Where have the "GTA clones" gone?

[Music] grand theft or 3 was the first GTA game in a 3D open world that you could explore at your leisure and in doing so it carved out its own unique genre the term GTA clone has been around almost as long as GTA itself there have been and still are a lot of negative connotations to the term but I don't believe that's deserved there have been many GTA star games that have a lot of Merit even to this day there are a lot of stinkers obviously but having spent a vast majority of my life playing video games in this very specific genre I know that there have been some really well done polished games out there that have fallen by the wayside only to be surpassed by Grand Theft Auto Studios and Publishers around the world saw what Rockstar was doing with their games and the success of Grand Theft Auto left the door open for similar games to try their hand at the market years ago we'd have got a lot of options for open World sandbox games yet the way the games industry has progressed with the introduction of games like fortnite it's left us with barebones live service titles that promise the world and barely ever deliver and I'm not talking about fortnite there but on the single player side of things Studios and Publishers have been releasing some God awful games with poor optimization and buggy gameplay it wasn't always like this however and today I'm going to be taking a closer look at the Golden Age of open World Games exploring various GTA clones and asking the question where have all the GTA clones gone when GTA 3 first hit shelves it was nothing short of a revolution Liberty City at the time was the most alive and realistic depiction of a city in a video game Liberty was much more than a setting it was a character in its own right the dark and grungy atmosphere delivers an experience that I feel has only been somewhat matched by GTA 4 it created an entire genre of 3D open World sandbox games ever since the initial release on PS2 it has been praised and then praised a little more for its innovative gameplay and at the time vast open world a world that felt alive it was only a matter of time before other Studios wanted piece of the action GTA 3 may have been the first of its specific genre but it wasn't the first game where you could drive around an open map in a fully modeled 3D environment that honor goes to the driver Series driver is a series that has its ups and downs starting in 1999 it actually beat GTA 3 to the punch for a fully 3D open world driving game so we can't exactly call it a GTA clone in fact driver is popular enough that it could well have been considered the GTA of its time selling millions of copies on both PlayStation and PC however its sequel Driver 2 which released a year later in 2000 allowed you for the first time to exit your vehicle and Commander the cars of other people this is the first example of a game that I can remember that is similar to Grand Theft Auto yet all of the missions were done in vehicles so there wasn't much of a reason to go around on foot besides acquiring another car driver 3 should have been the nail in the coffin for the series by All rights it was an incomplete buggy mess one that really should never have seen the light of day do you want to know something though as a dumb kid I played this game all the time I never completed it for obvious reasons those reasons being it was pretty much impossible for me at the time but damn this game looked good for 2004 it had a very unique Vibe and it was ahead of its time in many different ways three giant cities 156 M of Road 35,000 unique buildings and over 70 drivable cars all on PS2 and original Xbox the ambition was there and it's a shame the game had to release in the state that it did the game soundtrack which you are likely hearing now conveyed the tone of the game perfectly things were not going well behind the scenes though the game was extremely far behind in development and Atari had already sunk a lot of money into it so much so that the company was hemorrhaging money this was because the higher ups at Atari were sweating heavily over driers biggest competitor Grand Theft Auto despite the immense success of the previous two games Atari wanted this one to beat much more with GTA san andreas' October 2004 released looming on the horizon Atari wanted to get their game out before though Reflections needed much more time possibly going into 2005 Atari with practically pennies to their name at this point needed to get the game out ASAP they ultimately asked Reflections to wrap up what they were doing and launch the game so dri 3 released on the 21st of June 2004 despite being ahead of its time in many aspects such as Graphics physics and the three incredible city maps the release was marred by its raw and unpolished experience one that couldn't be fixed as the discs had already been printed and there was no game patching at this time driver 3 should have by All rights killed the franchise fortunately driver parallel lines was up next in6 while not being the most Innovative of the games borrowing heavily from Grand Theft Auto in many aspects it was a finished game and it was developed in half the time of three just 2 years being set in both 1978 and 2006 is this game coolest aspect to me it's set in New York City and between the two time periods you can really feel the change and it's awesome the game had a money system a form of wanted level with a unique level for both yourself and your car it even had car customization and I used to just customize as many cars as I could while Express Yourself played over the garage's radio at least in the 70s portion it's a pretty solid game and you can find it on Steam for dirt cheap so I recommend