Just Cause 2 was going to be top recommendation. >_<

Red Faction: Guerllia is fun though. And the game that closest follows the GTA formula that I can think of, also the destructible enviorments are awesome.

Then there is also Assassin's Creed 2(I did not play it on PC so not sure how the port is) and the STALKER games which I think are quite good.

Mafia II is great but there aren't many side missions or anything so the open city feels a little wasted. But if you like to run around and cause random havoc you are free to do so like in GTA and the story is very good.

Terraria
/end thread/

It looks like you want GTA-style sandbox games (aka open world games), and it sounds like you've played a good amount of those. I've yet to play Red Faction: Guerrilla (I loved Red Faction, but I can tell my computer would never run this), and I've heard a lot about Xenus 2 White Gold here on GOG (though I'd never even heard of a Xenus 1 before that, if there even is one), but haven't seen a good enough sale for that one yet. I agree that Hunter is an excellent old-school choice.

Bethesda specializes in open world games, but you've probably played, or at least heard plenty about, their Elder Scrolls series and the recent Fallout games. Might and Magic is pretty open world too, and some of the best purchases I've made on GOG to boot.

As far as creative sandboxes go, Terraria, Minecraft, Garry's Mod, Phun, Platinum Arts Sandbox, and World of Sand are all good choices. You might find it to be a much too slow and cumbersome glorified level editor to be more than a curiosity, but Virtual Reality Studio/3D Construction Kit is, at the very least, a good early example of 3D environment creation.

WoW, if you're into MMOs.

Mafia series, The Elder Scrolls series, Fallout series, if you're into single player.

It was called Boiling Point in the US and Western Europe

I guess that explains why a query for "Xenus" on GameFAQs only yielded a game called Boiling Point, without the alternative name "Xenus 1" listed for Europe. I don't know why Xenus 2 isn't listed at all on GameFAQs, though.

Either way, I'd never heard of either of them before just recently, but there's enough praise here for White Gold that I've been wanting to play it. :)


Anyway, Phun, Platinum Arts Sandbox, and World of Sand are all free, as well as open source, so you can play them on both Windows and Linux if that does anything for you. My netbook couldn't handle Minecraft very well, but Platinum Arts Sandbox helps fill that void a little, especially since you can make things out of cubes quite easily. Phun is just... well, it's fun! Unfortunately, the developers went the commercial route by continuing further development as "Algodoo", a right shame, but you can still enjoy the original Phun in all it's glory. World of Sand has been ported to everything, you can even just search it up and give it a try in a browser.


As for Terraria, my netbook doesn't have Windows on it, and unfortunately, I've yet to find a way to get Terraria or any other XNA or DirectX game to run. I love Terraria, though. Even more than Minecraft. It makes me quite sad it's not particularly Linux friendly, but I suppose I have enough distractions on my netbook, especially considering I was misinformed that netbooks were barely powerful enough for word processing and web browsing and had little intent to use it for more than NetHack.

In reality, I got my 1000HE for $125, and it's immensely more powerful than my Thinkpad ever was. There's barely anything I've thrown at it that it hasn't been able to handle splendidly. Now I've found far too many people saying that netbooks are dead, that there's no reason to get one, and that smartphones and tablets have rendered them obsolete. This thing is the small, affordable, capable, comfortable, and battery/power efficient laptop I always wanted. People are idiots! XD

Apparently Xenus 2 has another name too..

"White Gold: War in Paradise"

Red Faction: Guerrilla is my highest recommendation beyond that Saints Row 2 comes in 2nd and then Oblivion or the Fallout's (3, new vegas) the rest are listed for fun if you want..

GTA 4 or vice city i guess san andreas too but... meh
Saint Row 2 (best yet)
Red Dead Redemption
Morrowind
Oblivion
Terraria
X3 or really any X universe game, best and biggest spce sims out there
Fallout 3
Fallout New Vegas
Red Faction: Guerrilla A+ #1 best sandbox i played in years YEARS!
fable 2
Borderlands
Garry's Mod
infamous (kinda)
spiderman 2
Minecraft
Prototype (kinda)
Assasins creed 1, 2, brotherhood ((ok but the DRM is not worth it play on console))
crackdown (quite fun)
mercenaries 1,2
the Stalker games... (kinda)
arma2 (kinda)

now for odd wierd stuff:
Neverdaunt
Roblox
Second Life
Incredible Hulk ultimate destruction
spore

My favorites would be:

X3 Terran conflict with the X-Tended Mod
Mount & Blade Warband

Just Cause 2
Played more than 90 hours , but today i found it boring .

Gothic 2 was mentioned already, but I'm going to throw my hat in with Gothic 3. On release it was buggy as hell and on the edge of completely broken. Over the last few years the community patches have corrected nearly everything, and with the newest patch, Gothic 3 Enhanced Edition has become one of the smoothest open world RPGs I've ever played. The world is massive, far larger that Oblivion's, and there are multiple factions to join, and multiple ways to develop the character. I might be odd, but I consider it one of the finest RPG experiences of the last half decade.

so your saying the v1.72 community patch is the "enhanced edition" or do you mean patch 2.0 from forsaken gods is the enhanced edition? i have the Original retail would love to give it another go... i was told to run far and fast from forsaken gods so i never bothered...

It's actually separate. There's a version 1.74 community patch for the original Gothic 3, then there's another community patch for Forsaken Gods. Even with the community patch, Forsaken Gods still lacks the Gothic soul. Likely because it wasn't created by Piranha Bytes. The 1.74 patch for Gothic 3 (which transforms the game to Enhanced Edition), is terrific, and I highly recommend you give it another go!

At the risk of flamage I add Two Worlds... *runs*

I don't know about Two Worlds I, but Two Worlds II is actually pretty good.