Players like to be rewarded with additional story, characterization, and fun upgrades upon discovering more of the open world, not another checkmark on a map. The Witcher 3‘s world is huge, but players don’t complain about it being bloated because it’s filled with unique landmarks and interesting side quests around every corner.

These 10 games even manage to disappoint the casual collectathon fan with their uninspired locales and boring terrain, proving that games need to do more than merely populate the world with objects. Here are 10 more open world games in recent years that have suffered from bloat.

Forspoken

Like other games on this list, Forspoken had a ton of potential leading up to its release. We first saw glimpses of it with the impressive next-gen demo when the PS5 was announced but the final result was severely lacking. The best thing about the game, its versatile and engaging parkour, isn’t facilitated well by the open world.

For one thing, there’s entirely too few things to do in the magical world of Athia. What’s more, there’s an absence of ‘magic’ to capture the imagination in the world, consisting of empty rolling hills dotted with repetitive activities as it is. What hinders the empty exploration further is Frey’s constant quipping and complaining. If you’re not keen to hear constant quips and snarky complaints over the course of several hours of empty, though fun, world traversal, you’re not going to have a good time in Athia. After critical and commercial failure, the studio was shuttered.

Rise of the Ronin

Team Ninja’s design identity lives and breathes by its dense and action-packed linear nature, so naturally, the decision to go open-world in their next samurai game was ambitious for the team. Being the first open world game from the studio, Rise of the Ronin doesn’t falter too hard, but it could’ve been better within a more streamlined structure.

The refined action combat the team has been known for helps the formulaic world activities feel a bit more fun than they otherwise would. This is the third game on the list to feature dozens of bandit camps in its large world, but there’s also genre mainstays like watchtowers, and … cats to pet across mid-19th Century Japan, okay at least that’s kind of charming. Still, the lack of organic environmental discovery, unlike, say, Ghost of Tsushima’s waypoint wind, and a more empty and boring world map than other games within the space, keep Rise of the Ronin from reaching the potential set by its unique time period and deep combat. Hopefully, the developers will keep on investing in this IP, because there is potential here and a Rise of Ronin 2 could be a genuinely great game.

Biomutant

Unlike Gotham’s largely samey environments, the open world in Biomutant is rather diverse and visually unique across biomes. But visual distinctness between the six tribal regions  is where Biomutant’s open world stops being impressive – unless you enjoy the busywork of clearing checklists, that is. Completing the many outposts, resource towers, ruins, and fast-travel signpost rewards you with little while being but it’s as shallow as it is repetitive.

But the combat and quests don’t really do anything interesting to accommodate the rote world activities, firmly solidifying Biomutant as a quintessential ‘mid’ game. It’s unremarkable, but not bad per se, and when multiplied by the huge open world and all its repetitive activities, makes for a lot wasted time one could have spent in more meaningful game worlds. Biomutant is a prime example where a stong investment doesn’t always result into a meaningful product.

Gotham Knights

If rote repetition is the death knell of open worlds, Gotham Knights feels oddly lifeless for a city meant to be in constant crisis. All of the positives of the Arkham games, save some of the third-person combat DNA, is gone with this game. Sure, there’s some fun stealth sections to be found within the story chapters, but a majority of the game’s content is beating up the same thugs and solving copy-pasted crimes throughout Gotham to grind towards Knighthood progression.

Players can typically look past a bit of padded grinding if the world feels alive and responsive, but Gotham also fails on that front. Alleyways are mostly empty, civilian traffic is practically non-existent, and the city doesn’t evolve or react to story advancements or a recently liberated borough. At least the game looks really nice with its lighting. Gotham oozes atmosphere on a superficial artistic level despite the lack of liveliness and organic activities. Gotham Knights does have its shining moments, but very few of them have to do with the open world structure. Honestly, at this point, we just need a new Batman Arkham, not to mention the disaster that was Suicide Squad.

Just Cause 4

While Biomutant can’t reasonably be considered bad by any means, Just Cause 4 certainly can. The only thing I’m uncertain about is if this game suffers more on the story or exploration axis because it sucks at both. First and foremost, there’s just way too many patches of nothingness in the game world, resulting in terrible activity density.

At least Rico’s versatile grappling hook can be played around with to traverse the boring environments because it’d be downright sleep-inducing to go anywhere in this game otherwise. Accommodating the poor map design is a total absence of a minimap or radar. I mean, come on, an open-world game with no way to track points of interest at-a-glance, and one with such a bloated and empty world at that, is inexcusable. The missions and side activities are also far less creative and interesting than previous Just Cause titles, and the game crashes pretty often. You know what, I can’t even point the main blame on the open world, Just Cause 4 is just plain bad. It’s amazing how the series shifted into a complete free fall after Just Cause 2. Such a massive shame!

RAGE 2

Rage 2 is another game on this list that certainly isn’t altogether bad; its open world design just kinda feels tacked on to extend game time. Avalanche studios used Id Software’s wonderful gunplay tech to craft a fast and fun gameplay. Shooting in Rage 2 feels fast paced but with very lackluster and repetitive map design, its potential is severely diminished. There’s hardly any reason to spend time checking off side activities due to the drip-fed upgrades that players are rewarded with. This is thanks largely to a pretty early plateau in the upgrade tree, which maxes out your character pretty quick.

