December 2016 – tinkerXperience

Open-World Games Could Be Fun, If…

I have owned an Xbox 360 for a few years now but haven’t ever played an open-world game on it. Now if you aren’t familiar, an open-world game allows the player (or players) to explore at will a large mapped out area within the game. Missions and Challenges are usually spread throughout the map area for the player to discover. It’s true, open world games look fun to me from a limited time playing GTA 4 with a police mod called LCPDFR but most of my knowledge about open-world games come from others—other people playing them on YouTube. Now you may be wondering, why haven’t actually played much with these type of games if am so interested. I mean really, it’s 2016 and many open-world games have already been released.

I don’t play much with this style of game is because well, I am a person with a higher standard. I am an adult who enjoys third person action games probably in the style of GTA (Grand Theft Auto) 4 and 5 or even Red Dead Redemption but in today’s world it is impossible to find this type of open-world sandbox style game that truly rises to my standard for gaming.

High Standard…Really?

What is my standard you ask? It’s what would make a game decent to play. Such a game would be one that doesn’t surround itself with gratuitous sex, unrelenting cursing and profanity all bathed in extreme violence. However the game I am talking about doesn’t exist despite it being the type of game that should be made.

Now it’s true most hard-core gamers mock people like me who want to remove cussing, sex and extreme violence from a game. They say it’s made that way for adults not kids. Well, I am an adult person who likes games that are fun but doesn’t enjoy hearing cursing and words or lyrics of a song that blaspheme God’s name pumped into my head simply while I drive a car or boat fast, jump into and out of planes (or helicopters) and do other cool stunts. Is this really to hard to ask? Apparently for the gaming industry it just might be.

Graphically Rich

Why not create a game so graphically rich as GTA 5 without profanity at nearly every turn? Why can’t a game company make an exciting stunt filled open world game similar to Just Cause or GTA that involves driving cars, planes, boats and trains as the good guy without sex scenes and only blowing people up?

Modding

This brings me to modding. There are mods for these types of games which do exactly what I have just mentioned such as removing or toning down the excessive violence, profanity, sex and will allow the player to play as a police officer (think LSPDFR). However, these Mods will only work for the computer version of a game and must be added in before you start the game. So my big question is, if a mod can be made to “fix” a game that meets or exceeds my high standard why can’t game companies make a game that already accomplishes this?

High Standard Sales

Grand Theft Auto 5 is a game from a criminal’s perspective and it did very well, sales-wise. And yet I believe a game of similar style could sell even more copies if it was raised to meet my incredibly high standard for what a good quality game could look like. And while I’m at it, where are the graphically rich games that allow a player to take on the role of cop and do things like pulling over speeding vehicles without always ramming them?

So let me ask you? If you like playing games, would you play a console or computer game that gives you the option to do fun stunts, drive cars, boats, planes, and trains within as graphically stunning an open and real world environment as GTA 5 but you could play as good guy?

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