9 Ways All Open-World Video Games Are Starting To Suck

4. Crafting Systems Are Boring

While it's not a feature exclusive to sandbox games, you can't move for crafting systems in contemporary releases. As developers litter their environments with resources to scrounge, you'll no doubt spend a good chunk of time in modern titles browsing the crafting screen creating new ammo, weapons or armour.

But while the feature is present in just about every modern genre, open world games are more likely than any other to lazily implement it. Because for some developers, the addition of a crafting system means that they'll always have something for players to 'engage with' in their world that adds some sort of value, even if it just allows them to improve their inventory space or ammo capacity.

The problem is, just mindlessly picking up items isn't fun, and it's rare that any thought is actually put into the types of resources you're searching for or how they combine with other things in the world.

Plus it makes actually creating the weapon you want or the armour you need a complete chore. No longer are these items found in the environment, but instead the game will have you spending hours searching for visually uninteresting resources, just so you can actually craft the thing you wanted half an hour ago.