giving it a try there's no controller support though officially so it's key and mouse only though there are probably mods to fix that with a few sight games in between which I will not mention driver San Francisco topped off the series with an entry that went back to its roots removing the ability to get out of your car in favor of the shift mechanic the game takes place in Tanner's mind as he lies in a coma This Is How They explain the ability to shift into the bodies of other drivers and use their cars it was such a unique game and brought driver back in the best way the game is generally a lot lighter than its predecessors and tana is quite quippy as are the rest of the characters San Francisco released in 2011 over a decade later was still no closer to a new driver game personally I don't know where they could have gone from here the shift mechanic was honestly a great addition and provided some really interesting gameplay however if they wanted to use it in another game they probably would have had to put Tanner in another coma which would have been pretty dumb driver was such an interesting series but with the release of GTA 5 in 2013 Reflections didn't really have a chance to make a drive again game that competes with modern Grand Theft Auto the series has been left dormant since 2011 and doesn't show any signs of coming back as far as I'm aware Ubisoft still has the license but they don't seem too interested in the IP for a series that started way ahead of Grand Theft Auto then tried to turn into Grand Theft Auto and then eventually did its own thing with great success I think it's overall a great series with lots of potential it's just a shame we never got to see an Evolution Past San Francisco you can't talk about Grand Theft Auto clones without mentioning saint row the series started as an exclusive for the Xbox 360 and to this day has never been made officially playable on the PC or Playstation platforms the first game was really something you could call a GTA clone at this point the sandbox gang game had already been done pretty well so it wasn't entirely A New Concept at this point but Saint Roy felt like something different still water at this time that's still water with one L by the way was located on a penins it was extremely run down in some areas especially around the southern half of the map around Saints Row and other nearby districts you could customize your character to look however you want the story lines for each gang were separate and you could complete them in any order that you wanted each story line had his own arc and its own rewards for completing them the activities and respect system was actually kind of great in my opinion in order to start missions you had to have enough respect now you break it down and it's all about respect get enough of it they're going to back off and we're going to move right on in the activities were also really damn fun and there was a lot of gameplay there you have activities like the infamous Insurance fora Mayhem is great if you want to cause some chaos there was a demolition derby you could compete in and even escort missions there are eight different levels for each of these activities at any given location in a game with three stories they managed to pack even more gameplay into SRO with everything else that you could do there's a bunch of stores dotted around the city too clothing stores obviously like impressions branded and sloppy seconds as well as Barbers to change your hairstyle and length the car customization was great too and the different clothing hairstyle options complete with the ability to like I said change the length of your hair was pretty much brand new at this point the player comes in all shapes and sizes and he can look pretty much any way you wanted to which made it much easier to have a character you could have as some kind of maniac self-insert Saints Row released in 2006 some months after driver parallel lines and yet those two games feel well toart not to disparage driver PL I like that game a lot but SRO had a lot of passion behind it and it feels like it was the game VII really wanted to make despite being absolutely hilarious in its own right so you're julius's new boy huh you don't look like much then again I don't look like I have an 8in [ __ ] so I guess we're both full of surprises I'm going to scull up that [ __ ] hope you don't mind Hepatitis what the story is still the most grounded ENT so far there are still a bunch of wacky things going on so it's not taking itself too seriously but when it comes down to it there are still some really impactful parts of the story and it's exceptionally well written in my opinion it is a shame that it's locked to the one platform Saints Ro 2 perfected the formula and was a clear evolution of the first game in every way it's still one of my favorite games of all time time and one I play still to this day Saints Road 2 released on Xbox 360 PS3 and PC in 2008 to great success being the first game in the series on the PlayStation and the PC the game had to stand out on its own story-wise and the beginning of the game in prison when the boss wakes up from their coma was a perfect excuse to have a clean sleep for the rest of the game this version of Stillwater had been considerably improved and expanded now located on a lake somewhere in Michigan Still Water had that's again with one L by the way still water had been given a huge makeover from top to bottom even though it was the same location it had changed so significantly that every street felt brand new and for Xbox players it was especially fun revisiting old districts and neighborhoods to see what had changed activities are back with some great additions but unlike the