- [Falcon] There are a
ton of open world games and sometimes a lot of
them can blur together. So when one does something different, it's obvious. Hi folks, it's Falcon, and today on Gameranx, 10 Open World Games with Unique Mechanics. Starting off with number 10, it's "Sunset Overdrive". This often forgotten about missing link between the "Ratchet and Clank" series and "Marvel Spider-Man" is where Insomniac first dipped their toes into open world gaming and it resulted in one of the most fun traversal systems in any open world game, period. What makes this game so unique is how traversal mechanics are central to the experience. In most games, movement abilities are
just for getting around, but in this game, movement and combat are intertwined. You just can't have one without the other. I mean, Spider-Man's web slinging is a unique mechanic and another great example of traversal, but we kind of all know Spider-Man and what Spider-Man does. And "Sunset overdrive" is just like when you wanna talk unique, this is Insomniac's unique traversal game. And on paper it doesn't
really sound unique. You can grind on rails, phone lines, bounce on cars, run on walls, glide on water, there's a lot of moving around and it's all fun to do. In contrast, running around on foot is intentionally slow and leaves you really vulnerable to most enemy attacks. So the game encourages you to be moving with the traversal mechanics at all times. And that's especially true
with the combo system, which makes your attacks more powerful the longer you keep a combo string going. Staying on the ground too long makes the combo end, and the best way to fight in the game is to grind and bounce all over the place while fighting enemies, and that's where it's really just something different. It's the layers of stuff
that they put together that just makes "Sunset Overdrive" really have a unique identity. Like it's humor is more a matter of taste, but it's rock solid mechanics are what really make it an overlooked gem. - [Sam] Those were like the cleanest sewers ever. Not that I'm a sewer expert, but I expected a lot more solid waste. I didn't see a single chunk of- - [Falcon] At number 9 is the original "Dying Light", which was innovative
for quite a few things. It's first person parkour elevated how moving around an open
environment could feel, and the way the game combined different movement with combat, it was a lot of fun. But the thing that
really makes it stand out is the day and night mechanics. In most open world games, the distinction between day and night's pretty thin. Night's basically just day, but everything's uglier and harder to see. Night in most open world games is an annoyance more than anything else. But in "Dying Light" it
actually means something. For one, it actually feels like night. When it gets dark it actually gets really dark in the game, and that makes just the basic act of getting around a lot tougher. Zombies get a lot more
aggressive at night too, but the main thing to worry about are these super zombies
known as "volatiles", hyper aggressive monsters, and for most of the game you want to avoid at all cost. There are rewards for
exploring at night though, you get bonus experience for the amount of time you spend outside a safe zone when it's dark, and any enemies you kill earns double combat experience. There's also night exclusive airdrops that aren't worth a lot on top of unique zombies called "bolters" that you can sneak up on and kill for valuable tissue. Going out at night is a calculated risk, it's a tense experience, it can be nerve-wracking, but the skinnier teeth escapes are some of the most satisfying moments in the whole game. Easily the worst thing
about "Dying Light 2" is how they neutered the night and took out everything that made the night
portion of the first game so intense and fun, and hopefully if the series continues, that's something they'll revert on. At number 8 is "Grand Theft Auto 5". Kind of hard not to talk about this one. It's been out for about a decade and it's easy to forget just how innovative this game was when it came out in 2013. That trailer that saw you switching between multiple characters during the same mission was seriously mind blowing, and I can't help but be even a little as impressed now every time I come back to this game. They switch characters, the camera zooms out and does that whole thing 'cause your characters are in different places in the world and comes back on the
next character mid-action, no loading screens, it's just cool as hell. It doesn't redefine the
experience or anything. You're still basically playing a "Grand Theft Auto" game in the end, but that's forgivable because, A, it's "Grand Theft Auto" and not one of the million clones, and B, it's an incredibly cool effect that they put a lot of extra work into. Like making it so Michael, Franklin, and Trevor all have unique things they're doing when you select them, makes it seem like these
characters have lives and that just brings you into everything much more in my opinion. Characters aren't just
