Guide: Best PS4 Open World Games

Good list. I really need to check out Dragon's Dogma and Nier sometime. The lack of AC: Unity is terrible though. And it inFamous should be higher up.
I'm also surprised to see that Horizon wasn't higher, I haven't played it so I can't say, but given all I've heard I was surprised at what as above it.

@Jaz007 Jaz please

There are only 3 open world games I've ever enjoyed:
3. Incredible Hulk Ultimate Destruction
2. Breath of the Wild
1. Horizon Zero Dawn

@sketchturner
Then you have never played Just Cause 3

@steventonysmith
Yes I've played both Just Cause 2 and 3. Both were a lot of fun... for about 2 hours. Then it just gets boring for me.

Ghost recon and dying light would be in the top 10 for me. Both had really well done open worlds for the games they were.

@ShogunRok Is that really a screenshot from Unity?! I never played it due to the poor reception but I had no idea it was that buggy.

@sketchturner
I think they make medication for that sudden loss of joy

@Jaz007 Dragon's Dogma is good fun. The acting is corny and the game can feel a little stiff in places but it's approach to fights and the various enemies make the game great fun.

@ShogunRok The games been patched though (no one can deny issues at launch), and I don’t think I’ve seen a open-word more alive and vibrant. It’s a brilliant recreation of the French Revolution with everyone going about their daily activities. The detail is mind boggling.
Besides, I don’t see people toss PS3 Skyrim out the si doe for that reason. Heck, AC: Unity pathed is probably better than PS3 Skyrim ever became in technical terms.

@ShogunRok "... it’s not hard to immerse yourself in Guerrilla Games’ fantasy world."

Should be Guerilla Games' SCI-FI world, there's a difference you know.

I'm currently making my way through the Assassin's Creed games just so I can get to Origins. I'm playing Black Flag at the moment and it's superb. Any game which features sea shanties as collectibles was always going to be a winner in my book.

Surprised to see Watch Dogs 2 so high up. Quite enjoyed the first. Thought the second added very little other than more obnoxious characters with some of the most cringeworthy dialogue I have heard in a long time. Above Skyrim as well? Each to their own I guess.

I still haven't play The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt but I always read comments saying it's one of the best games this generation, maybe I buy it on Black Friday to try it

I don't like many first person shooters, but Dying Light & Far Cry 5 are my favorite!

NIER only 19th ??? But whyyyy ??

@ShogunRok, @Th3solution

Like Jaz007 wrote, they have patched the game really well, especially on console. The above picture is from the pre-patched PC version, if I remember correctly, which is the platform that had the worst version of the game at launch.

The best open-world games to me are mainly those I can have simple 'fun' in. I'm not really looking for realism and such, I just want something rather simple and fun to explore.

So for me the best open-world games for the PS4 would be:, Yakuza 6, Yoku’s Island Express, Grow Home, Jazzpunk, Blackhole. Metroidvania games, explorative puzzle games and platformers in general are also very high on my list.

Lots of great games here that I ought to get. Nice to see Horizon Zero Dawn high up on this list, but I would have put Nier Automata much higher than 19th (I really need to find the time to play more of it).

@DLB3 Horizon is definitely fantasy. If you're going to do an amorphous flying evil computer virus soul, you're in fantasy territory.

@Octane I was just nitpicking. But since we're into the discussion, I still wouldn't call Horizon a fantasy game because of that one element when everything else is grounded in science fiction. The Witcher 3 is obviously a fantasy game, but there are some sci-fi elements in there, doesn't really make it a sci-fi game though.

@DLB3 I'd say that for it to be sci-fi, it needs to be grounded in a certain ''realism'', if it doesn't do that, it's not science fiction. The Witcher 3 doesn't do that, so it's obviously fantasy. Same is true for Star Wars for example. I think that Horizon has a lot of fantasy elements, so that makes it fantasy to me. A fantasy game set in a post-apocalyptic setting.

@Octane Well that's where our differences are, for me science fiction isn't grounded in a certain "realism" but instead grounded in something that's POSSIBLE, usually through technological achievements. Not matter how likely to occur or not, that's why it's science FICTION. I think the world of Horizon Zero Dawn is possible if technology gets to the point where we can have machines like that.

