I liked their novelty back then... now it is indeed a bother as I don't want to spend 100 hours unlocking an achievement for shooting 11 pigeons spread out on a map ^^

Sorry to say that, but you are the kind of person I do not want to meet in person. If that is the sort of things that you call "fun" I hope that I will never meet you in an online game, too.

In fact those are statements that are the reason why governments want to ban such games worldwide. Germany is pretty strict and many Germans have to buy their 18 games here in Austria or in the UK (if the UK Versions has german language available).

Thats the reaons why I stopped buying Rockstar Games, with RDR being the first victim. What is with that trophy where you have to hogtie a woman and put her on railway tracks and watch her dying? Is that funny, too?

Thats my problem with those moral systems. In Oblivion you can cancel Autosave and kill a whole village "just for fun" with no real penalty. In GTA, you can kill innocents and the police, get a high wanted level, just let yourself getting killed and only lose some money (or just reload and have no penalty at all). What is the entertainment in this?  It does not contribute anything to the overall game? Is it really that funny to slaughter some innocents?

Thats what I like about Square-Enix games. They have youthful characters, but they are questioning their motives and the gamer has to think about what his actions cause for the whole ingame world. Think about FF7 where Barrett blows up some reactors to fight Shin-ra and they destroy a whole sector to fight Avalanche. Or FF 13, where the characters have to choose between fulfilling their probable focus and destroy their homeworld Cocoon or just do nothing and turn into a monster.

That is where the actual strength of JRPGS lie. There is so much depth in the story and you can get the most intense form of storytelling if you put some thoughts in the game.

WRPGS/Sandbox Sidequests? It is totally unimportant if you do some side quests or not. Like someone said before, in Oblivion you are in the quest of saving the world, but take a break to do some unimportant errands or leave the whole main quest and just try to become head of the quilds.

This "freedom to do what I like" is just taking out the depth of the game in my opinion. Sure, anyone can play sandbox games, since you can't do much wrong in that game, since you put your own goals in them. Maybe that is the reason of their commercial success. Anyone can play them and have fun. FF XIII can't be played by everyone, because the real fun depends on how much thoughts you put in the story.

For example FF7. It took me a second playthrough where I saw the secret cutscene in Nibelheim with Cloud and Zack to fully understand the story of the game, because the story was so complex. But after I got it, it is still one of the most intense gaming experience I had in my whole life. FF XIII was similar, since the story is very complex too.

i agree completely, Spike must be on Drugs giving Red Dead goty because i thought it was a piece of shit lol

You are right and I agree...

But I just like it, GTA Vice City just rocks...

For those who dislike sandbox games let me ask you a simple question, did you have a sandbox when you were little?

A sandbox in of itself is nothing more than a box on the ground filled with sand. When a child plays in a sandbox they may be supervised from afar by a parent, but it is not the parent telling them how to play; instead the child is creating his own play with his green army men, toy cars, toy dinosaurs and the like. The adult is not telling the child how to play other than advising him not to eat the random piece of cat crap AKA cat almond rocca every once in a while.

A sandbox video game is only as fun as you. If you are the type who likes objectives, going from point a to point b like a Mario game, and constraint, then sandbox games are not for you because you are a boring person who cannot have fun unless the developer has created the game in very specific constraints where the fun you are having was designed by the developer, not you.

Lets take a Mario game and put it into a sandbox. A real sandbox. Imagine Miyamoto and a crowd (the development team) towering above you when you were little. At Miyamoto's command you will go from one end of the sand box to the other. As you complete his dictates, he will throw in more complicated order to get from one end of the sandbox even varying it up ordering you to crawl, jump, do a handstand, do the worm dance to the other side of the sandbox and on.

See, Mario and linear games do not work well in a sandbox, thus forth they are not sandbox games.

The key to having fun in sandbox games is you, if you cannot have fun in a world designed where you can create your own play, then what does that say about you as an individual?

I would say you are boring and would probably find military bootcamp "fun," but that is just me.

If STALKER counts, then defo STALKER as well. Great game.

That's not true at all. All sandbox games have a set of limitations that steer you towards a variety of ways to play the game. An example would be Red Dead Redemption and Infamous, in both games your ability to swim is taken away. A sandbox was only as fun as the materials placed in it, an empty sandbox limits the things you can do to entertain yourself. In a game like Red Dead Redemption, I can't swim, I can't fly, I can't shoot and kill the main characters, I can't finish the game without following the given quests, I can't get trophies without following the set objectives, I can't dig a hole and set traps for my enemies, I can't use squad tactics to control my partner AI, I can't kill everyone in a town without being punished and the list of limitations goes on and on. 

Some games are better than others at hiding these limitations, some are also better at giving you a significant amount of one type of freedom (Just Cause 2's gameplay and travel), but then it limits other types of freedoms (Can't enter every building or talk to random NPC's, also a lack of interaction with AI).

These limitiations are one of the main reasons why some people love modding games on their PC's or using cheats on their older consoles. Those two things aren't allowed on a PS3 or 360 today and so that basically means that the fun to be had in a game is dictated by what the developer see's fit to make available and how they design the world and missions. The people in this thread believe that some sandbox games are either limited or they are badly designed in the way the developer wants you to play. Red Dead Redemption was boring because it was limited and the mission structure was badly paced and designed

The only true sandbox games by your definition would be something like Minecraft, Garry's Mod and to a limit, Little Big Planet 2.

Been a while since i read a post as awesome as this.
I couldn't have said it any better.

Of course every game has limitations or boundaries. I agree every game has boundaries, but it is a matter of degrees when one says sandbox games are boring, Final Fantasy games are fun. My main point is that if you cannot have fun in a sandbox game then can you have fun on your downtime that is unstructured.

When I was little, my grandparents built a house and retired in South Lake Tahoe. A gate leading out from their backyard went into a forest. The forest was enclosed by other backyards at the opposite end and roads on the sides. My play area was limited, but the amount of fun I could have within those confines was up to me and myself alone. I had great fun out there even with the constraints.

Sandbox games like the World of Warcraft and the GTA series win great praise because they allow for emergent gameplay albeit limited by the design of the world and, in the case of MMORPGs, to what the moderators will tolerate if it becomes predatory on other players to the extent they may drop their paid subscriptions entirely.

On the other end, FPS single player and many other games tend to be very linear. The recent and most linear being Final Fantasy 13. For these games to be fun, the developers have to be top notch storytellers, create a fluid, rewarding combat system, and pay attention to the details in the graphics.

The most fun games I have played are the World of Warcraft followed by Earthbound and 1990s Squaresoft JRPGs.

I love the World of Warcraft because how far I go and how successful my toon becomes is up to me. It is up to me to make those relationships, put in the time, be polite and respectful to players over Vent when I really want to ream them a new one, and play to my best during a raid.

In contrast, games like Earthbound and Final Fantasy 3 (6 in Japan) will be forever memorable because the gameplay was solid, addicting and the story told and world created by the developers was top notch at the time.

On one hand, I love the freedom of a sandbox game, but on the other hand I am always down to sit around the proverbial campfire and listen to and engage in another's tale. Two different kinds of fun, but I like them the same for very different reasons.

:) I appreciate it :)