first game there are only six levels per activity my favorite additions here were of course septic Avenger also The Bodyguard one I I think it was just called bodyguard and of course fuzz where you pretend to be a police officer for a TV show there were also diversions such as paramedic and streaking and flashing people that is that's not a joke all of these would earn you respect somehow which you could use to start missions just like the first game but this time around it was different because this time you were the leader of the Saints the customization from the first game was pretty much twice as good in every aspect except for the fact that there were no more barber shops anywhere in the city so if you wanted a a new trim even if you just wanted to change your hair color you would have to go to the plastic surgeon of all places you could even customize what cars the Saints drove and what they wore the three story lines for each gang are back but this time there's also the matter of Alor the huge corporation responsible for the development of Saints Row and the surrounding areas the new gangs have insanely fun and well-written story lines that just like the first game have some really impactful moments this is where Saints Row really came into its own and found its voice deciding to double down on the fun Factor while delivering a story that the series hasn't even come close to in terms of heart and immersion following on from two SRO theii was something brand new in many respects it couldn't reach the heights that SRO 2 had reached steel Port was a huge change from Still Water 1 L and I don't really feel like it was for the better I mean sure they couldn't have set a third game in the same city it just wouldn't have worked but steelport was so Bland compared to still water in my opinion and there were consider considerably less memorable areas around the map there also just wasn't much to explore St TR 2 had Interiors like the airport the shopping mall the pyramid a hospital the police station and so many other buildings around the map I can't think of many Interiors St TR 3 had that you could explore during free roam that weren't stores the city also just felt less varied than Still Water it was very dull even with all the neon signs everywhere it was still a fun game though with a compelling story but it did also begin the uput trend in the series of leaning towards the more comedic side again all of the games are funny in their own right but there was a clear shift for three the boss is still relatively serious though we'll party once the work's done I'll call you when I make another move against the morning star and the game still did pretty well there are a lot of missions in this game though that are just activities repackaged as missions and that was apparent immediately in a good chunk of the early missions this was something that I really didn't like but the bespoke missions were always great after the dealing with the gangs you get to take on stag which is another great storyline for the game the customization was still pretty stellar and it's still a game that I'll go back and play from time to time because it really does hold up following a trend that dri set in place bition decided that for SRO 4 they wanted to go in a completely different direction for their next entry we all know what happened with Saint Ro 4 even if you never played the series we' gone from games about a street gang to the same gang running the country when aliens attack and eventually destroy Earth the series had taken a road that they really couldn't come back from in my opinion though and I don't know if this is going to be a hot take but I honestly really love this game for what it is looking at it objectively it's a love letter to Saint Rose's past it's something that no other series could have pulled off there were a lot of deep cuts to the series history with many levels taking place in either locations from previous games or featuring characters from previous games you can even hang out with virtual Recreations of characters who had died or even younger versions of your current crew of course we can't forget about the superpowers something very controversial in the fan base originally intended as DLC for sa roow theii it was later spun-off into its own game but I think that's where the problem lies if the game had released as both a DLC and a standalone expansion for SRO theii I think it would have been a much easier to Market and B it would have left the door wide open for future games to pick and choose a direction based on what worked if the alien end of the world stuff had worked out the way the other games did and people wanted more then they could have gone that direction if it didn't work out as well then they could have disregarded the story as non-cannon and just for fun and then continueed the story further and take it in any direction they wanted unfortunately four wasn't for everyone even though I have a lot of warm feelings for it I can't say it was the right decision for the franchise the rest of the franchise is easily forgotten Gat out of hell was frankly an insane choice in my opinion even if it did have its charm in some places Agents Of Mayhem flopped harder than maybe any one expected it to and the recent return to the franchise with 2022 Saint Row practically killed the franchise and its creator ution it must be said that at least from what I've heard Deep Silver was the driving force behind some of the more egregious changes to the franchise it wasn't the game that fans wanted and it didn't really feel like the game The Debs wanted to make either of course I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth I'm sure the teams put their hearts