gonna flop.
How could you forget Scarface and the Godfather games. Those were really good "GTA Clones".
Scarface is actually better than a few GTA games especially vice City
I'm sure Captain Glack realizes that by now.
@@Marcus_shawnmafia 2 and saints row 2 are probably better than gta at the time yet they’re here
💯 imagine a New (not remastered) Scarface and Godfather with the graphics and on these new consoles would be dope
@@Marcus_shawn what a big bullshit
Saints row 2, Watch Dogs 1 & 2, Sleeping Dogs, Driver: San Francisco, Just Cause 3, and the Mafia series have got to be some of the greatest things to be produced by the gta clone fenomenon, and its truly a shame that the modern videogame landscape as a whole is just afraid of taking any risks, instead they choose to keep pushing out shallow and un-original videogames with no substance to them.
does just cause 3 really count though
i mean you can commit a grand theft auto sure
Watch Dogs appreciation W
Just Cause was in its own niche. I don't remember leading a revolution against a dictator in GTA 5.
@@aircraft2maybe if you count avon
@@gazuhiramilleryou can steal cars and store them in the garage
Umm…Just Cause is not a GTA clone. Why are all open world games considered “GTA clones”?
This shit, calling every open world game a GTA clone, itself is a reason that these games went away. Nobody gave them the fucking respect that they deserved.
So angry, it will be ok, it’s just a video game
true
@@RJ_Cuetell that to the developers whose past four years of their lives were to make a “gta clone”
World's biggest Just Cause 2 fanboy speaking. Have you played the first Just Cause? It was pretty clear Avalanche were basing it heavily on the GTA formula. Some of the things they copied from GTA clearly didn't fit - like the safehouses, complete with save points you had to travel to and garages for cars you'd never bother bringing there. JC2 dropped a lot of that stuff - safehouses were removed, the weapon inventory was changed from the GTA style, the majority of the gameplay progression was moved outside of missions and, perhaps most importantly, a unique way of moving around the map was introduced, greatly reducing the importance of traditional vehicles (especially the autos that you'd have to grand-thieve). While the sequels definitely found their own identity, the original game was very much a GTA clone, which was probably also the reason why it never really gained much popularity. There absolutely were open world games out there that had nothing to do with GTA, but Just Cause was not one of them.
@@infinite_data4796 I’m not reading all that but I agree for sure
I loved and enjoyed having more varieties in this genre. Variations do not necessarily have to be a clone, and each managed to shine on its own. I especially miss Saints Row, it was the one I adored as much as GTA.
Calling mafia a gta clone is nasty work
I wonder why that never happens with other games, like no one has called ghost of tsuahima an assassin's creed clone 😂
You forgot to mention Bully, but is also a Rockstar game.
@Bunny-658 sleeping dogs and total overdose were also great games, but people called them gta clones
@Bunny-658i totally agree👍 they did something to the controls after AC2 which made it feel less badass
.
.
I cant explain it but maybe you what i mean ?
Ac1 and 2 made you feel like you were in control of a badass assassin
.
But the fight scenes after AC2 felt disconnected and more of a button mash with automatic fight moves
@@jdarealvisuals EXACTLY like wtf are ya’ll talking about💀
Please tell me how just cause was ever a gta clone😭😭
Avalanche is currently working on an open world coop game called contraband, a game that was teased 3 years ago and still nothing is known about the game, so im thinking just cause will come after that, which might still be years away
We technically did get somewhat of an evolution of the Driver series. The next installment of the driver's games was turned into Watch Dogs 1. Watch Dogs 2 even has a nod to Driver San Francisco. Some elements such as controlling vehicles, are present in Watch Dogs 2. And it's easy to see that sort of sandbox progression from one franchise to the other.
Is it a perfect installment. No. Not really. But it's probably the closest thing to Driver we got in this universe.
I had NO idea Watch Dogs was a product of Driver San Francisco. I knew about the reference in WD2 but that's it. That's cool actually.
Watch Dogs driving is horrible compared to Driver though
Exactly.. But after watchdogs2 Ubisoft is going backwards in graphics😂
@@HCS_Gengarr yeah, devs initially were developing new driver game, it turned to be a game with codename 'nexus' and then they picked name 'watch_dogs' for their new game.
there's still unused tanner model in wd1, though it has no facial rigging (means his face is 😐all the time) and has few bugs on his model. you can see him in e3 2012 demo at the very end, there's two of e3 2012 demos, watch "11. Watch Dogs Ubisoft E3 2012 Press Conference" one.