like waiting around. You find them in the game world and they're reacting if they're seeing something or doing something. That could have easily been left out of the game, it would've been just fine. But little details like that just make the world much more immersive and alive. Switching characters mid-mission also a great edition that allows for some
really fantastic heists. And even though I don't know I'd say they managed to use it
to its full potential, hint, hint, Rockstar, "Grand Theft Auto 6", you can play the same mission three times and see things completely differently from each character's perspective. It's also just really good for the pace of certain missions and it makes 'em way more interesting. Like just having multiple
characters to play as in an open world game was like innovative itself at the time, but the brilliant way that Rockstar implemented it made it really unique. Like a couple "Watchdog"
sequels down the line, they tried multiple characters there too but it just didn't have the same impact and none of those
characters felt truly alive the way these three did. And number 7 is "Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor." You can't have a list like this without bringing up the "Middle Earth: Shadow of-" blank games and their famous nemesis system, 'cause it's just such
an interesting system that a lot of other games
have attempted to copy, like, I'm looking at you "Assassin's Creed: Odyssey" specifically, but there's nothing
quite like it out there. That might be partially because WB literally patented the system. So I think other devs are a little afraid of using it. But ignoring that, it's a really cool system that adds a lot to the game. The whole thing lives and breathes in this menu called "Sauron's Army." You get a organization chart of the orc hierarchy in a region. All of them are randomly generated, they have their own traits, strengths, weaknesses, et cetera. And to learn how to defeat the tougher orc bosses, you have to interrogate lower level orcs. And when you fight these tougher guys, sometimes they'll come back for revenge with new traits that are based off how you killed them. And that's really what
makes this system so fun. It manages to tell a story through these randomly generated gameplay mechanics, orcs don't just remember
if you killed them, they also remember when they killed you or if you ran away or some other permutation of events. And things only get more elaborate when you find you're
able to mind control orcs in the second half of the game. - Forfeit your mind! - [Falcon] The sequel, "Shadow of War", managed to build on the system in almost every way. And it really is a sight
to behold in my opinion. But the original game was where the innovation came from. They're both solid games as long as you're not somewhat obsessed with Tolkien lore, because I mean, if you want accuracy
to the source material, these games will probably
make your head explode. But as open world action games with a unique mechanic, they are solid. And number 6 is "Watchdogs: Legion." I actually mentioned this in the "Grand Theft Auto" point. Because it's not actually the same thing as "Grand Theft Auto", and the underlying idea is pretty unique. The execution leaves a
little bit to be desired, but here, the play as anyone mechanic is what I'm talking about. And it was kind of a big swing for Ubisoft who is usually pretty risk-averse. Rather than having a fixed protagonist like the previous two games, and you know in pretty much every other open world game without a character creator, in "Legion" there's no single protagonist, instead, the game starts you off with a random, and I mean randomly generated character. And from there it's team building that is on the agenda. In the previous "Watchdogs" games scanning the NPCs was mostly just for fun, but in this game it gave you their stats, their web of connections and their unique abilities. Literally anyone you
could see on the street could be recruited through a randomly generated mission and they'd become a playable character, even seemingly pointless ones like little old ladies or guys pretending to be statues. You can understand why I
would call that unique, and there's potential for
something incredible there. But in practice, it's kind of just playing the game like any other open world game except for you swap
characters once in a while because instead of having a guy with all the abilities
like Watchdogs 1 and 2, every character has a few abilities and only those abilities. They can all talk, but the nature of the system means that whoever you're playing as isn't really an active
character in the story like most open world games, or "Grand Theft Auto 5" where you had three protagonists and switching between them had such a realistic feel to it even though there's no actual realistic standard for inhabiting a different person's body for a while. Mostly you're just like taking orders and it's a less interesting
narrative for it. So this is an example of a unique system that turned out to be more than a hop skip and a jump away from perfect, let's say. Now if this game did get a sequel and they really put the time into it, genuinely it could be a fairly revolutionary system. But it needed more time in the oven. And number 5 is the "State of Decay" series, combining open world gameplay, survival mechanics, and a base building strategy layer. There's nothing quite like these games. Like, yeah, there's plenty of open world zombie games, like plenty of open world survival games with zombies, but those are always about keeping a single character alive, and "State of Decay" is more about building a community. It kind of feels like zombie "XCOM" in an open world. You got a base with