Our personal definitions differ, so that's where we have to agree to disagree, but just so you know, Guerilla themselves have described it as a science fiction game. I've never heard them mention fantasy.

@DLB3 Oh, I agree with you on that. The machines aren't that farfetched, you could make something like that. But it's just the little things like the elemental arrows (especially freeze arrows), those cables that seem to spawn like vines, the floating virus soul I mentioned earlier. It's just the small details that are definitely fantasy based, and to me that makes it more of a fantasy game than a sci-fi game.

@Octane I strongly disagree when you say it's "more of a fantasy game". You said it yourself, it's the small things, it's not what the game is grounded in or what makes the world of Horizon what it is. Again, the Witcher has small sci-fi elements, but the world is grounded in fantasy.

Did I mention Guerrilla describes it as a "sci-fi action rpg"? Don't take it from me, ask them lol. But of course everything isn't going to be 100% one way or the other, plus it's still a video game, not everything can be explained. You can nitpick small things in The Last of Us or GTA or any other video game for that matter and call it "fantasy".

@DLB3 The small things add up

To me it's sci-fi (or realism if there's no focus on technology and science), unless it does something that doesn't fit that label. In that case it's fantasy. You can have a 100-hour game set in a realistic world, but if there's one small part where a witch shows up and uses a magic spell, it's fantasy to me.

That's why I would classify both TW3 and Horizon as fantasy games, as both games have fantasy elements, regardless of how big the focus is. A science-fiction game should have no fantasy elements at all IMO.

@Octane I agree with your first paragraph, but what is fantasy? For me, it's wizards, elves, magic, and things like that. Non human characters and things of that nature. Everything in Horizon is either based on technology or is tribalistic because of the post apocalyptic nature of it all.

@DLB3 It's like Star Wars. Everything is kinda realistic, except for the force, that's just pure magic. The same applies to Horizon I think, the machines and all are mostly believable, but there are a few things that are fantasy, the flying computer AI was the biggest culprit. Suggesting that if such a thing is possible, there is some kind of magic/supernatural in play.

@Octane Eh I don't know, still doesn't seem like something in the fantasy genre. There are things that also are a mixture, I believe Star Wars falls into that category. But we'll have to disagree on Horizon, our definitions, or at least perception of both differ too much. Things we normally associate with fantasy do not exist in Horizon despite some things we can't really explain.

Something not being realistic doesn't automatically make it fantasy. The Walking Dead has zombies in it, not realistic, but it's not fantasy either.

@Jaz007 Kinda surprised that you feel that AC Unity should be on a best of list after that launch. While yeah they did patch it, it shouldn't have been released in that state.

Make way for Red Dead..

Not sure how to feel about that placement of NieR. The open world aspect of it is pretty poorly done, but I'm liking pretty much everything else about the game.

A great list. Great, not perfect. The Witcher 3 deserves every good thing ever said about it and no doubt should be number one. I'm no fan of GTA, but I feel like it should have been a little higher on that list, at the very least it should've been rated higher than anything made by Ubisoft.

@Ralizah Yeah, with NieR being one of my all-time favorite games, I bristle when I see it only at #21, with so many more formulaic and pedestrian games in front of it — dominated by a horde of Ubisoft games that all do the same thing. The list includes a couple games I just couldn’t even bring myself to finish in Black Flag and Dragon Age Inquisition which had open worlds so pointlessly conceived as to make it a chore to even make it through the game.
But you’re right, when judging NieR strictly as an ‘open world’ game, then I might have to concede that it’s not the most stellar representative of the genre, even if it is head-and-shoulders a more satisfying experience than the rest of this list. So it’s hard to argue the placement, even if it’s a better game than 90% of these others.

i think ill give Burnout and The Witcher 3 a look

Looking at this again, and this isn’t saying anyone is wrong (sole will like one more than the other), but why is Horizon lower than AC: Origins? Didn’t everyone (including staff on this cite) like Horizon more? Was the open-world aspect specifically, or what did it?