@@hardVatsukiIn the video you say, it´s the character at 14:10, with the red shirt?
Video starts at 25:11
I'm sure almost nobody even knows what The Saboteur is, but that game was pretty cool and fits into that "GTA clone" type of thing.
God, I loved that game so much. Singlehandedly taking down Nazis was so badass. Genuinely an underrated classic.
Greatest open world game similar to AC ... I miss the non agenda games 😢
@@ELFORAS888 Non agenda Games? Wouldn't The Saboteur have an agenda against Nazi's or something lol.
Everyone's got something against someone.
Hidden gem forsure
Played and finished it. Nice game. Especially art and visuals particularly black and white at night, flying over the Paris. It really looked stunning. And what can we say about the game like Scarface The world is yours from 2006? Absolute masterpiece of a GTA clone. Many elements of that game were flat out better than any GTA game!
Pretty difficult to compete with R*'s multi-billion-dollar prowess and decades long legacy of having the best criminal open world experiences. If there is someone out there to match them, they would need to be at least of the same calibre, or make this kind of game in a completely unique and creative way.
Ubisoft could compete if they didn't have their heads up their asses
The Getaway was an amazing PS2 game. It had characters I still think of to this day.
Technically máfia is a sister game because it’s under the same parent company
Are games boys or girls 🤔
@@Nomad-bl4yw genderfluid
Mafia is GTA & Red Dead's cousin Vinny. 🕴
This is bullshit! Mafia 1 was developed by Illusion Softworks, Mafia 2 by 2K Czech and Mafia 3 by Hangar 13... None of these have anything to do with Rockstar.
@@celesteorsa3918 But Rockstar and 2K are both under Take-Two Interactive.
If saints row stayed the path of 1-2 It could’ve been a solid series but ofc they fumbled
Had it not been for THQ being in the red and deciding on how Saints Row 3 should be, the franchise would've been booming. Naw, THQ decided to call the shots and make Saints Row more lighthearted, make Volition kill off Gat, change the production team and so on... And then you find out recently that the Reboot dev team was split on how it should be. Devs on once side wanting to go back to how SR2 was and the other wanting to go the more over the top/modern audience/sitcom style route. It's a hot mess.
It really rivaled GTA and then later it threw itself in the dumpster marketing it for kids
@@slaterock4612 But how does that explain Saints Row IV which was done without THQ?
@@MerlautJones Technically, it was still under THQ as far as some of the development goes. SR4 was originally dlc for SRTT. THQ's president at the time, Jason Rubin, told Volition to use what they had for the dlc and make it into a full game instead, as they were keeping it over the top. Reason to make the dlc into a full game was due to THQ being in the red financially. So, they filed for bankruptcy and had handed the game over to Koch Media/Deep Silver after they acquired Volition. Koch Media (now known as Plaion) owns Deep Silver. Deep Silver let Volition ended up continuing from where they left off, while keeping the over the top gameplay and story.
I played Saint Row 3 and 4 on the Switch.. I played Saint Row 3, and it bored me to death.. I played Saint Row 4 and it is as hell.. I never played Saint Row and Saint Row 2 until one day I turned on my Xbox looking for something that was on sale and Saint Row and Saint 2 both were on sale for a $1.50 a piece.. I immediately bought both games.. They are both really good games..
The Getaway being from London holds weight for me
I hate the "Gta Clone" term it's not clones it's Gta Competitors look what happened Saints Row series it lost that true identity of being a good gangster game all due to the people that were calling it a "gta clone"
And I like Gta Games and Saints Row 2 equally
Exactly what I am saying, the GTA community its just dumb. They see a game in the same category ( open world crime game ) and they say " uMhn ThAts A GtA CloNe , YoU shOuLdnT PLaY ThAt "
They don't understand that if rockstar had competition they wouldn't milk the same GTA over 10 years , they would pay more attention to make their games better
@@orynx2835 very well said. They ruined competition and milkstar has monopoly for so many years. This is the result. We have nothing. Monopolized market is the worst kind of thing in capitalism.