And without any meaningful side stories or lore to discover out in the wasteland, exploration is largely an exercise in repetition. The rapid pacing of the gunplay also just isn’t well suited for the wide swathes of land, something a more densely populated map could’ve remedied a bit.  It’s a shame Rage 2 faltered on the open world front. A synthesis between Id gun mechanics and the open world chaos of Just Cause 3 set within a Mad Max-esque setting seem like a dream come true. But Rage 2’s world is largely average and is enough to pull down the game’s otherwise fun gameplay and traversal mechanics. It’s unlikely we will ever see a new RAGE game and that’s such a disappointment.

Mafia III

The original studio behind the first two Mafia games merged into Hanger 13 for Mafia 3. Hanger 13’s debut game lacks a lot of the charm and density the previous games had, going for a quantity over quality approach. The territory control system quickly becomes repetitive, with little variation between districts. The world itself, a fictional version of New Orleans, also lacks intriguing landmarks and unique stuff to do within it. It’s just a shallow and hollow open world all-round.

At least the story and atmosphere somewhat make up for it; however, repetitive side objectives are often mandatory to progress the main plot, harming that aspect as well. Here’s hoping the Hanger 13 has learned from their first game and refined Mafia: The Old Country’s Italy into something more engaging.

Saints Row (2022)

In a lot of ways, the 2022 reboot of Saint’s Row feels like a first draft of a game from a decade ago. It’s got the basic elements to make a classic Saints Row experience, but hardly any of the creativity, charm, or polish. Where previous Saints Row games made exploring and causing mayhem unpredictable and fun, this reboot turns every open world activity into a chore.

Criminal Ventures are just one example of this; once you do your first couple insurance fraud busts and repo jobs, you’ve pretty much seen done them all. The world does little to encourage curiosity either, considering how empty and vacuous it feels. What’s really a shame is the lack of charm across the whole experience, thanks in part to the odd incongruent meshing of attempted wackiness with serious drama, resulting in an experience that falls flat in the end. This release, more or less, has killed Saints Row.

Crackdown 3

Out of all the games featured on this list, Crackdown 3 reigns supreme when it comes to boring environments. We all wanted to explore a dark sci-fi city in the sequel, but the city’s repetitive building designs make exploration feel stale and uninspired. It’s one of those games where the asset reuse is so glaringly obvious that it significantly detracts from the experience. But it’s not just the bland environments of the city that hurt the open world experience, mission and enemy variety is severely formulaic too. What puts the nail in the coffin is the paltry rewards for doing open world activities.

You’re mostly just collecting ability orbs after completing activities or exploring environments with no interesting lore or customization. And of course, Crackdown 3 commits the major sin of mandating side content to progress the main story, this time in the guise of collecting intel for regional boss fights. At least there’s the charm of playing as Terry Crews throughout the formulaic experience, but even that wears thin pretty quickly. With Microsoft cancelling projects left and right, the future of Crackdown seems like it’s done and dusted.

Need for Speed: Payback

Need for Speed: Payback is a game I still kind of enjoy playing to this day, but it’s not to experience the exploration or anything. No, it’s the superb vehicle selection and customization which is the main draw of the game, but even that can be had in the better NFS maps that Heat and Unbound facilitate. Payback’s fictional map is quite large and spread out, but it features no police chases outside of scripted events.

Instead of hiding from cops and making an intricate escape through a dense downtown route, you’re just collecting stuff and starting events on the map. This makes Payback’s map the least dynamic and least designed for racing than any of the modern-era NFS titles. Fortunately, a lot of great Need for Speed games were released since then, so let’s hope this continues into the future.

Overwatch 2

The original Overwatch was a runaway success that garnered a sizeable player base and many awards, and many fans were understandably excited about the sequel. Overwatch 2’s announcement sparked excitement with promises of expanded PvE and a broader scope, but what we got in reality was a shooter that lost focus of what made it so special in the first place. The magic of Overwatch’s PvE was gone, and the expanded PvP options felt shallow and generic.

Bloomberg’s recent report offered some updates while seemingly confirming the 2022 action RPG’s original live service model. Those plans were reportedly dropped halfway through development as the studio “struggled to make progress.” Though it wanted to develop a “1.5” iteration of Gotham Knights, the higher-ups were apparently not having it and relegated the studio to assisting other projects.

WB Games Montreal would subsequently pitch other projects, including John Constantine (which WB Games were noncommittal on) and the Flash (the latter not happening due to the 2023 film flopping). There have since been resignations among leadership due to “frustration with their corporate bosses,” according to sources. It’s helping with Wonder Woman, as reported last year and pitching a new title based on George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones. Whether it’s approved or not remains to be seen.

For more details on Gotham Knights, check out our review here. WB Games Montreal also assisted Rocksteady with Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, which saw its end of support last month.

