Playstation 3 Recommend me a free roam game

I am looking for something new for my PS3 to keep me occupied in between boughts of getting my GT5 levels up!

I like games you can take your time with and have a free roam element which allows you to go off and mess around instead of doing 'the main quest'. Games I have in this genre are;

• Oblivion
• Falllout 3
• Fallout NV
• Just Cause (1 & 2 on various platforms).
• Mercenaries (2 I think).
• Red Dead Redemption.
• GTA IV
• The Saboteur
• Assassins Creed (1, 2 and Brotherhood).
• Bioshock 1 & 2 (Ok, doesn't quite fit but they are sort of free roam).
• Borderlands
• Infamous
• Crackdown (2 I think - whatever the last one was)

What I like about these games is that they are relatively slow pace, and you can spend hours just exploring and 'doing other stuff'.

To give you a sense of what I don't like, I have got the following games recently and I haven't really enjoyed them...

Castlevania Lord Of Shadows - just a case of button mash then boss, button mash then boss - rinse and repeat. Not for me.
Demon's Souls - too bloomin' hard and frustrating - managed to kill one demon but after hours of trying just end up dying and dying and dying and ending up with no souls. This game made me want to commit acts of violence against innocent inanimate objects!

Is there anything out there that I have missed or overlooked that might fit the bill?

 

Infamous.

 

Ah yes - forgot that one! I will edit the list as one I own already!

 

What about Saints row 2? Red Dead Redemption? Prototype? Far Cry?

 

I really enjoyed Burnout Paradise for it's free roaming play - and I'm not even a racing game fan. You can just spend hours exploring.

As for Demon's Souls a few tips to help with frustration:

Start with Royalty. Keep your shield in your left hand and hold it up through every fight (you can defend with a shield and attack with the rapier at the same time).

Go slowly and fight one enemy at a time.

Soul Arrow will pretty much kill anything on level 1 except the red knight and the dragons.

Look for a walkthrough for the first level, complete it and then farm the red knight to level up.

Get the Crescent Falchion from 4-1 as soon as you feel capable. (There is a way to get it without facing the nasty that's guarding it).

After that the game is a lot of fun and a lot less frustrating.

BTW there's a basic guide here (http://uk.guides.ign.com/guides/14242310/) but you can use youtube to help with difficult sections.

 

I have to agree, prototype seems like the perfect game for you. That is if you don't mind a bit of gore.

 

Thanks everyone!

I have all the Burnout games (as well as NFS Hot Persuit) and have played the Saints Row series (1 was rubbish, 2 was good).

I will give Prototype a go - I saw my nephew had played it on the 360 and just assumed it must be a hack and slash button-basher!

I may also give Demon's Souls another go a bit later - I just can't get my head round how hard the final bosses are. I can get my head round moving slowly and killing one thing at a time and can usually get to the last boss on the level I am on without dying (it's the one with a spider that shoots webs and fire). But then I die in about three seconds as the web stops me from evading the fire and two hits from the fire kills me (by the time I get to him I have no herbs left and no souls to buy them with!!). I will study the play-through but in the meantime will try and pick up Prototype!

 

Mass Effect 2 is quite popular, with the 3rd one on the way it might be worth playing through them in order to have a nice long flowing story (though for the first game you'd have to use the PC/360 for now). Should last you a fair bit of time if you go all over the place doing everything possible.

Dragon Age is free roam to a minimal extent, you can go to whichever place on the map you feel like but travelling between places is automatic and each place contains a bit of story that sometimes tends to lock you in that area.

Bully is a nice free roam once you unlock the school gates, it should be easy to get into if you've been playing GTA games and the story is a nice change. You may get a little overloaded by the cheap humour but it's fun nevertheless. It's a little old being a PS2 game, but still worth it... or you could get it on the PC if you're not bothered about what platform to play on.

 

Thanks again. I have Dragon Age (Origins) on the PC and have enjoyed that up to a point. Not played Bully - didn't even realise that was still available! May get ME2 for the 360 as thats where I played ME1, but I am intrigued as to whether ME2 on the PS3 is any different to the ME2 on the 360/PC.

Going to try and find Prototype pre-owned for now.

 

Sounds like you've already got everything,

 

Get a bow and around 100 arrows. Equip the thief's ring. As you enter the fog move directly left. A few feet in front of you the tunnel has a little bit of rock sticking out. Stand directly behind it and the spider's fireballs can't hit you. Equip the bow in sniper mode and fire away. Every now and then the web will hit you but it doesn't matter as it won't do enough damage to bother you and you'd have plenty of time to heal even if it does.

Having said all of that, the best advice I can give you is to spend some time farming level 1-1 for souls. Even without using the various methods for killing the red knight (2000 souls) you can still amass >1500 souls in 10 minutes:

Start the level, kill everything on the opening bridge. Go left and climb the tower killing the fire throwing baddies as you go up the stairs. At the top kill the Blue Knight that guards the first fog door. Kill all the others on the wall. Kill the red knight (if you can). Back to the fog door, go through it and down the stairs. Clear the area all the way to the scaffold with the crossbowmen snipers. Climb to the first level, kill the lower sniper, then prepare and kill the Blue knight (quickly to avoid being hit by arrows) then kill the other sniper.