@@srmafios maybe but I still enjoy GTA
@srmafios well why don't you do it? Honestly I really want something new from rockstar and I don't see so far any way they changed it . The only GTA that felt kinda different was GTA V with that movie like story. GTA 6 from the trailers to the leaks looks enough GTA to me .
I hate how people call anything remotely similar to an open world crime game a “clone”. This is why GTA will never have any competition, because of ignorant and shallow thinking groups of people who can’t comprehend that other games can exist in the same GENRE that “popular household” titles do.
People fuel their own oppression, giving companies the power to have a monopoly over an entire genre, because they don’t want their ‘favorite game’ to have fair ‘competition’.
So you didn't watch then video then?
@@DontEatGlass So you can’t read then? I said ‘people’ and was speaking in a general sense.
Same thing happened with Pokémon. There used to be dozens of monster-catching RPGs throughout the 90s and 2000s - most notably Digimon and Yo-kai Watch - keeping Game Freak in check and making great Pokémon games.
Ever since those disappeared, Pokémon games have been on a very noticeable decline. Thankfully, the monster-catching genre seems to be making a resurgence - most notably Palworld and Temtem - So maybe we'll get a real Pokémon competitor again
DOOM clones in the 90's: First time? 😎😎😎
People fuel their own oppression applies to so, so many more facets of life and I wish more people understood this. Well said.
I'm surprised "True Crime" wasn't covered. I remember being jealous of my cousin who had it. I always imagined it was a pre Sleeping Dogs but I never got the chance to play them.
Its crazy i looked for a video like this a couple days ago and couldn't find a good one now you upload one and i get it on my recommendation
Just bought Driver Parallel lines because of you. Played Driver SF in the past and enjoyed it.
The great thing about "GTA Clones" is that there's a lot of overlap in the community. I loved SR2 as an older kid but I also liked GTA.
This video was awesome. Do a part 2 and include The Saboteur.
Just cause is a masterpiece series its not a GTA clone . Especially just cause 2
To me, Urban Chaos was the push towards 3D GTA style games. Came out in late 1999, GTA 2 was still topdown view, and here we have a 3D game where we play as a cop, commandeering cars and enjoying a map, walking around, smashing bad guys' faces or casually shake it at the club.
I just recently tried Urban Chaos out. Has to be one of the most impressive PS1 games. I really like the vibe it gives off and the gameplay feels really good for a game of it's time. I wish game devs could have that level of creative freedom again. What I'd really like to see is a sequel to State of Emergency. That would be sick.
Yeah Urban Chaos is an interesting idea for a GTA type game, I spent a fair amount of time running around in that game trying stuff out. It is very limited by the tech of the time and would have been better served if it had another year in development and then released on PS2, although that would have put it in the path of GTA 3 so that would have killed it anyway.
The people who unironically called these games GTA clones were so stupid. By their logic basically any game with their person driving and shooting was automatically a GTA clone. The worst part about those people is that they weren't just spreading harmless stupidity. They actually had an impact. It's because of those people that the creators of Saints row basically took a sledge hammer to the franchises knee caps and butchered it til it was completely unrecognizable and we see where that franchise ended up... I know there was more factors to that situation as well but honestly I put 99% of the blame on those people who perpetuated this ridiculous idea about saints row being a GTA clone. It had its own style and identity and did things GTA didn't.
The problem with saints row is it didn’t stick to being a GTA clone and became a cartoon. If it had made san andreas like content but with better graphics every 4 years it would still be around instead it decided to pump out games that appealed to only 13yo every 2 years as it got worse and worse.
By 2 it was apparent where it was going by 3 it was just a quick crash grab without any thought to its own brand.
31 minute video by one of my new favorite creators, hell yeah! I am truly inspired by your recent success, looking forward to seeing the growth of your channel over the course of the year!
no rockstar do not deserve to monopolize on the open world crime games genre
They've earned it. It's not like they kept buying studios making these type of games and just shut them down. They're not Disney. They're just making the best ones.
@@srmafios They have objectively earned it. It isn't R* fault that the competition kept getting tripped over by thier own shoes. R* never engaged in practices in hopes of getting a monopoly. They got it out of sheer dumbness of their competition. Ubisoft EA or Activision can make thier own crime Sand Box game they have the resources, so why aren't they doing it then. Because they kept fucking it up, only R* knows how to make a successful crime Sand Box game. Don't you think any of the previous publishers would kill for a chance to even have 50% of the success that the GTA franchise has? Of course they would. But they can't do it.
