Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra :: Recent games in sandbox genre that are superior to GTA4

[quote name="Lizard_King"]For a variety of reasons, but they all have in common a superior checkpoint/save structure than GTA4 except for M2, which had to rely on other bonuses to tide it over. Godfather (1 only) Scarface Saint's Row 2 Just Cause Mercenaries 2 "Other" Sandbox Assassin's Creed Crackdown I have not played San Andreas, although I'm sure it can't be worse, and Liberty City Stories doesn't count and was terrible to boot. Maybe I just haven't gotten to the mission where Infamous makes your target artificially invulnerable for the first part of the chase, or the one where the cutscene has you do something incredibly stupid that defeats the point of having games based around options, or the one where the makers and their stupid fans crow about how their thin 24-meets-the-Sopranos plot redefines gaming. Or for the one that got me to cast GTA4 aside once and for all, where they'll teleport in Phil Bell, make me drive to two different locations that are far away, and then I get insta-mission failure because when the dumbest infiltration plot in the universe fails, the correct response is for my AI partner to run into a warehouse ambush at full tilt. Yes, it is entirely possible that Infamous will premise the bulk of its missions around its greatest weakness or ideas that are actually inimical to the whole purpose of the genre, and do so without checkpoints. But I doubt it, based on what I've seen so far. So I'm reserving judgment until I'm through with one of the alignment plots, but my prediction for now is that Infamous will have plenty of light broken things including a hint of objection 2 by teleporting you to where the game needs you to be in mid-mission cutscenes but that the movement, power upgrading, and ass-kicking will keep me coming back. But hey, you play like one video game a year, I'll defer to your expert opinion on this. [/quote]