so into the reboot because they wanted the franchise to succeed but there are rumors that volish really wanted to make a game more like two and three again but as we found out that unfortunately never came to pass now valtion has closed down and the SRO IP is in the hands of deep Sila where it will likely remain for some time I don't expect that we're going to be hearing that much from the series anytime soon and that's such a downer despite being the series most compared to GTA it really stood out on its own and claimed its own identity I think the most we can hope for in say the next 10 years would be a remaster of Saints Row 1 and 2 on a current generation platform and even then I think that's wishful thinking but I would like to see at the very least the work done by the late Mike Watson also known as Idol ninja and the SRO community at large on the SRO 2 PC patch finally be completed at some point I think that it's the least that should be done the just call series is one that I have some trouble calling a grand of auto clone but it appeases pretty much the same crowd it's an open World sandbox game with guns and cars and missions so there's definitely some overlap there my main point is it's another Sandbox game that's competing pretty directly with the other games I'm mentioning here I have very vague memories of just calls but I remember the box art vividly the series follows Rico Rodriguez and the game playay for the time was really something new and it's a formula that the series is stuck with but to be honest it wasn't really as good it was cracked up to be leaving generally mixed reviews behind in its wake it released in oh look at that 2006 and it probably shouldn't have got a sequel but just c 2 in 2010 was really where Avalanche Studios hit their stride set in panal a huge map with tons to explore and if you want to talk about over-the-top open World Games you look to just course 2 and its sequels the set pieces were intense and explosions were loud and many you could grapple and parachute around to your heart to content I played this game a lot when I was younger but I never completed it but I plan to eventually jqus 3 which released in 2015 is where I spent most of my time in the series I love everything about the sandbox experience in JS 3 I love calling down a big stupid Jet and tethering a bunch of cars to the back like a Maniac or sliding down the side of a mountain in a big boat like a Maniac or blowing up a bridge you know like a maniac the grapple hook along with everything that it can do is what makes just unique the addition of the Wings suit was the best decision they ever made and it handled really well that was until the addition of the jetpack wings suit in one of the DLCs fully upgrading this thing turned justs 3 into the best Iron Man simulator that money can buy the fact that you can get it super early on in the game is a bonus to it's my favorite way to liberate outposts destroy chaos objects and complete missions and it's generally just a really great way to get around town the rebel drop system allows you to call in different vehicles and weapons for you to use at your leisure which only added to the sandbox experience the game is pretty funny too and features David Tenant on the radio everything is absolutely fabulous it's not that every single major military base has been wiped off the map and that this regime is a g hair away from complete another claps no super fantastic stupendous when it came out on the consoles of the time it didn't run that well if you haven't played it then it's really going to be worth your time in my opinion I love that game going from town to town Outpost to Outpost liberating them from brutal dictatorship as a one-man Army it honestly never gets old it's extremely satisfying blowing up big chaos objects and it makes you wonder why they ever thought this could run at a near locked 30 FPS on Console at the time it's just beyond me just CA 4 released in 2018 to favorable reviews and it was clearly trying to be an evolution of three this time Rico finds himself at soless soless a South American country that is subject to a lot of extreme weather such as thunderstorms and tornadoes these will dynamically spawn into your games and you can interact with them in the sbox for me justor 4 felt like a downgrade though the wing suit handling felt so much worse than it did in three and you didn't have the jetpack from the first game you had to buy another DLC just to get that functionality back the worst part is that if you did you'd find the wing suit didn't control nearly as fluidly as it did in three and there also seemed to be less destructible objects and there were no bridges that could be blown up that was the biggest travesty they did improve on the grapple hook though as they had a lot more abilities such as control Rockets or balloons among other things the series just kind of went silent after four that is until recently as Square Enix recently said that they are working on a new entry in the series this has got to be hopeful for a return to fall for the series and hopefully they can innovate on the formula in a meaningful way to keep the series relevant most of all though I just hope they give the teams enough time to make the game that they want to make and enough resources to do just that grandford 6 is hopefully coming out next year and I don't know how long just SCS 5 has been in development but by right it should have been around 2018 2019 when four released just cause has a great opportunity to do what Saints Row did and position itself adjacent to gr offt Auto as a deceivingly similar game on the surface while having a depth and Nuance that only a game like just C can have gameplay-wise I