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Topic of the Week: What is your favourite open-world crime caper?

Topic of the Week: Crime capers

You probably noticed that Grand Theft Auto V launched last night. We’ve written about it quite a lot, and our GTA V live blog is still on the go. It’s an impressive open-world crime sandbox, but is it the best? There’s plenty of competition, even just within that single series. 

So that brings us to our Topic of the Week. We want to know what your favourite open-world crime game is. If it’s GTA, which GTA? Or maybe you prefer to be on the other side of the law, as an undercover cop in Sleeping Dogs. Or perhaps you like your open-world games to have more chaos and silliness, like Saints Row. Let us know in the comments. 

I’ll get the ball rolling.

GTA V is the most visually and technically impressive game in the sub-genre, but it’s not my favourite. That’s Saints Row IV. It’s distilled, ridiculous fun. The characters, gags, superpowers and the parody heaped onto parody – it’s brilliant.

It might seem juvenile, and it is very silly, but underneath the absurdity and spectacle is a lot of cleverness. Here’s an example I wrote when I said that Saints Row IV was one of the best games of 2013:

“Take Keith David, veteran actor and frequent voice actor, who stars not only as himself, but a version of himself who has now become the Vice President. Now, having an actor playing himself in a major game role is amusing on its own – especially when he’s already lent his vocal talents to the series before in the guise of the original Saints Row’s naughty Julius, which is frequently mentioned by other characters. But then when you add in the fact that David co-starred alongside Roddy Piper in They Live, the ‘80s cult classic which also serves as one of the game’s inspirations, and then get to witness David and Piper brawling in a scrap reminiscent of They Live’s famous fight scene, hailed as one of the best movie fight scenes ever made, the whole thing becomes spectacularly clever.“

Crazy.

Anyway, that’s enough from me. What’s your favourite open-world crime caper? Is classic British crime sim, The Getaway? The GTA with objectively the best soundtrack, Vice City? Retro indie offering, Retro City Rampage? We want to know.