I do find it odd that people call them GTA clones when Drive released on PlayStation before GTA even touched the 3D scene, and Shenmue was a 3D sandbox RPG also before GTA went 3D after it.
They weren't cloning something that wasn't a thing when they released, and the top down GTAs beforehand were commercially terrible sellers, not something anyone wanted to clone.
Rockstar deserved the monopoly because every other devs suck a$$ in developing crime-like open-world games!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 😤😤😤😤😤😤😤😤😤😤
@dereenaldoambun9158 and fanbase like you deserve gta 5 for 15+ year without any sequel
Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction is one of my favorites.
I have a feeling we might see a revival of the GTA clone genre around when GTA 6 comes out
Though Sleeping Dogs was a spiritual successor of True Crime series, the franchise can continue in two major ways-
1. The protagonist Wei Shen was an undercover cop from San Francisco Police Department who investigated the Triads in San Francisco before the events of sleeping dogs. So a prequel set in San Francisco featuring Wei Shen is possible.
2. Though the first game wrapped the story of Wei Shen, they can continue with a new protagonist following the aftermath of the first game and can include Wei Shen as a guest character.
Thank you for this video, just got done replaying sr2 on pc (holy game crashes even with the patches) and own most of these on pc as well (originally owned on xbox) ill be replaying most of these soon, great video! (Also i surprisingly enjoyed the new saints row, but 1 and 2 will always be my favorite)
Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven was made before GTA 3, the first 3D GTA, so its definetly NOT a clone. It was released later (i dont remember the exact reason), but the two games were developed pretty much at the same time. I am also shocked that you didn't mention the Mafia one Remake, its very well made. They used the base of Mafia 3 (engine and physics) and improved everything possible. I really recommend the game. Its usually on sale for like 15-20$ and even at full price its only 40$! Mafia always went for a more realistic style, both in gameplay and story. It also never played in the current era, always in the past. I think those two franchises kinda go hand in hand because they are both open world 3rd person gangster games, yet very different. I would recommend to all GTA players to play Mafia 2 and Mafia: Definitive Edition (Mafia 1 Remake) and i would recommend to all Mafia players GTA 4 and GTA V.
The first Mafia game was originally supposed to be a driving game similar to the first Driver game and was set to release in the year 2000 but plans changed along with the game engine being changed due to the previous engine not meeting the developer's requirements, both reasons led to the release date being pushed to 2002, a few months before the release of GTA Vice City. It's why the first Mafia game has such detailed driving physics (the first game can even be played with a force feedback wheel and pedal setup) and the first game was initially developed exclusively for PC which is why it has so many realistic details in it that the GTA games of the time didn't have (as they were developed for consoles first and then ported to PC).
I remember the time when there were Doom Clones. Then came the era of GTA Clones. Today we are in Souslike era.
Rockstar is a money machine, but FromSoftware has been more influential over the industry, recently.
Funnily enough, Demon's Souls started as an Elder Scrolls Oblivion clone. During production trouble, Hidetaka Miyazaki came on and actively questioned industry tropes. Early on, many observers pegged Souls games as being hard for the sake of being hard, but that's not the intention. There are so many mechanics that are interesting in their own right. I love how influential Souls has been on the industry.
I remember when Halo 1 was called a Quake clone lol
Which kind of sucks, crime games are imo the best the industry ever made.
FromSoftware games also probably cost less too, Which probably is the reason why there's here's dark souls clones everywhere.
Meanwhile in 2024, we got genshin clones! 💀💀💀💀
I'm a HUGE fan of this style of games as well. Very glad you mentioned the Driver & Getaway series! Those games are my top favorites over GTA, as is SR2!
I just love a good, compelling story, with fun, passionate gameplay elements.
Game studios nowadays might believe their "GTA clones" have to be bigger than the latest GTA, but that's not true at all! They can be small, short games, as long as they have great polished gameplay that's fun, and have compelling characters part of a good story!
The Getaway & Driver 1 are examples of small, short games with fun core gameplay & compelling characters in a story.
Sleeping Dogs is one of the best ones ever, and actually better than GTA in some ways. Mafia 2 as well (and the remake of 1.)