mean he's hoping it works out there's been a lot of games over the years that have tried their hand at the genre I think one of the most famous examples is definitely The Simpsons Hit and Run if you're around my age this game may have been a big part of your childhood even as a kid who started playing GTA 3 very young hit and R has such a great Vibe and it was so incredibly faithful to the show and it was fun to play if there was ever a game more deserving of a remaster I haven't heard of it the world was filled with iconic locations from the show each map had a ton of fun things to explore it never got a sequel though as The Simpsons game was the next big Simpsons game I would love a modern version of the game though think of all the things they could do building off of everything The Simpsons has done since I think it's about time Watchdogs couldn't be more recognizable in this category and Tred to mix an open World sandbox with a hacking game to mix success Watch Dogs 2 was decent but Legion was pretty forgettable I'm honestly surprised the series has run this long Watch Dogs one was a genuinely decent game the driving was horrible and the graphics downgrade controversy didn't really do its reputation that much good and moving on to Legion it was just a bland and forgettable game with an interesting mechanic of like let you play is literally any NPC that you find on the street but it made the game feel shallow and there was no way you could identify with these characters the true crime series was pretty fun to me as a kid and the game play is still going for that GTA sandbox the series was comprised of two games True Crime New York and True Crime Streets of LA a third game began development and did in fact release but under a new name Sleeping Dogs another game that in my opinion is a gem and definitely worth playing if you're able to play it the series started in 2003 and is one of the earliest examples I can find of a true GTA clone they certainly made their Mark Sleeping Dogs included but once again it's just another dead franchise that shows no signs of return the mafia games specifically Mafia 2 but to an extent Mafia 3 did a great job with their open worlds Mafia 2 specifically is one of my favorite open world games I love the 1940s Vibe the cars and the clothes and when everything's covered in snow and the radio is playing literally anything I get a pretty warm feeling even the 50s portion of the game has its own unique Vibe which completely changes the feel of the world halfway through the game Mafia 2 is still a great example of taking the GTA formula and not worrying about doing a onetoone creation but taking the idea and running with it to create a believable open world that is fun to explore the story is fantastic and the characters are wonderfully written and performed the definitive edition of the game released either last year or the year before or the year before that I'm not quite sure but it's definitely worth a play through Mafia 3 fell victim to a lot of repetitive gameplay and while the game looked beautiful combat was satisfying and the driving was in my opinion really fun and well done and even the story was decently engaging but overall it just came down to that gameplay which featured very similar missions and objectives from start to finish if you like going around a map and taking out bad guys over and over and over again with some unique missions here in there then this game may be for you I for one am partial to that kind of gaml to be honest but it doesn't help the story and can definitely get very boring I hope the mafia series can come back sometime soon as it's uniquely positioned to take on GTA if they were able to do it right not to the same scale of course it would never out sell or jeopardize GTA's sales in any way but it would be nice to have another big player in the space again like sa row Rockstar's own Red Dead Redemption games took the grand offt AO formula and Incorporated it into a wild west setting cars may not have been there but pretty much everything else is the Red Dead series feels like the only set of games that can compete with GTA on the same level but that's really only because Rockstar makes those games too with all of the same resources that they use for GTA so that brings me back to the question posed in the title of this video where have all the GTA clones gone in light of a lot of live service games flooding the market now a lot of them with open world elements or full open world maps it seems that nobody is really interested in creating something new in the space to compete with rockstar I remember a time where there were sandbox games games coming out left right and Center everybody tried to have a go with varying success I remember a little game called total overdose can you guess when it came out wrong it was actually a few months before 2006 but whatever it's a game set in Mexico about a criminal turned DEA agent tasked with taking down the cartel the game was actually pretty fun in places it had a few elements borrowed from Max pain 2 with a shoot Dodge mechanic and bullet time so it definitely felt unique compared to similar games a sequel was in development but it was scrapped leaving the series as a one-off the open world action adventure sandbox genre is my favorite video game genre that's probably no surprise but it's one that's looking pretty damn thin nowadays when GTA 5 released other games were barely reaching the levels of Grand Theft Auto 4 and some had already decided to go in a different direction now GTA 5 has been out for a while and I'm afraid to say that not only are we seeing the same thing again but there are less and less games in the genre coming out these days the ones that