The listing, published by WB Games Montreal for the position of External Development Artist, that the role’s “first mandate” will be to “work closely with our team and support the Monolith Productions team on their announced Wonder Woman game.”

In December of 2022, the LinkedIn profile of WB Games Montreal’s Bryan Theberge suggested that the studio’s own next title had also entered production.

WB Games has previously announced that Monolith Productions’ Wonder Woman game will be an open world experience, and that it will use the Nemesis System from Monolith’s previous titles, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Middle-earth: Shadow of War.

Last November, job listings suggested that the game would feature live service elements, though WB Games clarified promptly afterward that Wonder Woman was being designed as a single-player action-adventure game.

Other noteworthy titles include The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes, Disco Elysium: The Final Cut, FAR: Changing Tides, Gungrave G.O.R.E, Elite Dangerous, Dead Island Definitive Edition and Alien: Isolation. Interestingly, bilbil-kun said rumors have circulated about The Last of Us Part 2’s addition to the catalog for Extra and Premium, but it’s reportedly not happening.

There should be more games announced, including a new slate of classic games for Premium subscribers, so stay tuned for the official announcement. In the meantime, The Callisto Protocol, Farming Simulator 22, and Weird West are free to claim as part of PlayStation Plus Essential in October.

Following that, tomorrow, on September 20, Recreate Games’ multiplayer party title Party Animals will launch, and it will be available day one on Game Pass for cloud, console, and PC. The day after that, on September 21, Payday 3 will see its global release, and it, too, will be a day one Game Pass release on cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X/S.

Later in the month, on September 29, Geometric Interactive and Annapurna Interactive’s puzzle adventure title COCOON will be available day one via Game Pass on console and PC. Meanwhile, early next month, on October 3, open world action RPG Gotham Knights will come to the service via cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X/S. On the same day, Paradox Interactive’s turn-based tactics title The Lamplighters League will join Game Pass’ library on the day of its release via cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X/S.

Additionally, a 10-hour early access trial of EA Sports FC 24 will also be available to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers via EA Play on September 22.

Recent leaks have claimed that a Nintendo Direct presentation is scheduled for sometime during the coming week. If accurate, it might be where WB Games chooses to officially announce Gotham Knights for Nintendo’s platform.

If the open world title is indeed coming to the Switch, it should be interesting to see how it fares on a technical level. Though the game was originally supposed to be a cross-gen release, its PS4 and Xbox One versions ended up getting cancelled, with WB Games Montreal citing the game’s “scale and scope” as the primary reason.

In our review of the game, we gave it a score of 7/10, saying, “Gotham Knights’ insistence on being a modern open world RPG leads to some gameplay issues and painfully generic mechanics, but there’s a lot of fun to be had here nonetheless, and an engaging story to experience. It may not be Arkham, but it’s good enough in its own right.” Read the full review through here.

Gotham Knights is currently available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.

ANTHEM

After having built itself up as one of the best Western RPG developers in the industry over the course of decades, with Anthem, BioWare decided to go down the live service looter shooter route, and it was… well, let’s be generous here and say it wasn’t great. Anthem was a failure by pretty much every metric, because not only was it sorely lacking in the things that had made previous BioWare games as great as they were, it wasn’t even a good looter shooter. Hell, it wasn’t even a competent one. It was rife with technical and connectivity issues, missions and objectives were boring, the loot balancing and progression systems were broken, and there was a shocking lack of content, a terrible issue to have a for a game that claims to be live service. Of course, it didn’t even end up being live service in the end, because after a short period that saw intermittent and underwhelming updates (and some talk of a complete overhaul), BioWare and EA ultimately decided that it just wasn’t worth the effort, and chose to shut Anthem down.

Leaks suggested that even more was on the way, focused on the main villains from the story. While the developer hasn’t confirmed the same, the SteamDB listing for the action RPG continues to see updates. Its most recent ones have been over the past few days, though there’s not much information about what’s being updated.

If the leaks are true, there may be revamped versions of Clayface, Mr Freeze and Harley Quinn, along with Supercharged versions of the same and new Most Wanted villains. Of course, these SteamDB updates could mean anything, so take them with a grain of salt  and stay tuned for further updates

Gotham Knights is available for Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and PC. Check out our review here.

To that end, we run down 10 not-so-great games that deserve a second chance should you happen to come across them during a sale.

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 was arguably one of the most highly anticipated games of the last decade, but all that anticipation and excitement didn’t amount to much when the game finally launched in 2020 after a ton of delays and pushbacks. Cyberpunk 2077 was rife with game-breaking bugs and glitches, and the performance on eighth-generation consoles was absolutely horrendous – making it all an unplayable mess. Many of the previously promised features like a live service multiplayer component, wall running, vehicle customization, and more were also absent from the final release. But underneath that thick veneer of technical inefficiencies and broken promises, there lies a great depiction of a dystopian future complete with a complex net of gameplay mechanics that’s definitely worth more than a look. And now that post-launch updates have cleared out these rough edges, Cyberpunk 2077 is definitely worth checking out.