This is a straight banger of a video. You are definitely on your way up, keep up the great work 👍🏼💯
Just Cause games just make me think of skies because everyone's always flying around when I see them playing. This video is making me think of buying the early Mafia games, because I like a story and I like the 40s and you said good things about Saint's Row 2 and Sleeping Dogs and I love those.
I happened to discover the Mafia series and man they were awesome. Mafia 3 was definitely my favorite setting. There’s something refreshing about how the game isn’t hesitant to show how awful racism was in the 60s down south, something that my grandparents had to live through. Definitely excited for Mafia 4 whenever it’s coming out.
Mafia 3 is so cold, my favourite of the three. I didn't play the first two until the remakes/remasters, copped those badbois hard copy with the special case. Three's setting and absolutely banging soundtrack really drew me in and it had some solid characters to boot. Lincoln Clay is too cold with it, taking that post Vietnam conflict PTSD to tear down the Mafia. What an experience!
The problem is calling them GTA clones. You don't call battlefield or call duty doom clones. Also driver 3 was a good game but the on foot gameplay was what made it a bad experience.
Driver 3 is horrible compared to the previous and the next installments
@@lilgemini4032 like I said, the driving gameplay was top tier in 3.the on foot sections in the campaign made the game worse.
They did call those doom clones. You literally have no idea what you are spouting.
@@Kaledrone battlefield and call for duty play very differently what are you smoking
@@KaledroneI thought that ended with games like Half Life and Quake
"Other attempts" being Mafia and True Crime, the truest and some of the most successful forms of GTA like (Sleeping Dogs still being acclaimed and "missed" to this day), with a tiny mention of Total Overdose as "having fun bits", and 2 sec for The Getaway, while having a dedicated segment for Just Cause which has barely anything to do with a GTA, this is all pretty funny. You are so impressively unserious my man, and I'm impressed that the algo still gobbles that up in the name of nostalgia.
Some ones you missed. EA's The God Father. CDPR's Cyberpunk 2077. Radical Entertainment's Scarface: The World Is Yours. Sony's The Getaway. Realtime World's Crackdown. Pandemic Studios' The Saboteur. And Betagames Group's early access 171.
I wouldn't call cyberpunk 2077 a GTA clone at least entirely as it borrows many elements from different games plus trying to be it's own thing
Ayy the Scarface and the Saboteur. So good.
Yakuza
@@ElsonFernando78nah it’s too different
Mercenaries 2 World in Flames too
Driver 2,s video editor was cool,and the way the cars would go flying out through there when you blew them up was awesome
driver was SOOOOOOOOO dope... what i would give to go back..
Kinda makes me sad that you didn't mention the Mercenaries or Crackdown games imo
I was gonna put up a comment about the ignorance of no Crackdown mention (considering SR 4 was definitely taking the superpowers from that and Hulk Ultimate Destruction)
Crackdown 1 and Mercenaries 1 were brilliantly crafted games for their times, the sequels were absolute abominations unfortunately and killed those franchises, although Just Cause definitely took cues from Mercenaries 😊
@@jammin2575 Crackdown 2 wasn't bad though it was indeed a letdown, the third game was inexcusable though
I wished red faction guerrilla was mentioned 😢
8:10 you totally fooled me here 😂 i expected you to say Mayhem 👀
Total Overdose is a masterpiece
Your channel is criminally underrated.
Thank you kindly 🤠
Genuinely one of my favourite channels to watch, hope he gets a LOT more attention
give it a time bruh
i loved playing driv3r as a kid on my older brother's ps2 :)
This was a well informed and a great video! Im glad you mentioned plenty of games which seem to use the same formula from the gta series, but not specifically call them clones, like most would. Its cool to see how each and everyone of these games had their own go at becoming a masterpiece of a video game. GTA, which shaped the open world sandbox genre, seems to be the only game which I know of that is maintaing its title of that. Nonetheless, im glad this video explained what GTA clones truly means.
Also, thank you for saying Just Cause 3 was a gem, as it is one of my favourite games, with the others being Titanfall 2 and, you guessed it, GTA 5.
The fans killed them all the talk of "GTA Clone" forced many studios to destroy gaming leaving the mess we have today and Ultimately giving the industry to rockstar on a silver platter
DOOM clones in the 90's: First time? 😎😎😎
You can also than IGN with help on that, because they tend to have influentially bad takes in their game reviews and the ones who only shill the most biggest budget title of the time, as the standard over anything else. Then they tried to claim Saints Row 4, was one of the greatest Open World games of all time. Pff.
