Best Open-World/Sandbox Driving game?

[MasterChef]

I heard Saints Row 2 was ok, but I have yet to play it. I bought it during the Steam sale back in December.

[Bronze Fox]

Crazy Taxi?

[Tungsten]

Arma 2...though...it's pretty intense and requires a pretty strong computer. Controls are also tough to get used to.

There's also a demo for it on steam.

[BigBiker05]

While Arma 2 isn't the genre I was looking for, it looks like an amazing game that'll soothe my Battlefield 2 hunger that didn't get fully filled off of bad company 2.

[Tungsten]

Oh yeah, another warning about Arma 2, the voice acting is atrocious. Like...it hurts...

There are also some mods which can help improve performance, like a grass reducer and an FPS monitoring thing, which adjusts the view distance automatically depending on FPS.

[Bakuryu]

Morrowwind...you can get it cheap and it dwarfs oblivion in size and scope. Many...many...factions and expansions. I'd also recommend (and this is going old school) Arcanum, Planescape Torment, and Chrono Trigger. I've heard good things about Fuel and NFS: World (which happens to be free).

[MateoTheBold!]

Just Cause 2 is a nice open world, driving game. Beyond simple cars, you have motorcycles, boats, planes, helicopters. Additionally, the protagonist wears a deployable parachute/grappling hook so you are able to sort of base jump and parasail around by grappling and deploying the parachute onto buildings, passing cars, etc. Driving however is not the main focus of the game; the grappling hook/parachute are.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZVPqruhfJA

http://www.1up.com/reviews/2-review

It doesn't really have any classic character RPG elements, but you do earn points by causing destruction around the island that you use to unlock new missions, weapons and vehicles to use. Also, there are some collectibles that you use to upgrade vehicle and weapon stats.

The story is pretty weak and the missions are repetitive at times. For me those can ruin a game, but I enjoyed the game play enough where those faults didn't really bother me. Case in point, after beating the game, I still spent some time just messing around in the world. That's a good sign that the underlying game mechanics are fun.

It has a demo on steam; I never played the demo before buying the game, so I don't know what's in it, but maybe you can try downloading it?

[BigBiker05]

Ignoring morrowwind for previous reasons...

Just Cause 2 is an interesting game. I played it for awhile and it has some great elements I liked but then... it had the horrible ported controls. Sure I can play the entire game with my 360 controller but I hate using controllers in shooters. Playing that game with a mouse and keyboard only (like many ported games) can get a bit funky.

[Gruelsicle]

Burnout Paradise has a wide open world, lots of free driving to do. And crashes. Many, many glorious crashes.

[benwilliams]

It is a nice game. You have to play it immediately. Thanks for sharing.


driving games