Back down the scaffold then down the steps and kill the 4 baddies. Break the stuff blocking the archway and go in slowly, killing the axe wielder who comes around the corner. Run into the room and kill the Blue knight at the far end. Turn around and go all the way back to the nexus, warp out, spend your souls and repeat.

Do that for an hour and you'll collect plenty of healing grass and enough souls to level up plenty.

BTW if you don't have a bow you can get one on 1-2 at the top of the second tower.

 

Thanks very much for this! I did not realise that you could come out again with your souls in tact- I thought you had to carry on until the end! This will make life a lot easier. OK, yes I am a bit stupid, but I have to say that there is not a lot of info with the game itself that makes things obvious! Damn I must have lost thousands of souls without needing too!!

I have read a couple of things briefly and see references to 1-1, 1-2 etc. How do I know which is which when I am in the Nexus?

I might just give this another go before spending cash I don't have!

 

Yakuza 3 is a fairly good free roaming game, rather slow at the start, but after an hour or so really opens up. It's sort of a hybrid between a JRPG and GTA (just without the car hijacking) Theres a demo on PSN, and it should be fairly cheap anyway now.

 

Thanks - that looks interesting I'll check out the demo later.

 

People refer to the levels by number rather than name, so Boletarian Palace's (BP for short) first level (starting level) is 1-1 with the first number referencing the place (BP) and the second "part". So, for instance, once you complete 1-1, when you touch the BP archstone you get two choices, the second of which is "Phalanx Archstone" which would be referenced as 1-2.

The worlds are:

Boletarian Palace (1)
Stonefang Tunnel (2)
Tower of Latria (3)
Shrine of Storms (4)
Valley of Defilement (5)

BTW, once you feel you've levelled enough go to 4-1 and get the talisman of god and crescent falchion (look for youtube vids). The falchion is brill (physical and magic damage) and the talisman will allow you to buy Evacuate (20,000 souls) which gives you the ability to warp directly back to the nexus and keep all your souls - a real timesaver for farming.

 

@Whirly - great that will help a lot. I think I will need to do 1-1 a few times before attempting 2-1's Spider Boss.

Next question! Do you level up as you go like in a traditional RPG (assigning extra stats as you go) - or is it just a case of hoarding souls and buying equipment?

You can tell I did not research this game first - I just went on a recommendation!!

@Kiytan - there is no demo for Yakuza 3 on PSN - I have downloaded the vids though and will take a look later.

 

I tend to have a goal (eg. getting my STR to 22 to use the Purple Flame shield) and spend the souls I have every time I go to the nexus. That way, should I find myself dead without the opportunity to recover the lost souls I haven't lost too much. Remember to repair you stuff regularly. If you don't have the soul arrow spell it is VERY useful so save up for it (you should have the wooden catalyst by now).

I don't use the "unknown/hero" souls in the nexus. I save them for when I find myself in need of souls in an emergency (eg finding a merchant on a level). Never use demon souls for their monetary value as they are needed for weapon upgrades and spells.

Also, it's generally a good idea to suicide in the nexus before attempting a level as dying in a level affects the world tendency unless you are in spirit form.

My advice is that you concentrate on getting your vitality and endurance up first. That gives you enough HP to survive the first hit in a lot of the ambushes and enough stamina to use your shield/attack effectively.

Oh yes, and get used to holding your shield up as often as possible (be careful as stamina regenerates much slower with the shield up)

 

Mafia II?

 

Mafia II was a huge disappointment IMO, I really couldn't get into it. It had the potential to be a great game, but I don't think it lived up to it. Maybe my expectations were too high, but it really was bad.

Bully is a great shout. I had fun with this when it came out, but it is pretty old now. Could find it dirt cheap though.

 

A couple of things to add, only dying in body form will reduce your tendency in a world. If you aren't fussed about being pure white then feel free to die. You can only lose 1 point of tendency per level if you don't use any ephemeral eyes, and the boss will give you 1 point back after killing it. Any pure white events will still be there as well, you don't need to be pure when first going through an area.

Second note: the game is very new game+ centric. It has a lot of possibility to play through many times in many different ways, which may appeal to your tastes once you get more confident in your gameplay. One of the upsides of this is that you can get ever boss's soul again on later playthroughs. If you're unsure then yes. Save your boss souls until you know how to spend them (wikis are useful for saving you the trouble of running around finding what you can buy) but if you're sure that you have no use for the soul then go ahead and eat it. The souls gained will be constant regardless of playthrough, so they're really only useful on the first couple playthroughs. In contrast, they typical purchase powerful spells or craft powerful items which you may not even be able to use on your first playthrough! Example: The first boss's soul is used to make a spear which I knew I would not be able to make on my first playthrough, and the soul is also worth very little souls (4k or so) so I ate it at a level when it would still have an effect.