Don't forget about The Saboteur.
The problem is that no other game could really get close to the style and writing of GTA or RDR. It's not only the gameplay, it's the art, the way Rckstar embraces, includes and presents pop culture.
Driver Parallel Lines is my favorite Driver games
Absolutely. It was one of my most memorable childhood video games.
That thing would deserve massive remake... but ubisoft is way too dumb now to realise that...
@@srmafios no I mean normal remake expanded and enhanced. That game would have massive potential. No one would be forcing you to play it ffs. You can play original anytime...
thanks for your opinion. I didnt ask for it and I dont care.. but I get it you just needed to nag..
@@srmafios aint you a man of words. Mafia definitive edition was quite solid. It aint that black and white like you try to say. I didnt see anything woke there. The original is still there. People can play both.
it has impression of nagging. Also I really aint in the good mood today. I dont worship anyone for me it's just one of the fictional characters. Im ending this conversation. Thanks for understanding. Have a nice day...
@@srmafios ok
well done, i thoroughly enjoyed this.
I LOVE Saints Row 4. I know most people hated it and I get why since they fell in love with a game about street gangs but I found all the super powers, flying around and even the story I thought was a lot of fun.
And if I remember correctly it was only like $40 not $80 like a new game, it was priced like a big DLC so reusing the same map was acceptable to me.
I just think it sucked as a Saints Row game. As anything else it can be and probably is a good game. But it'd be like releasing GTA 6 as a card game. No matter how good of a card game it is, GTA 6 is not about cards. I hope I'm making my point here
having clones of *Something* is both disgusting & flattering to the source material 😂
Like those doom clones
Imitation is the best form of flattery
@@adedhuman9582it’s not at all if you really think about it, it’s just disrespect
Wolfenstein was before Doom @@4Pickledonions
FPS games used to be called DOOM clones, sometiems games are so influential they spawn a new genre
I love GTA clones specially if they have some kind of unique setting like Mafia and Sleeping Dogs had, but I guess the idea of competing with GTA it's just too much of a risk for developers nowadays.
Don’t forget the infamous Vin Diesel’s Wheel Man, such a perfect mix between fast and furious action and open world aspects of GTA, I used to play that game for hours as a kid 🙌🏼
Sleeping dogs was great the hand to hand combat was amazing
Am I the only one that misses the True Crime games!!! 😢
I've played the first True Crime and it was absolutely amazing.
@@yevgenydevine wait till you play true crime New York City . Buggy as hell but still 👌
You mean "True Grime"?
Found you through the 'Los Santos is Boring' video. Got into your channel and I've got to say, you have some high-quality gems hidden on your channel. I've gladly left a subscription, regards from Poland.
My favourite GTA clone was True Crime New York City on PS2.
Such a gem and a classic that deserves a remaster or remake.
I liked LA better (cuz I'm west coast myself lol) but new York SLAPPED. I remember it like yesterday on PS2
@@SonicAdventureEnjoyer The realism and details on that game was insane for a PS2 game. Even the story was awesome to play through. LA was cool though but New York City was incredible.
Calling ANY open world game a “gta clone”. Is like calling every action movie a John wick clone.
specifically crime open world game, there is an overall similarity between all the listed ones.
That's true..
Stop it. They were clones. They tried to jump on the bandwagon but failed. The only one that made it was Saints Row. Until they put out that last crappy one.
Not any open world game. Didn’t mention Fallout, Horizon, the Simpsons Road Rage etc. for a reason. They are not GTA-like.
What you’re doing is called “putting words in people’s mouths”
Feel free to watch the video all the way through though, or to at least recognise the quotes around “GTA Clones” and figure out what I might mean by that.
That’s silly though GTA was a pioneer of that genre John Wick was not. There were plenty of action films before the wick films that could hold that title.
driver was a cherished game for me as well lol. I actually beat Driver 3 multiple times and enjoyed the hell out of it barely remembering any glitches playing. Part of it was probably due to the fact the game was rented from a rental company locally owned and the day my game was due, my dad showed up to the parking lot and it was the only section of the plaza that was attached to a publix and bells, was stuck by lighting overnight and burned to the ground. Kept that game till i was 19 when she finally stopped reading
The market killed them. All the gta fanboys calling any game that tried to enter the genre a ‘clone’ when many of them were fantastic games with their own thing going on.
