I realized something as I was playing inFamous the other day: as I was crawling along buildings and electrically ziplining from area to area, whether it be on the railroad tracks, or the wires connecting buildings, I didn't care about the city anymore; I merely saw all the buildings, cars, pedestrians and enemies merely as obstacles that were blocking me from my destination.
This is a marked distinction from Grand Theft Auto 3, what I argue is the grandfather of modern sandbox games like inFamous, Prototype, the Spiderman series and many more sandbox games.
In GTA3, Liberty City came alive with bright lights, distinguishable civilians, and a wide variety of buildings that beckoned me to explore every nook and cranny of the area.
GTA4's release last year reignited that child-like glee of exploring a vibrant city, but it still lost its novelty; hailing a cab was tedious and getting from point A from point B felt like work.
That's what I feel like sandbox games today are becoming; it was cool a few years ago to run around a city and see what new features it had to offer, but now improved disk space and existing game engines allow for even bigger cities and areas.
Pretty soon XBOX360 and PS3 owners will be driving through cities completely modeled after New York, down to the falafel vendors.
But a bigger city doesn't appeal to me anymore and game developers need to figure out what the next step is going to be to enrich gameplay.
Many have already taken initiative through Sony and Microsoft's features of downloading games, offering addictive games that are cheap and don't take up a ton of time.
While I like exploring new places just as much as the next guy, there comes a point where gamers and have it all and done it all and that point for me came with GTA4; now sandbox games don't really appeal to me any longer.
I would, however, like to see virtual reality mix with open worlds to bring us to the next level of gaming, but as for using controllers, a linear story that keeps the player interested is fine with me.