Open world games give players ultimate freedom, offering a huge world filled with stuff to do and places to see.
Of course, to get to these places, you’ll need to traverse the world, which could be as big as, well, infinity.
Some games just allow you to run (and some, like Fallout 3, don’t even allow that), but others really take this traversal conundrum and run with it.
They make some really interesting traversal mechanics, with the best making it so you forget that you can even fast-travel in these games, preferring instead to traverse the open world one step, leap or swing at a time.
The following traversal mechanics are ranked by helpfulness and fun factor for travelling.
10
Pokemon Legends: Arceus | Rideable Pokemon
2022 | Game Freak | Nintendo Switch
It’s long been a feature of the main series of Pokemon games to offer a way of traversing through the world on the backs of these Pocket Monsters.
From surfing on Lapras in the original game to flying on Latios/Latias in Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, players have been able to use a multitude of Pokemon for the means of traversal.
However, I’d argue that Legends: Arceus does the best job of them all with this, with some great choices of Pokemon to use, from Ursaluna to Sneasler and allowing for a higher degree of control by the player.
No longer are you bound to just press a button and let the game fly you to a location or climb up a mountain, but instead, you get to do it yourself.
Mind-blowing this is not, but it certainly makes traversing the world of Legends: Arceus much more enjoyable, especially with the ease of throwing Pokeballs in this game and the ability to stay in real-time for catching.
9
Grand Theft Auto V | Stealing Vehicles
2013 | Rockstar North | PS3, PS4, PS5, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC
Talk about hitting a great system from the get go with Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto. The ability to steal any car and use it to traverse the world makes the entire place a playground.
This is especially true once the series made its jump to 3D with GTA III and the simple amount of variety in GTA V makes it the best of the series so far.
Driving a truck, but see a Lamborghini in the distance? Block it off and jump into the car to add it to your collection (if you can get to the garage without wrecking it, of course).
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Nothing beats the thrill of being on a police chase and making a mad dash for a sports car to escape or intricately planning how to get the jet fighter from the army base.
To be honest, I’ve spent many an hour just picking a spot on the map and travelling using whatever I can get my hands on, enjoying the sights and the radio player.
8
Forspoken | Magic Powers
2023 | Luminous Productions | PS5 and PC
Forkspoken is an action-RPG open-world game, published by Square Enix, which emphasises quick movement, parkour and boosts to get you to fly over the world in style.
Of course, you need to unlock all of these abilities first, so the first couple of hours can drag, but you’ll soon be leaping over terrain like The Flash, jumping between enemies, and generally feeling like a superhero.
You can combine abilities such as Zip to create grappling hooks and Scale to create Phantom Footholds to climb even the biggest structures in the game.
Some of the world is blocked off, Metroidvania style, until you can return with the abilities needed to reach them, offering more reason to not stay in your lane when it comes to a movement style.
Forspoken is a game with good bones, but is in desperate need of a sequel, with a bit more care taken to the environments and design to allow the rest of the game to catch up to these, admittedly fun, traversal mechanics.
7
The Legend of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom | Zonai Devices
2023 | Nintendo EPD | Nintendo Switch/2
Tears of the Kingdom, for better or worse, takes Breath of the Wild’s already packed amount of traversal opportunities and adds in the ability to create your own, via the Zonai Devices.
Ancient artifacts which can be spawned in and attached to each other via Link’s Ultrahand ability, the Zonai Devices allow for creations from a basic boat to a hover bike or a mech.
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Now, the level of complexity for these builds is really up to you, as a steering device and two fans are enough to create a decent vehicle for most situations, but you can also dive in and over-engineer your builds if that’s what you want to do.
While not my personal favourite style of traversal, as it requires more pre-planning rather than spontaneous adaptations in the moment, I can appreciate the sheer spectacle that some people can create with their Zonai Devices and some forethought.
6
inFAMOUS Second Son | Smoke And Neon Powers
2014 | Sucker Punch Productions | PS4
inFAMOUS Second Son is the third game in the inFAMOUS series, created by Sucker Punch Productions, of Ghost of Tsushima fame.
In Second Son, you play as Delsin Rowe, who, after an (un)fortunate accident, finds himself with superpowers, including many powers revolving around traversal.
You’ll be using smoke to traverse through vents or neon to climb up buildings, alongside the regular parkour mechanics of these types of third-person action games.
However, you also need to keep an eye on your reserves, as each element must be collected in the world from power sources, including neon signs and exploded vehicles for smoke, adding an extra material-management angle to the game.