‘GTA clone” is such a close minded term for games that feature an open world that also happen to feature guns and cars. Game could have such a great story that feature a unique set of characters while also having amazing customization options only for it to be called a clone. Ironically GTA 5 over the years became a saints row clone with all its ridiculous vehicles and online updates
No?
gta 5 and online are not really the same
Because they literally rip off GTA's formula. If the devs have imagination the series will stay alive like yakuza, spiderman, whatever whatever did. Rdr made by rockstar is a clone of their own game and it's cool. Most of these games just lack content, creative direction or replay value and that's why they're dead. Like many others before them.
It was fun waiting for the new releases of COD or GTA and in between the new releases you had great “clones” releases to keep us entertained until then!
Take just cause of this list... just cause is a chaotic open world sandbox shooter with like a million things you can do, gta is imo way more boring than just cause with way less creative freedom. But i personally miss gta "clones"... i want more chaotic Sandbox open world games, like just cause 3... good video tho!
If square enix ever comes out with another just cause they need to give it a 4 player co-op or some type multiplayer because those games were too fun.
That dumbass term is the reason we dont get them anymore
DOOM clones in the 90's: First time? 😎😎😎
@dereenaldoambun9158 yeah and that term died off and we still get FPS, this term is still commonly used and we don't get open world crime sandbox games anymore
And there were Battle Royals clones after PubG, Sandbox clones for Minecraft and Soulslike clones after The Demonsouls games.
It’s happens with EVERY successful new genre type, don’t play like it’s only GTA that did this. As has been stated Doom made FPS and there were “clones” of that in the 90s but it also lead to games like Half Life and Deus Ex that innovated because they wanted to make something new with the genre. The reason as was made clear in the video, no has the money or resources of Rockstar, it’s a hard genre type to get right and make money on, when GTA had spent up to 5 years + in some cases on any one game. They craft each one so that on it’s release nothing is close to them tech and gameplay wise.
Hopefully there is another Just Cause or Mafia game that can do something different, apparently at least one of the previous employees of Rockstar is working on a game in a similar vein. So maybe there’s more on the horizon….
I know man just look at saints row what happened
The way you say genre as Zhan-rah is cracking me up lol. I am enjoying the video though. Thanks!
Jak and Daxter is another clone to add to the list, considering that Naughty Dog literally changed the sequel from a light-hearted platformer to a mature, open-world game with guns to chase after GTA III's success.
Jak II: Renegade on playstation 2 used to give me GTA vibes
I think Just Cause is the odd one out. That’s very much it’s own thing and GTA Online has turned into it.
Real
Feels more like a 'Far Cry' clone to me.
Total Overdose was INSANELY fun game ;)
Saints Row was beautiful ✌🏾
Another thing we need in GTA 6 for the love of Sam and Dan Houser is bringing the gore into the game like how it was in rdr 2 except even more improved and crazy just do something to get Jack Thompson upset again Rockstar.
Except Dan Houser has left, so has Leslie Benzie and Lazlow Jones. They were the trifecta of what made GTA interesting, so not sure how good GTA6 will be. Also with the online mode being the big money maker, Take Two will be pushing for a lot of content to be in that mode.
Hey, very nice Video, thanks for the huge efford.
Can somenone tell me, what the title of the music playing in the background in the part about Just Cause. I like it a lot.
We traded in GTA clones for GTA re-releases
Don't care what anyone says Saints Row 4 is an amazing game. The superpowers were incredible.
3 was amazing
Total Overdose, a game I still like to this day tnx to the theme and fun gameplay
A little surprized not to hear it mentioned but The Yakuza series, for me, is a great Open World series that some think of as "GTA from the East" and is really the only Open World series that has always had the best Hand to Hand combat we have ever seen in sandbox games.
I believe it's more an RPG than it is a GTA clone, because if you consider Yakuza a GTA clone it opens the door up for games like Cyberpunk 2077
I did consider including it, but those games aren’t really full open worlds, and they are in a class of their own.
I swear if i see anyone else call yakuza a gta clone im going to have a stroke.
Its not like gta in any way
@@may292so are most "gta clones"
It's crazy how if an open world game has guns and cars then its considered a gta clone but games like metal of honor and call of duty get a pass, even though they're competitors, overall the concept of gta clone has always been a dumb thing.