do seem to be a buggy mess or they're just not that good to begin with these games can't reach the heights Grand of5 did back in 2013 and every year past is another year closer to GTA 6 we know this and you better believe that every other studio and publisher is acutely aware of it too when GTA 6 releases I have no doubt that it will set a new precedent for how the open World sandbox should be done that's going to be a big problem for anyone else working on a so-called GTA clone what I think served sa Rose so well was the release of San Andreas 2 years prior and Grand offt 4 was still 2 years in the future at this point sa had a big window where it could come in and leave its mark on the 360 players as a true Next Generation open world complete with ragd doll physics full player customization and everything else I mentioned thankfully it made enough of a mark to Warrant a sequel the driver games with three and parallel lines seem to try and pivot to a GTA kind of style and it didn't work out for them too well I remember other games like the getaway and The Getaway Black Monday set in London of all places and that was really fun even if they weren't mind-blowing games it was still something that felt kind of different to GTA I kind of begs the question do you even really want more games like GTA is this something that you dear viewer are interested in they made three Watchdog games for God's sake and while they weren't awful I'm really questioning if those are all just die hard Watchdog fans or people who really wanted to like the previous games and gave the new one a try because they really want another open world game Saints Rose reboot was a return to anything but form if you get my meaning it felt like SRO in name only with this new Just Cause game in development I hope it can be the start of a comeback for the genre GTA 6 will obviously steal the spotlight for some time before and after release so I wouldn't expect anything in the realm too soon any game that's come out and try its hand has usually had some success with a game or two but they just can't keep up the momentum for the follow-up entries the bag seems to be fumbled at some point along the way is it even possible for a game to compete with modern Grand Theft Auto the most compelling example of a GTA competitor right now is Red Dead redemptions 1 and two and they provide basically all of the same gameplay trading cars for horses the early days felt like a free-for-all but over time we've definitely lost something all it would really take is a team of passionate developers that really want to take a crack at the genre and a publisher that will give them the time and resources they need to create the game that they want to make unfortunately that is just too much of an undertaking to actually have happen in this day and age these big video game companies don't want to take the chance risking their money on a game that may be forgotten a month after launch all that money to create a brand new IP to create a world capable of competing with a Grand Theft Auto all in the hopes of maybe chipping a slice of the play base it's just not a worthy business investment maybe that's why Ubisoft keeps trying they just want to keep making mediocre games and you know that's cool with me I'm not going to buy them so is that it I mean is Rockstar the only entity that has the resources to pull this off every Studio had worked on rdr2 in some part and the same will be true for GTA 6 thousands of employees across the globe are working on this one game and I don't see anything ever coming close at least not for a while the curse of grft also is that it's the best at what it does and it's a league above everything else some so that Rockstar can literally do whatever they want they aren't beholden to deadlines or current trends they make the trends so they can go any Direction they want I'm very much curious to hear what Memories some of you have with so-called GT GTA clones what's some memories that stick out for you is there something that you feel is underrated or forgotten in the long line of GTA clones are there any series that you think should make a return or do you think that we need a new IP to come in and stake a claim but mostly I just love to hear about games that you love whatever the reason GTA starle games have fallen out of popularity ignoring GTA itself not with the players but with the people who make them because nobody's really willing to put enough time into their games to flesh them out these games release almost half baked in a lot of scenarios people stop buying them and they'll go back to Grand Theft Auto so the other games stop getting made it's a bad cycle and one I don't see breaking for a little while thank you so much for watching this video if it's not obvious yet I really missed the time where we had a bunch of options for GTA style games and I really want that back thankfully GTA 6 will be out soon enough and I know that's going to keep me going for years to come if you enjoyed this video then please hit that like button as it helps the video get scene I hope to see some discussion in the comments too so I'll see you down there but in the meantime keep it Breezy and take it sleazy I'll see you in the next [Music] [Music] one

Channel: CaptainGlack

Views: 518,575

Keywords: gta 6, gta 5, grand theft auto v update, grand theft auto, rockstar games, gta clones, best gta clone, worst gta clone, just cause 2, just cause 3, saints row, saints row 2, saints row vs gta, gta vs saints row, where have the gta clones gone, open world games like gta, games like gta, mafia 2, mafia 3, mafia vs gta

Id: 08x0Aeuw3cs

Length: 31min 30sec (1890 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 24 2024