Good open world games with boring exploration

Some of the best games of all time have bugs. It is inevitable that they have mistakes out of the gate or over time. For example, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a masterpiece on many levels, such as the way players can explore, including the ability to slide and climb across surfaces. However, not everyone loved the durability of the weapon.

So even the best games have bugs and with the following examples they all have one thing in common. While they have worlds full of life and places of interest, actually exploring them can be tedious for a number of reasons, from the slow pace to the lack of transportation.

Death Stranding

Watch your feet

First Death Stranding was an ambitious game from Hideo Kojima as his first big outing after leaving Konami. The game focused on Sam, a courier tasked with physically going from bunker to bunker to reconnect the ENTIRE United States. Of course, this map isn't exact, but regardless, it was a grueling job because players couldn't simply walk around.

Based on weight, players would have to constantly balance their load, and if they fell, it would injure the load and often make Sam's BB cry, which could attract ghost-like entities. Vehicles and better equipment could help the traversal process, but the first game is really the definition of rough.

Fallout 4

Sandy land

It's wild that with so many innovations like Fallout 4 brought to Fallout series as a whole, did not add vehicles or mounts. Players could build entire houses and customize their weapons to wild degrees. Even so, they had to walk everywhere they went, which wasn't difficult since the terrain wasn't full of traps and the fast travel system was good.

However, the pace of exploration was a chore, especially if players kept running into patches of radiation or hard-to-kill enemies that slowed things down even more. The only “vehicle” players could get was a set of Power Armor that could fly around, but keeping the thing powered up was difficult and walking around was clunky without the ability to fly.

Days gone

Trouble with gas

Days gone takes place in the post-apocalypse in the great state of Oregon. The state's beauty makes it one of the prettiest end-of-the-world games out there, but exploring nature's rich side can be tiresome because gas is a commodity. Players can explore on foot, but the zombies in this game are more dangerous than most zombie games, and ammo is scarce, so it's not always easy to take care of them.

As such, it's best to explore most of the game on a motorbike, but gas isn't easy to come by either, meaning players have to do a lot of scavenging on foot. Between low resources and high danger of zombies, Days gone it almost discouraged players from exploring.

A deadly premonition

Worst open world ride ever?

A deadly premonition it has two things: a wild cast of characters and a story. Everything else isn't as great as an open world horror game, with the worst part being the driving. First, the cars are incredibly slow and the town of Greenvale is realistically laid out as a small place in the mountains.

This means that getting from place to place can seemingly take years, and to make matters worse, gas is a factor. The townspeople run according to a set schedule, so if players want to complete side quests, they have to learn their patterns, which can also be a tedious task. Again, A deadly premonition is a must-play experience for the narrative, but those slow mechanics can make it hard to recommend.

No Man's Sky

Continue scanning

No Man's Sky is one of the most expansive open-world games ever, with endless planets all waiting for players to visit. However, after a few visits it can start to feel patterned since everything is based on random generation. Players fly to a planet from space, land, and then begin exploring.

They can use their scanning to mark plant and animal life and then use tools to gather resources. If players don't want to make a home on that planet, they'll likely return to their ship and repeat the process, which can be a satisfying gameplay loop for some, but mind-numbing for others.

Xenoblade Chronicles X

Terror from all sides

Xenoblade Chronicles X takes place in the future where Earth is almost deserted and players are part of an exploration crew that lands on an alien planet and establishes the colony of New LA, which is a funny Earth location. Players are free to go where they want and the game is absolutely massive. Unfortunately in each zone the monsters will be ten times stronger than the players and sometimes they will ignore them and other times they will hunt the players.

Fortunately, progress is never lost after death and players simply wake up at the last checkpoint. This means that when you're trying to complete quests or create waypoints in the world, being constantly harassed and killed can be exhausting. In about twenty hours, players will get a mech called a Skell, which will make exploration better, but it's a long way to get there.

Kingdom of Amalur: Showdown

Great fight, tough on the feet

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning it has one of the best combat systems in an open world game ever and was released in 2012. With many weapons to choose from and a great skill tree to gain new powers from, players will never get bored of fighting monsters.

Unfortunately, there are no horses or vehicles in the game to help with traversal, so running on foot is the best form of travel. Like Fallout 4, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning at least it has a fast travel system, but that doesn't help when initially exploring areas. Another positive is that the areas are not too massive compared to other open world games.

Diablo 4

My kingdom for horses

Diablo 4 is the first game in the franchise to feature an open world, which is one of its better features. The areas were huge in the past Diablo entries, but now players were free to explore without having to enter loading zones, which also meant that more world events could be encountered.

Players could obtain a horse, but had to wait until Act 4, which could take anywhere from twelve to twenty hours, depending on how many sidequests the players completed. It's a shame when open-world games like this hold up the horse for unnecessary reasons, as exploring on foot is a slow and laborious process, though admittedly fast travel is a feature.