Grand Theft Auto represents the pinnacle of AAA games, not just in huge-scale production values, but in the kind of innovation that rewrites the rules for what games can even be. It seems only Rockstar is capable of fully nailing this style of game. Of course, with its level of success, that hasn’t stopped other developers from trying.
Rightly or wrongly, these games are often dubbed GTA clones, a label that automatically assumes it’s an inferior imitation to the real McCoy. However, that doesn’t mean these games don’t have their redeeming features and innovations that offer something different, or in some cases, even arguably improves on GTA’s shortcomings–yes, even one of the greatest game series of all time is imperfect.
Even as GTA 6 promises to be the most refined vision of open-world gaming that eclipses all the competition, there’s still a good chance you’ll find some feature in these clones that’s more compelling than Rockstar’s own criminal paradise.
Mafia (2002)
“Open-world game” for many players means having the freedom to explore and do whatever you want within a large sandbox. However, Mafia’s Lost Heaven was very much a “faux-pen world” that served as one large movie set you’d just drive around from mission to mission. While that might sound like a criticism, it worked in favor for Czech developer Illusion Softworks and its atmospheric period piece set in 1930s America.
In taking a more mature and serious direction, Mafia was also more realistic in many ways, from the real-time damage of vehicles to a more in-depth minor- and serious-offense system from the cops compared to GTA’s star-based Wanted System. It may not appeal to players looking for a sandbox for wanton criminal chaos, but when it comes to telling the story of a humble man’s rise and fall in the world of crime, and the ultimate consequences, few games do it as memorably.
Scarface: The World Is Yours (2006)
GTA clones may imitate GTA, but you can also argue that GTA very consciously pastiches popular crime and gangster dramas, such as Vice City’s amalgamation of Miami Vice and Scarface. So you can certainly see the appeal of a game where you get to play Tony Montana for real, based on Al Pacino’s likeness, while André Sogliuzzo (handpicked by Pacino himself) makes for a faithful soundalike.
While licensed games can get a bad rap for being lazy cash-ins, Scarface: The World Is Yours is a great example of not just aping the source material but expanding it with an alt-universe scenario where Montana survives the original 1983 movie’s finale and then mounts a campaign of revenge. More importantly, it introduced ideas and mechanics that improved upon the other GTAs at the time, from a more robust targeting system to a deep money-laundering system that also impacted the heat you’d get from cops and rival gangs.
