American Fugitive

[gbasden]

I stumbled across American Fugitive on Steam today. It's not the most compelling story, but it reminds me of the original Grand Theft Auto - a top down driving/shooting/thieving game. The vehicles feel fun and behave differently, whether a sports car, a dune buggy or a pickup. It's also cheap, at $15, so it was an easy pickup for me.

[coopasonic]

I had this on my wishlist for a long time and Humble was kind of enough to include it this month. I am not sure how far into the game I am, I imagine getting close to the end, but it's been a lot of fun for a fairly light game.

[Rumpy]

Bought it a few months ago and it will be my next game to play after I get done with Outcast Second Contact.

[Paradroid]

Yeah I played half an hour or so the other day and it had promise. But then Flight Simulator came out and I've played nothing since.

I liked how breaking into buildings worked. And also how peering through windows first will look suspicious to passers by.

[coopasonic]

I liked how breaking into buildings worked. And also how peering through windows first will look suspicious to passers by.

One of the most expensive skills will case a structure automatically as you approach. Saves time and suspicion.

[Rumpy]

Been enjoying this one quite a bit. Definitely a throwback to oldschool topdown GTA, but with 3D rendering. The controls feels pretty tight, especially on a gamepad. But there are a couple of things I'd likely improve, such as being able to zoom in and out with the camera and being able to change camera angle. Unless I'm missing something, it seems fixed, which can be annoying at times. Also, using guns can be quite difficult as aiming them can be a little tricky due to the perspective. I'd started out using the uzi the first time out they give you a mission with guys to shoot at, but I actually found it much easier using a standard pistol. I'd love to see an improvement on that, such as changing the color of the line when you're facing an ennemy or at least having some sort of reticule.

[coopasonic]

Yeah the gunplay is easily the most annoying part of the game, that yellow line can be hard to track when things get messy. There are a couple of the later fights that I had to restart several times to get through.

[Rumpy]

Another thing I've been finding frustrating is with some of the mission scenarios. Ok, so one mission has me use a tow-truck to steal an ATM machine, and no matter what, it seems that whenever you steal it, an alarm will sound, even if there are no witnesses. It seems scripted to do that. So then a chase ensues and the tow-truck is slow and you easily get in over your head as it escalates. You're somehow supposed to evade them before driving to the lockup, so how the heck am I supposed to do this?

[coopasonic]

You're somehow supposed to evade them before driving to the lockup, so how the heck am I supposed to do this?

Any time I needed to evade pursuit with a slower vehicle, I would go off-road, zig zag between buildings, basically trying to lose line of sight. Another option is to smash them into things. Oh and one other strategy that I found by accident is to stop and they will get out of their cars and then you take off again.

[Rumpy]

Ok, I'll have to try some of those. I was kind of wishing I'd be able to hide out in bushes or something, but the game doesn't seem to have a system like that unless I haven't encountered it yet. I've found that the police escalates rather quickly, and when they bring in the chopper, it's almost impossible to lose them. I've had it escalate to tanks while I was on foot once.

Funny thing happened with the AI the other day. The game has a similar fault to GTA when it comes to crimes being reported as being done by the player when they haven't done anything. I was in a parking lot, a car came in and ended up killing a pedestrian, and I waited around to see what would happen, and the police converged on me. I'd really like to see this kind of thing improved in open-world games overall.

One small but really neat thing I like is being able to take clothes from a clothesline. That's a brilliant detail that makes a lot of sense that I can't believe any GTA game hasn't used yet.

[Rumpy]

I think I've encountered a hilarious yet frustrating bug. In one mission, you're given a shotgun, which is actually a fairly good gun for mowing down guys. In one mission, you're told to meet up with a guy to get a new gun, where he then ambushes you. I tried to use my shotgun, but I couldn't fire it even though I had plenty of bullets. My guy only wanted to use it like a melee weapon.

[Rumpy]

Well, I finished this one. The story only seems to exist as a bunch of scenarios and is nothing special. It actually ends quite abruptly. Fun game if only for the driving physics. The shooting can be quite frustrating as it's not very accurate and hard to know where you're aiming. In the last several battles, I ended up just using my sprinting and knocking them out with a shovel as I found that far more effective than messing around with the guns.