How do you play your sandbox games?

[Hatta]

I mostly just do the missions. I do try to complete side missions first, unless they're annoyingly difficult. Don't do much random exploring these days.

Does Morrowind count as a "sandbox" game? I did every side quest I could find in that game. Went in and cleared out every cave I say. By the time I actually got around to the main quest, I had already found and dropped an item I needed to complete the game. Argh! I had at least 80 hours in that thing. But honestly, I was already sick of it so no big loss. (I think I finished Persona 3 after 120 hours and was still loving it, and it's definitely not an "open ended" game)

Should be a lesson for game designers. Give us plenty of rope, but not enough to hang ourselves with.

[Gamerforlife]

I don't play many sandbox games, but I do play games that are non-linear from time to time. I find that I'm the type of player who must fully explore an area and finish every side mission currently available before I will proceed with the main missions or storyline. This is partly due to me being an obsessive completist, partly due to me wanting the accomplishment of doing and finding everything in the game and partly just due to me believing that if you don't do this stuff, you are missing out on half of the game

I love a little mystery too, so it's fun to explore and see what you find. I stay away from most sandbox games as I'd probably never finish them, too much to do and many of them are full of throwaway, not fun side missions. Brutal Legend had some really fun ones though like the bombing runs where you would drive towards a group of enemies and signal your partner to fire a cannon ball on their location. Those were tons of fun, here's a video

[dunpeal2064]

This article made me think of the copy of Steambot Chronicles that I have sitting on the shelf. Supposed to be a pretty crazy sandbox game, but I have't started it yet.

As for GTA, I usually find too many random things to do to actually progress in the story. Sometimes I will obey the street lights and just drive around town, and then give a few pedestrians a bump with my car, and end up fighting off helicopters. I have enough fun with this that I never feel the need to get further

[jfrost]

I don't like sandbox games. I don't feel a sense of purpose while playing them, and give up on mostly.

I vastly prefer linear games. In sandbox games, story takes a backseat most of the time and I don't feel the urge to go forward. Missions in GTA don't mean anything to me, even the mandatory ones.

[Jrecee]

I wander around aimlessly doing stuff until the limitations of the pre-scripted actions of the people become apparent. Then I lose interest completely and don't play again.

After a few hours of wandering around the missions don't hold any interest for me either. It feels like you're doing the same thing as usual just more restricted.

They need to take AI to the next level and create more intereaction with the environments other than knocking down lightposts. A smaller city with 90% of the buildings having explorable interiors would be one thing they could do. Or make it so if I drive a car onto the train tracks and a train hits it the train derails and comes flying off. More interactions with findable/purchasable items would be good too. What if you could buy a trampoline or a grappling hook or something?

I guess that's getting away from the grand theft auto theme but I think the template is getting kind of old.

[RBT]

I like to get the main missions out of the way first then spend hours exploring.

[BoringSupreez]

I mainly stick to the missions, but sometimes, when I'm kind of tired of that, I'll get in a helicopter and use the winch to pick up cars really high, and then drop them on people. (I'm talking about Mercenaries here, not GTA.) But I don't really like to explore much. It's just a fake world

[Pabstblueribbon]

I never get very far into the stories on these games. In GTA, I spend a lot of time driving, trying to get my vehicle to go places its not supposed to go. I'd spend hours trying to get a car onto the raised monorail track in GTA III. I also always liked entering the cheats to make everyone attack each other and have weapons and then start mowing people down. I dont really play that many sandbox games, but when I do I usually just do all the pointless shit and I know i've never beaten any of these kinds of games.

[Ack]

I've beaten a handful of sandbox games, and I know how I like to play them. I wander and explore. To me it's not just about completing missions, it's about seeing how the designers put the world together. Does the architecture interest me? How can I get around easier? What buildings or natural caverns interest me? What's over the next mountain or skyscraper? What's the highest point I can get to? From there, I like to play around with what the world gives me. I maxed out the bicycle stat before I ever started the first real mission in GTA: San Andreas. And after I found it, I spent a good while just tooling around on the riding lawnmower. In Morrowind I jumped until my Acrobatics was at maxed and then spent a lot of time leaping over the rooftops of the various cities.

Now Minecraft is a little different, as it's not about what the devs create, it's about what you create. So I walled myself in and built a castle...or at least I was working on it until I got tired. I also saw what other folks had done in the game and decided I didn't want to sink that much time in to it.

[Xeogred]

I like doing both, messing around and following the story missions closely together. I do get kind of OCD about these games sometimes though and just love collecting all the collectibles I can, or completing every level of some side mission, etc. Saints Row 2 was a great one in that regard, it had so much stuff to it it was just amazing. I remember when I first got to the mall in the game I probably spent hours in it just messing around and doing everything possible.

For those who like to pay attention to the detail put into these worlds, did you guys ever do the phone/car missions in GTA4? I did this after completing the game and it was incredible because you just had these tiny hints about the locations and had to rely on street names via signs, etc. It kind of blew my mind, even after finishing the game, when I did these missions I felt like I saw a lot of attention to detail I never noticed before and it really put me in that world. I'd say the original Crackdown was kind of similar at times too when I was collecting all the orbs, you spend so much time looking at every little detail and corner of the city you start to see a lot of things you wouldn't see otherwise.

As for messing around, something my friends and I did a lot in GTA4 was drive around in the first person view. We'd just wreck havoc running people over and see how long we could survive against the cops, that or we'd go with the crazy movie-like camera angles which made it hilariously challenging to control. It was always hilarious driving down the sides of streets in the first person view running over everything and everyone, there was one time my friend was playing and ran under an umbrella or something and then hit this guy out of nowhere so hard it was like he flew over the car. It's still a hilarious memory we talk about years later and one.... well, you just had to be there. Haha. Lots of moments like that in messing around with these games.

I'm personally a huge fan of the genre, the GTA style is one of the best things to come out of this and the last gen for me. I'm so stoked for Saints Row 3 it's insane. On that note I see a ton of people all talking about GTA here, but if you guys haven't played Saints Row 2 you're really missing out. I can even say I wasn't a huge fan of the first game, with some really annoying missions, horrible driving/shooting controls, and a very slow start... but Saints Row 2 fixed everything, plus more. There was so much to do it was insane.