rooms that can be built that give your community various benefits. Like you got multiple characters with different skills, they get tired and you have to swap out between them. They can die permanently too if you're not careful. There's morale to worry about. There's food, basic supplies, and even though you're only directly controlling one character, it just feels like something different. The second game takes all those ideas introduced in the first game, but gives you a bigger
map with more characters and other survivor groups to contend with. And that makes the strategic options much more expanded. In comparison to other open world games, the actual combat and movement can feel a little stiff and unrefined, but it's such an interesting series that the shortcomings are actually pretty easy to overlook. For being relatively small games, they're ambitious as hell, and they mostly deliver
on the ambitions too. At number 4 is "Gravity Rush." There's plenty of open
world superhero games with movement powers, traversal powers, I mentioned "Spider-Man" back in the "Sunset Overdrive" point. But "Gravity Rush" manages to just stand out on the strength of its central mechanic. Instead of being able to fly or swing on webs or jump really far or whatever, the main character of "Gravity Rush" can control gravity. At any point you can just press a button to hover in place and then with another press you'll re-orient gravity to whatever direction you're facing. So instead of flying, the game's about falling with style, like the Buzz Lightyear thing. It's set on this bizarre city around a gigantic pillar in the middle of an abyss. The game gives you a world perfect for the unique powers you get. You're not just fighting
enemies on ground, you're flying through the air, getting into combat on the side of buildings and exploring the world in a disorienting but weirdly intuitive way. Pretty much everything about this game feels unique even now. It feels like a game made
on a different planet. It's incredibly polished, rarely sticks to open world conventions. The sequel doubles down on the first game's eccentricities which might be a positive or a negative depending on your tolerance for weirdness and frustrating mission objectives. But the mechanical improvements are great. Like, this ability where
you can tilt gravity and turn the entire
world into a big slide. It's really a unique and awesome game. At number 3 is "Driver: San Francisco". Before working on the
first "Watchdogs" game, the devs at Ubisoft
Reflections decided to take the mostly dead "Driver" franchise and radically transform
it into something unique. I really can't think of
a major Ubisoft release that's quite as weird or takes as many risks as this game. It's just really unique how bizarre the whole thing gets. Set in an open world San Francisco, obviously, the start of your game
has your main guy, Tanner, get in a car accident, and almost the entire rest of the game is a coma dream. Like seriously, it's a dream. And that's basically to explain the game's main mechanic, which is shift. So with shift you can instantly zoom out of a car and possess another car. There's almost no limits to how you can use this power either. And it would make literally zero sense if it weren't a dream. You can also just use
and abuse it on missions. So crash your car in a chase, like possess another car and quickly catch up. If you're in a race, you can possess cross traffic and ram headfirst in your rivals and eliminate them, or position buses to block roads. The whole thing's seamless, really intuitive and really fun. The game's story of course is bizarre but surprisingly engaging. The whole shift mechanic is one of the most unique abilities in an open world game, and while "Watchdogs" kind of hands powers like this, the way it's implemented
here is a lot better. (rock music) At number 2 is "Death Stranding", coming from the mad mind of Hideo Kojima. "Death Stranding" has so little in common with your standard open world game, it almost feels like it kind of belongs in a different genre, like perhaps maybe a "strand" game. It's the first of its kind! It's an open world game. It's just a really weird one. Like it's not really a survival game. And you could kind of say it's only kind of an open world game. But obviously it's an open world game. That doesn't mean everything about it isn't unique. It is. From the traversal systems to all the weird stuff you can do in the safe house. But believe it or not, what I want to focus on here is a social strand system. It's this game's version of asynchronous multiplayer, but how it's implemented is just nothing like anything else. And it's most basic. You can accumulate likes from NPCs and other players, and the more likes you get, the more you'll see items and structures from other players appear
