Sandbox games are losing their appeal

[Grant]

Aside from Infamous, and the upcoming infamous 2, 3rd-person sandbox games are just starting to wear on my nerves. They are formulaic and rely heavily on "living the life" of the main character. I haven't played much of Mafia 2 yet, but it seems to have just taken the formula of Mafia 1, and added new missions.

Step 1, learn the controls.
Step 2, shoot some guns.
Step 3, learn to travel.
Step 4, get a place to live
Step 5, kill everyone in a bunch of missions
Step 6, game over.

It's a dying genre. It's used up.

[Grant]

I forgot to add:

Even Red Dead Redemption, arguably one of the best sandbox games ever made, was still lackluster for me.

What was fun:
Hunting. Killing all of Mother Earth's creatures in a realistic and satisfying fashion. Then collecting their pelts.

What wasn't fun:
The missions. They just got in the way of my getting new weapons to shoot new animals.

The truly random parts of the game were fun for me. It was the more formulaic parts (nod to my last post) or the more genre-adhering elements of the game that weren't very engaging.

I.E. new sandbox games need new elements/game mechanics every time to make them interesting. Like hunting for example. Or finding treasure.

Listening to a generic set-up video just so you can shoot some more baddies, is not that fun.

[Danny]

I agree.  The idea of open world is very appealing to me but the overall implementation has been too formulaic.  Game studios need to come up with new ways of using and exploring the open world format that doesn't include generic, lame-ass missions.

[Steven]

If you ask me, sandbox games never had much appeal to begin with. The problem is a basic misunderstanding of their appeal on the part of designers. Take Infamous for example, this game worked because they took the focus away from the novelty of their created world and focused it exclusively on the thrill of living out the fantasy of being a superhero within said world. 

Conversely, games like GTA/Red Dead and others, tend to put too much focus on the world themselves and the players place within it.
In other words, GTA, a game predicated (for the most part) on its "realness" follows this philosophy to the letter requiring players to physically move from one location to the other via real means i.e. a car. The problem is, video games are meant to be escapist entertainment (again, for the most part) -- one could even say it's their raison d'etre.

This insistence on "realistic" travel has never succeeded in being in any way fun. It's really just a stopgap between each games' meat and potatos (nine times out of ten, gun fights). Indeed, designers seem to recognize this and "fix" the problem by shoehorning in character dialogue/story progression into these segments, which has its place, to be sure, but honestly, who wants to hear disembodied voices emanating from behind  a moving car/horse?

I think that this problem stems in large part from the awkward "baby steps" that each revolution in game design capabilities presents. Until this generation, the idea of a fully open and persistent world was just a dream -- technologically, it couldn't be done. Now that it's possible, everyone is jumping on the bandwagon as it were -- and with no precedent, many attempts just fail. I think it'll be at least 3 more years before we begin seeing developers consistently get the hang of it. Three years before we see them stop trying to "wow" people with the assets they've created and start focusing on what the player can do.

Maybe then I'll start getting their appeal.

[Grant]

Its safe to say as well, that in 3 years time the next generation of SKU's will be announced. XBOX may very well already have released their's. I do think that this generations game play has, in many ways, just been a revamping of the PS2 generation for the most part. Though this could be said about every new generation, I feel that specifically from PS2 to PS3, only graphics were focused upon, and gameplay remained pretty uniform.

Case in point--God of War III. Really awesome, but very similar to its previous installments. However, Metal Gear Solid 1 to MGS 2 was a huge leap in mechanics, gameplay, and level design.

Hopefully, the new sand box games will have these facets in mind rather than simply ramping up the graphics.

[David]

Its safe to say as well, that in 3 years time the next generation of SKU's will be announced. XBOX may very well already have released their's. I do think that this generations game play has, in many ways, just been a revamping of the PS2 generation for the most part. Though this could be said about every new generation, I feel that specifically from PS2 to PS3, only graphics were focused upon, and gameplay remained pretty uniform.

Case in point--God of War III. Really awesome, but very similar to its previous installments. However, Metal Gear Solid 1 to MGS 2 was a huge leap in mechanics, gameplay, and level design.

Hopefully, the new sand box games will have these facets in mind rather than simply ramping up the graphics.

I couldn't disagree with this more. While mechanically there hasn't been a huge revolution, the coming of age of online play/content/communication has drastically changed the behavior in games.

To contradict the previous sentence, the biggest shift in game mechanics has been the introduction of large choice branches. Sure they are usually 'be a saint or a member of the gestapo', hit-you-over-the-head choices, but the world does react and behave in ways not possible prior to this generation. The obvious example of this being Mass Effect and its subsequent sequels. I believe the grey area will work its way into the mix as developers start getting used to the design.

And don't forget about achievements...

For me the problem of sandbox games is the developer's vanity. Whenever playing a sandbox game I get the feeling that the developer wants to make sure I see every bit of the city they created and so, like Steven said, I cannot take shortcuts or warps. Furthermore, I must trek to every corner for random points in missions because Bob the designer made this really cool statue over on 923rd St.

[Steven]

Furthermore, I must trek to every corner for random points in missions because Bob the designer made this really cool statue over on 923rd St.

Worst offender of this: Assassin's Creed. Filling the world with little meaningless flags for the player to find is the WORST kind of game design. Infamous is guilty of this as well. It is literally just filler which at most gives the player a cheevo or trophy -- yippee. 

[David]

'Orb Collecting' is something that needs to die a terrible death. It's right up there with QTEs -- although it may have the edge since QTEs can, on very rare occasions, be fun.