I thought No man's sky might make the list as it's about as open world as it gets and a lot of fun in a zen kind of way. I find it hard to stop playing when each solar system is a randomly generated sandbox, especially with the constant flow of new content. It's stigma from previous iterations doesn't enamour it to praise I guess but I still love it!

@ShogunRok Reading the recent article about the Platinums earned in Spider-Man and the addition of AC:ODC to this list got me thinking. Given the sheer size of the new AC game is the Plat massively difficult to earn?

Can't believe FO4 is higher than Horizon and Spider-man, lol

@Th3solution Still, even then, putting it under FFXV with its vast tracts of nothing and constant enemy reinforcements throwing your party into disarray?

Fallout 4 as well.

Ugh.

@roe In at number 1 with a bullet, no doubt!

@Ralizah Yeah, I haven’t played FFXV yet, but my impression is that the open world is not very well developed. I still plan to play it one day though. As for Fallout 4, I just haven’t the interest to even give it a try.

@LaNooch1978 It's a pretty big grind, yeah. One of those "do everything" Platinums, which usually isn't too bad, but when you've got a game as big as this...

@Tasuki and @Jaz007 The are a few games I haven’t bought because the review says thay have lots of bugs. I don’t think I’ve ever gone back and pick anything up after it has been patched.
How would you ever finding out if a game that was broken at launch is fixed now?

@Ryall I would ask look online and ask people there. You can ask people here, and you could also look on gamefaqs, just be prepared to deal with much less civility on there and many more trolls. There is a good chance of it having the information though.

Fallout 4 beat Horizon Zero Dawn? What?

RDR2 is one of the most stellar open world games I've played.

@sketchturner I love both but I think there's much more content in Fallout 4.

@Rash I even thought the hunting was going to be average or as stale as Trevor's in GTAV but RDR2's hunting is so quite addictive and satisfying. The graphics especially makes it a joy studying animals and then you chance upon and inspect some strange site deep in the woods while tracking some elk.

Fallout 76 didn't make the cut?

Technically, I think Rockstar's attention to detail in their games is leagues ahead of anybody else. I did think Ubisoft's Bolivia in Ghost Recon: Wildlands was impressive, though, especially the sheer size of the map.

From a combat perspective, I think Horizon: Zero Dawn is the pick of the bunch. Taking down those dino machines was a joy to play.

The Witcher 3 is still my favourite, though.

@TheArt Amount of content does not equal fun gameplay. I'll take quality over quantity any day.

Horizon is my personal #1, because huge frickin' robots > everything else. Plus, no online and no MTX.

I’m surprised to see Far Cry 5 on here. From everything I’ve read, nothing about it stands out as the best in the series.

@Jaz007
Maybe it's the atmosphere. It's a stunning game with good gunplay and satisfying mechanics in general. Also so much crazy stuff happens. Random stuff everywhere. It just has that thing where it ends up greater than the sum of its parts

Just Cause 3 is more of an open world game than several of these - Dragon Age Inquisition is more a collection of restricted areas accessed by a map

RDR2 at number one!? Lol. You guys.

RDR2 number one? Better than GTA5 , Far Cry 5, and Skyrim.? Not the RDR2 i played.

Why do these sites post titles that aren't actual open worlds? Waste of time.

@NoCode23 Though I think Bethesda's reputation has plummeted, I agree. RDR2 was nothing special. Just another tedious game with many, many flaws, and a money hungry gaming company who's still polishing their golden turd.

Death stranding over grand theft auto 5 is the joke of the year.gta is so fun.word up son

@playstation1995 Yea son GTAV still gets treated like a last gen game but it's better than AC or DS by miles no matter if it's old. And HZD should be top 5. But at least RDR2 is #1 😉

@TheArt RDR2 remains undisputed king. Far out!

@TheArt. Gta 5 is so beautiful it was a good looking game on ps3.now on ps4 it looks better.and theres so much to do.word up son

Infamous in the list and no days gone?!! Really now?
Infamous's empty and hollow world is better than the massive, alive and beautiful world of days gone?
Not to mention the overall game quality which is far superior again..