Open-world games are becoming increasingly popular, offering expansive landscapes and rich, immersive experiences that can captivate players for months. With such an abundance of options, it’s crucial to choose wisely where to invest your time. This guide highlights some of the best open-world games from recent years, where every hour spent exploring, questing, and unraveling the vast worlds is truly rewarding. From the bustling streets of futuristic cities to the untamed wilderness of fantasy realms, these games provide a level of depth and freedom that makes them standout choices for any gamer looking to lose themselves in another world. For those who enjoy not just vast worlds but also great rewards, checking out the Wanted Win casino no deposit bonus can enhance your gaming sessions by offering you the thrill of casino games without the initial deposit, mirroring the expansive, risk-free exploration found in these top-tier open-world games.
Watch Dogs Legion
The events of the last part of the famous hacker series unfold in London in the not so distant future, where unknown people organize a series of terrorist attacks. Hackers from DedSeс group are blamed for everything, and now they have to recruit new members, prove their innocence and find the real villains.
Watch Dogs: Legion is the most beautiful and content-rich game of the series, in which you can disappear for dozens of hours. Due to the fact that many elements are generated procedurally, each player gets a walkthrough with a unique team and missions. This approach also has a flaw: the story of Legion is unlikely to impress, although there are still enough interesting moments in it.
And the game also recently received a big addition Bloodlines, in which the hero of the first part, Aiden Pearce, comes to London on a new mission. It’s a great way to get back into the action for story content and spend another dozen hours in the city of the future.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
Tired of sultry sunny landscapes, players will love the latest Assassin’s Creed, whose heroes are trying to find their place in IX century England. Rain, fog, gloomy landscapes and autumn forests – a great adventure awaits fans of gloomy setting and brutal warriors.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is a huge game for several dozens of hours, under which it is not a shame to take an extended holiday. Hundreds of quests, fierce battles, developing your own settlement, travelling, raiding enemy villages, searching for artifacts, hunting and other activities await players.
Even after a full playthrough of Valhalla (which is about 60-100 hours), it’s too early to relax. You can go to Ireland and uncover the secrets of an ancient and mysterious cult in the “Wrath of the Druids” add-on or survive the largest battle in the history of Vikings in the “Siege of Paris” add-on. In addition, Ubisoft is developing its game as a service, regularly organizing interesting activities in it.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon
Another Japanese game, but in modern times. This time the series finally left alone ex-Yakuza Kazuma Kiryu, to whom the previous seven games were dedicated. The developers introduced a new hero, Ichiban Kasugi, and the genre changed from action to RPG with turn-based combat.
The world of Yakuza is not as large as, for example, England in Valhalla, but it is worked out with great attention to detail. Shops, streets and courtyards can be looked at for a long time, and many buildings can be entered and have a good time. In addition to the main campaign and crazy side quests, there’s plenty to do: karaoke, arcade games, a manager simulator, and even funny visits to the cinema where you have to fight sleep.
Like a Dragon is a great way to visit an exotic country, enjoy a great story, meet crazy bandits and assemble an equally zany team. It’s also a great entry point for those unfamiliar with the series.
Days Gone
Nowadays it’s hard to surprise with a game about zombie apocalypse, but the authors of Days Gone took a risk and didn’t miss. Although the game was coolly received on PlayStation, after the release on PC it got a second wind: it received rave reviews and requests to release a sequel. But the authors said that Sony rejected the sequel after low ratings from journalists, and the team is already working on another game.
The beauty of Days Gone is in the characters, who instead of saving the world are engaged in personal matters. The protagonist, for example, hopes to find his missing wife in this dead world, and so earnestly maintains his hope that it’s hard not to empathize with him. The story here is generally lengthy and doesn’t want to end for long.
The open world of Days Gone is full of dangers, from brutal bandits to distraught zombies ready to devour a hesitant biker. Giant hordes of hundreds of monsters have even become a trademark of the game. You can see such a battle in trailers several times, but during the passage it’s hard to stay calm and not panic. And, of course, we should not forget that Days Gone is a game about bikers. That’s why the main means of travelling through its world is a motorbike: it needs to be regularly refueled, upgraded, and some missions are impossible to pass without mastery of the iron horse.
Death Stranding
Hideo Kojima’s courier simulator is the most unusual high-budget game of recent years. There are a lot of reasons for that: measured gameplay, offering to carry cargoes all over America, post-apocalyptic world changed beyond recognition, creepy otherworldly creatures, Hollywood stars in the main roles and twisted plot, in which you will have to understand until the end credits.
Death Stranding never ceases to amaze, constantly poses new challenges to the player and does a great job of introducing a new type of game. There is little violence and a lot of peaceful activities, during which, however, it is difficult to get bored.
Death Stranding Director’s Cut will be released in September, which Kojima himself didn’t want to call a “director’s cut”. According to him, it’s more of an expanded edition with a lot of new content that he came up with after the release. So the original game can’t be considered incomplete and can be safely passed if you don’t want to wait until autumn.
Cyberpunk 2077
Most open-world games are based on some large territory – a continent, an island, a country, just a set of locations. Cities in them are made in a simplified form, enough to settle the necessary NPCs and report to the voters about the successfully completed urbanization program. As a result, the capital of an entire continent may have only three streets, a royal castle and a wall with a couple of towers.
In Cyberpunk 2077, the center of the world is a huge futuristic metropolis. Here the game competes with Watch Dogs Legion, but if Ubisoft simply repeated London with some changes, the Poles from CD Projekt invented a huge city from scratch. And even though Cyberpunk 2077 was scolded for a lot of unfulfilled promises (including in terms of simulation of life on city streets), Knight City turned out to be great.
The city is really huge, it’s divided into many neighborhoods, different in both architecture and social environment, it’s full of beautiful places and corners. And when the city streets get stuffy, the scriptwriters make sure to organize a trip to the suburbs – from the story point of view they are not so important, but the opportunity to admire the lights of Knight City is worth a lot.
CD Projekt has done a good job of constructing the narrative as well. Scriptwriters skillfully mix new places with already familiar ones – as a result you get an impression of a world where you really live, where you have your favourite corners. Even the idea of travelling by car, driven by one of the NPCs, here works for the atmosphere – at such moments it’s great to relax after a difficult task and feel the city you live in.
Forza Horizon 4
Racing series have fallen on hard times, but Microsoft manages to keep the bar of quality in its franchises. Each instalment of Forza Horizon sends players to a new country and offers hundreds of races in different formats. There are the usual competitive races, and off-road rallies, and spectacular chases, in which, for example, you have to beat the plane. Events in the fourth unfold on the roads of Great Britain, which turned out to be very and very atmospheric
Forza Horizon 4 also boasts an impressive fleet of more than 750 (!) vehicles. And the main feature of the game is the system of seasons: the time of year in the game changes every real week, and together with it – the rules. For example, in winter it is more difficult to drive on icy roads. So it’s hard to get bored in FH4: the game is constantly transforming and presents new challenges.
In November we expect the release of Forza Horizon 5, the events of which will unfold in Mexico. But if you are not a big fan of this country, you can safely launch Forza Horizon 4, where the racing festival takes place in the UK.