Godfather 2 was AWSOME. Taking over NYC, Miami, Havana, and assembling your own family at the same time, was so much fun. It's absolute tragedy it hasn't been remastered.
I Agree💪🏽
Let me save you some time.
Driver: Dead in the water after DSF because the series can't compete with GTA.
Saints Row: Went out with "not a bang, but with a whimper". SR4 was already bad and the Saints Row Reboot was the nail in the coffin. Dead in the water along with Volition itself.
Just Cause: I have the most to say about this one as I am a huge Just Cause fan. The series peaked during JC2 and ESPECIALLY JC3. After JC3's huge success, Avalanche spent most of 2018 hyping up and marketing JC4 only for them to lie to our faces and turn that POS into one of the worst games released in recent memory. JC4 was a straight up downgrade in every single measurable metric from JC3, from the graphics to the gameplay, the story, map, weapons, vehicles, AI, sound effects you name it JC3 did it better.
Unfortunately, you failed to disclose the fact that JC4 did in fact, not have positive reviews (unless they were paid off by the devs looking at you NerdCubed). The series did not just go 'silent' for no reason. It is no coincidence that after a disastrous game like JC4 the series completely died off as all hope was lost especially considering JC3 and JC2 were SO MUCH BETTER.
Some random commenter years ago said it best "Just Cause 4 is not a game, it's a chore."
I sincerely hope a JC5 will be able to usher in a new era for the Just Cause series if it ever comes at all. Unfortunately with GTA 6 around the corner, we will have to wait until at least 2026.
2 seconds ago and 0 view, fallen off 😢
dead channel
@@CaptainGlack it’s so dead these days only ghost 👻
Whoa, I forgot this wasn’t a history of saints row vid.
I didn’t have much as a kid, and missed out on a lot of trending moments that were otherwise monumental.
My first exposure to saints row was definitely a later title. I forget what specifically I saw, but it was just too over the top for me.
I’m glad I could learn more about the IP’s roots and I just might have to give the second and third a play through
I think Cyberpunk 2077 outshined GTA in some ways as it was a full blown rpg like Skyrim but with carjacking, a wanted system in a criminal world. (Something I wish Saints Row did instead of going whacky).
Another way games can stand out is by making a retro crime game, going back to basics, giving us a more arcade experience. One where it's about blowing things up for money and plays like GTA 3 with modern graphics. There was recently a 2D open world crime game called Maniac which was a lovely letter to the original games, where it was all about open world chaos.
Cyberpunk in some ways reminds me of GTA San Andreas (and older GTA games), basically from the amount and variety of stuff to do, the best we get in modern GTA is just these Stranger and Freaks missions, and nope, these "details" don't count, i want content, writing, narrative, not to stare horse balls 24/7 or watch NPCs talking, I hope Cyberpunk stays for a long time, yeah it's not perfect, atleast unlike Ubisoft, 2K or Volition where they are too scared to even make these type of games.
Cyberpunk was an open world game masking as an rpg. Just because weapons have stats and you have (inconsequential) dialogue options doesn't mean its an rpg. And I say this as someone who really enjoyed Cyberpunk.
@@kamemesg2083 it has a ton of endings, different characters builds and even the story prologue changes based on life path (sure it's just dialogue options after that, but it mixes repeat play throughs up) to be fair, the middle section of cyberpunk is pretty much the same story wise (only you can romance different characters). I just wish GTA had dialogue options and built on SA's body building and melee style mechanics. Even the stats such as respect and six appeal added to the immersion. Cyberpunk now let's me buy different homes for V to live in and so on. It's an RPG lite akin to Fallout 4 then. Just wish Saints Row added these things. SR2 had crib customisation on top of car and character editor. I want the Sims meets Skyrim in a modern day crime setting and Cyberpunk is the closest we ever got.
@@NewOrderOfAlexandria Wasn't they added crib / safehouse customization in 1.5? you can buy 4 ownable houses and customize it with 10 different color scheme.
@@kamemesg2083 As the guy above me said, it's closest thing to a modern day game with RPG and sandbox elements, yes i know there's Deus Ex, but it's not open world, modern day city crime RPG is still and quite literally uncharted territory, hell even crime RPG itself is uncharted territory too, most of RPGs only goes as far as "you do anything for the greater good", i want something like robbing king's palace or raiding villages.