Do you like 'sandbox' gameplay?

[Hurricane V1]

I heard that term in some magazine, used for describing action/adventure games that have a wide open world to explore when you're not actually advancing the game's plot.

This type of gameplay is best known coming from GTA III, though I don't think it deserves all the credit. By that I mean, it's probably solely responsible for all these new 'sandbox' games coming out (not suprisingly, a lot them are crime games) but the type of gameplay was slowly being developed before.

Now, to tell the truth, GTA: San Andreas is the only GTA I can really stand to play. It's the fun of real estate, improved list of available stunts and the RPG-like influence of improving all of CJ's attributes. But the controls and the need to drive for so many minutes to get places drives me crazy. Now I remember playing Mario 64, I think it deserves some credit. It wasn't as linear as a lot of games today, and there was a little bit of fun to be had if you gave up on chasing stars. You could let Mario fall asleep and mutter, try to wall kick to the top of the castle before you got all 120 stars, or just fly/surf around to odd places with the caps and shells. Then there was Body Harvest. I remember how slow and crappy it was, but I still enjoyed it because I could hop into any vehicle I wanted and drive.

From reading magazines, I see a whole bunch of 'sandbox' games coming. We already have Spiderman 2, which while fun, the missions got repeative, Driv3r, which I hear sucked but sounded really good on paper, and the Jak sequels, which I never played and can't comment. There's a bunch of crime games coming, like I think the one is called Narc. What I like about this game is that you can either be a clean cop and bust a lot of dealers, or use performance enhancing drugs while dealing them. It might be like choosing light or dark side in those Star Wars games; it's fun to have that choice. I heard that in Driv3r, which I only played two early missions, you supposedly could have several ways of going about completing a mission, like either swimming across a river to get to a hideout or lowering a bridge after killing some bad guys in order to drive a vehicle across. Then there's this one gangwar game, can't remember the name, where you supposedly can duke it out online with other players. Sounds good to me. Then there's this one, again can't remember the name, where you're a graffitti artist and have to mark as much territory as possible in your city. The game sounds like it will let you be pretty expressive with what you can paint on the walls. Then there's that game Kill All Humans. The main character is a stranded alien. If the game holds up, there will be all kinds of fun you can have on the side, beyond killing humans. You can supposedly hypnotise them into doing crazy crap and can mutate animals and such, I think.

But then I got to thinking, how important is having a lot of choice and fun on the side in a game? Prince of Persia was considered the best game of 2003 by one game magazine and it was given great reveiws. It couldn't be more linear, and while the surrounding areas are beautiful to look at, you don't get to explore them up close. Tomb Raider was similar, linear and while you could explore a little bit, there was nothing to really do. And while both games gave you multiple ways to kills enemies, you usually end up resorting to the same tatics.

Which brings me to a game I'd like to see. How about one where your character is an acrobatic explorer type who has to search around a really old, barely inhabited town on top of a ancient city. You could rob tombs for profit or stop profiters from raiding tombs themselves, and there would always be a couple different paths towards your goal in each mission. You could try to beat an antagonist to a treasure by either running and jumping across building tops and trees or navigating a sewer system maze towards the treasure. Or in another situation you could try to take down an armor clad, musclebound monster with just a knife or lure him under crumbling building and try to make it collapse on him. There would be a barter system where you could haggle with natives using money you earned or smaller treasures you found. And with your athletic abilities, any lone ledge within sight could be reached, hopefully with some reward. Maybe you could take pictures too, that seems to be a big part of games now.

As you can see, I wish I made games. Anyway, back to the questions: are you pleased with the GTA influence, are you looking forward to any of these upcoming games, and how do you like your gameplay?

[William C. Maune]

Would Myst be the granddaddy of modern "sandbox" games?

[Mynd Hed]

Personally, I'd give that title to Simcity and all the other Sim games that followed it-- they're the ultimate sandbox games. No goals, no win conditions, just playing around within the rules of a complex system.

You could make a pretty good case for the original Legend of Zelda playing a big part in the evolution of sandbox games as well-- just a giant world map with a bunch of dungeons you could discover in any order. And Metroid brought a lot of that same mentality to side scrollers.

Personally, I think sandbox games certainly have their place when done well. Even essentially linear games like Fable can get a lot of mileage out of having sandbox elements to play around in between missions and after completing the story.

In fact, just lately I've been playing through Final Fantasy X for the first time (I only just got a PS2 so I'm catching up on a lot of relatively old stuff) and I've been frustrated by the fact that it's the first mainline FF title I can think of without a real world map. It's linear to a fault-- there's very little real exploration. Rather, you spend the majority of the game walking through hallways. Some of the hallways look like temples, others like forests, others like mountains, others like plains, others like towns, but they all consist of corridors about eight or ten feet wide, with a red arrow on your minimap telling you which direction to walk. Compared to the latter half of FF6, in which you could tackle the dungeons in any order you wanted or skip them altogether if you wanted to get ambitious, it gets a little boring. (Fortunately the battle system is well-constructed enough to keep me interested.)

But of course purely linear games have their place, too. Many of the classic franchises-- Mario, Sonic, etc.-- got their start with nearly 100% linearity, numbered levels played in order. Nothing wrong with that, as long as you do it well.

[SSJPabs]

Well what do you want from games?


Do you want the freedom to make your story, but know whats going to happen?

OR

Do you want a well-done story you don't know, told to you?

I've always believed that is the main division and I think it's rather obvious were I stand on this issue.

[Eidan]

Or do you play a game for the gameplay?

Honestly, anyone who considers themselves more a lover of actual gameplay would probably opt for the ability to make their own fun.