in your environment which makes getting
around the world easier. Building stuff is expensive, but you don't have to
do it all by yourself. If you accumulate likes from building things that appear in other players' worlds, you'll start to see things built by other players you've formed a connection with by liking their things. It's mysterious and it's not really fully understood, but it encourages players to help each other out even if you don't
physically see other people. With all that said, it's really weird. That's the thing. "Death Stranding" really is its own thing. It's got a really bizarre story and somehow more bizarre mechanics. (suspenseful tones) And finally at number 1 is the "Outer Wilds." Most of the time games with unique or untested mechanics can feel half baked or undercooked. Making games that work is tough enough, but trying to make something that's both fun and novel can be almost impossible. The "Outer Wilds" is one of those games that manages to hit players with a unique mechanic and explore it in every possible way and have it work. The basic premise is simple but ingenious. The Outer Wilds, the solar system, is about to end. In 22 minutes the sun goes supernova and destroys everything, and that'd be a pretty short game if things ended there, so time always resets back to the start of the day anytime you die. It's up to you to explore the small planets in the solar system and possibly find a way to survive the inevitable
end of everything. And if that sounds a little similar to "Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask", I think it's worth mentioning that game as well as separating it from this one because the time limit is real time. That 22 minutes is 22 minutes. It's not 72 hours
compressed into 54 minutes like "Majora's Mask", it's 22 minutes. Still props to "Majora's Mask" for trying out something
similar much earlier. But what really separates "Outer Wilds" is that it's such a deep exploration of this mechanic. There's no progression gates in this game. You don't have to do anything specific to go anywhere. You just have to learn how the world works and apply that knowledge in various ways. It's a great system and the space flight and physics are also an incredible system. Another game you could mention in conjunction with this is "Death Loop", but that's not even a true time loop. Times of the day kind of function as levels in that game. And again, "Major's Mask" and "Death Loop" are both worth mentioning, and there's millions of games with time loops in them, but there's nothing quite
like the "Outer Wilds". Couple of bonus games for you. First, "Ghost of Tsushima". I just want to quickly give this game a shout out for the guiding wind mechanic. Instead of slapping a
big ugly quest marker or checkpoint in the map like a lot of open world games, "Ghost" uses the freaking wind. It is the most unobtrusive and even weirdly natural
feeling waypoint system that's much more immersive than a standard one in an open world game. It's a simple, really creative solution to a common open world game problem that also fits in with
the world it exists in way better than if you randomly did this in "Saints Row" or something. It'd also be weird not to mention "Legend of Zelda: Breath
of the Wild" here. It's so innovative in
terms of open world games. There's tons of little things, but most noteworthy is the stamina and climbing system minus the rain part. Letting you climb anything in the world is really cool, and there's a risk and reward to getting around in "Breath of the Wild" that there just isn't in
most open world games. Or when other games attempt it, it's not quite balanced in the way that this game is. And finally, we gotta mention "Red Faction: Guerrilla", 'cause, duh. We mentioned this game too much to include it in the main list. Like, this game clearly
holds a special place in all of our hearts here at Gameranx and there's not much left to say. The destruction mechanics in this game turn what would otherwise be a pretty standard open world shooter into this all-time classic, where the mechanic builds into the world and the story and everything in such a way that
between the world itself and the mechanic, there's nothing else like this game. The sequel ditched the open world and it was all the worst because of it, and nobody else has
really done this since. I don't understand why. Like it's 2023, it's been enough time for somebody else to do this and maybe even do it better. The current owners of the
"Red Faction" franchise, Deep Silver, man, oh man, guys, if you're hearing this, make us a new "Red Faction: Guerrilla". If you guys could basically make "Red Dead Redemption 2" for "Red Faction: Guerrilla", that'd be nice. And that's all for today. Leave us a comment, let us know what you think. If you like this video, click like, if you're not subscribed, now is a great time to do so. We have upload brand new videos every day of the week. Best way to see them first is of course a subscription, so click subscribe. Don't forget to enable notifications. And as always, thank you very much for
watching this video. I'm Falcon, you can follow me on
Twitter at FalconHero. We'll see you next time right here on Gameranx.