5
Dying Light | Parkour
2015 | Techland | PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC
In Dying Light, Techland partnered with parkour pioneer David Belle, to create a zombie-apocalypse action-adventure game in which traversing the city via rooftop is not only cool but required.
For in Dying Light, the world is overrun by zombies, which, as soon as night falls, become extremely aggressive and dangerous.
You might be wandering around, minding your own business, and then night falls and it becomes a race against time to get to safety before you’re overrun.
Thankfully, alongside the parkour skills of leaping, sliding, jumping etc. you also get access to a grappling hook and to over 100 weapons.
You can upgrade your parkour skills by, well, doing more parkour, which unlocks agility points that can be used to unlock skills on the skill tree.
Overall, this is a great system, and one which I would have highlighted with the latest entry, The Beast, if that game didn’t spend a majority of the time in an flat open area with vehicles, for some reason.
4
The Legend of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild | Sand Seal Shield Sleds
2017 | Nintendo EPD | Nintendo Switch/2
In Breath of the Wild you have plenty of traversal options at your disposal from the parachute, to climbing, to horse-riding and even using a bomb to make you fly if you’re a speed runner.
But I’d say none are more fun or descriptive of Nintendo’s approach to gameplay than being able to shield sled.
If you’re going down a hill and jump and then press ZR to equip your shield, you’ll start zooming down the hill, as long as the floor doesn’t have too many bumps, allowing you to easily descend a mountain in style.
But what do you do if the terrain is flat? Well, attach your shield to a Sand Seal of course, and ride the sand-dunes the way nature intended!
You can catch a wild Sand Seal or rent one from the Gerudo, which allows for a faster variant which doesn’t run off when you stop, and even participate in Sand Seal races against the Gerudos.
3
Sunset Overdrive | Grind Rails
2014 | Insomniac Games | Xbox One and PC
Sunset Overdrive is both par for the course for Insomniac Games and a bit of an outlier. Focussing on fun, bright colors, a wacky tone and, of course, great traversal mechanics, Sunset Overdrive really feels like the precursor to Spiderman.
The entire game is built around the idea that you don’t want to stop moving, as you can quickly become overwhelmed by enemies if just moving on foot.
Instead, you’ll want to utilise the grind-rails set up in the city for quick traversal, alongside other mechanics including parkour, air-dashing and acrobatics.
If you do this while taking out enemies, then you’ll build up your Style Meter. This will unlock amplifications for you and your weapons, and as long as you keep your Style Meter up, you’ll become more and more powerful.
As an outlier to Insomniac’s portfolio, the game is an Xbox exclusive, which, for a now wholly Sony-owned property, can be hard to imagine. Much like with Forspoken, we can only hope for a sequel to allow us to explore the Awesomepocalypse one more time.
2
Just Cause 3 | Grappling Hook, Wingsuit And Parachute
2015 | Avalanche Studios | PS4, Xbox One and PC
Just Cause 3 might just be the ultimate game in making traversal fun.
A simple open world sandbox game which, rather than asking the big questions of good and evil, asks whether blowing up a bridge and flying through the debris will be fun – spoilers, it very much is.
Alongside the stalwarts of the modern times open world genre of driving, flying and sailing vehicles, you also have the ability to grapple to almost any surface and use the consequential momentum to slingshot you into the air and into your wingsuit.
An absolutely bonkers ability, which doesn’t pay much, if any heed to the pesky theories of aerodynamics, but instead just wants you to have fun.
Couple in the ability to use a parachute or grapple into the floor to stop your momentum and you’ve got a wild collection of abilities which makes fast-travel almost an insult for traversal.
Did I mention you can ride on the wing of a plane? Or on the roof of a car?
1
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 | Web-Swinging and Web Wing
2023 | Insomniac Games | PS5 and PC
So, you might be asking why Just Cause 3 isn’t top of the traversal list, given the praise? Well, while that game masters movement for a (quite super) human, it doesn’t allow you to become Spider-Man.
And, if a game doesn’t allow you to become The Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, then it has to drop a place, right?
The second game on this list from the legendary Insomniac Studios, Spider-Man 2 has you following the titular superhero as well as Miles Morales in an expanded New York, comprised of Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan.
Alongside the perfected web-slinging of Insomniac’s series, is the Web Wing, a wingsuit type gadget which both Spider-heroes can use, offering even more options for traversal in New York.
And, of course, you can always spend the time walking around New York, with your finger guns like in the third film.
