Waiting for GTA 6? Play These Great Games Now
By: Isaiah Mccall
Tags: Features, Gaming, Digital Life, Technology, Videogames

Waiting for GTA 6? Play These Great Games Now

There are plenty of games like Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto. Your Saints Row, Just Causes, and Watch Dogs of the world. But you already know all about those. Instead, let’s talk about the games like GTA, but for the gamer who wants to get out of his or her comfort zone.

These five titles aren’t exact copies of GTA, but still offer mature subject material, intense gameplay, and epic storylines like Rockstar’s magnum opus.

Here are five underrated games to play while you wait for the next installment of GTA.

5. Payday 2

Payday 2 is all about co-op and is the most GTA Online of all the games on this list. In Payday 2 you’re a bank robber, and along with your crew of friends, you fight off waves of police to steal priceless valuables.

You can do this by sneaking your way through a museum to steal art or take on hordes of SWAT teams and storm out of banks in a blaze of glory.

What really makes Payday 2 shine are the many opportunities to complete a heist. There are endless ways to complete a mission but it’s up to you how creative you want to get.

4. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

Now it’s on to the weird picks…

Metal Gear Solid 3 ushered in maturity and complex storytelling to contemporary gaming. Sure it’s not the first game that comes to mind when thinking of games like GTA, but MSG3 certainly did a lot to inspire the way Rockstar creates games.

From a gameplay standpoint, MSG 3 is the best out of the legendary series. It delivers survival stealth-based combat in the jungles of the Soviet Union during the break-out of the Cold War. By the end of the story, your heart will feel ripped apart.

3. Star Wars: Republic Commando

Star Wars fan or not, Star Wars: Republic Commando is one of the best first-person shooting games of all-time. Released in 2005, the game was so far ahead of it’s time that the gameplay of today is finally catching up to it.

Republic Commando offers squad-based combat — like completing a heist in GTA — with brutally difficult missions that will challenge gamers of all skill levels. Additionally, the story will leave you teary-eyed by the end.

Sure you’re not gangbanging or getting lap dances in strip clubs. But Republic Commando is for appreciators of GTA’s combat and squad-based missions. Now let’s just hope this game gets a freaking sequel.

2. The Simpsons: Hit & Run

Now Simpsons: Hit & Run is the most GTA-like game on this list. But it’s seriously underrated unless you grew up in the GameCube/Xbox/PS2 era, a golden age of gaming for sure.

This was the game for kids who wanted to play GTA but couldn’t play it because of the one letter: M (the dreaded “Mature” rating).

Most kids had to play failed GTA clones. But every once in a while you got a masterpiece, and for that era, it was Simpsons: Hit & Run.

1. Bioshock

Now let’s go off the deep end to close out this list.

Bioshock is a controversial pick when it comes to “games like GTA,” but it’s another storytelling juggernaut. Maybe story isn’t your thing in the GTA franchise, but for me, it’s one of the main reasons I play the game. I love the characters, atmosphere, and anything that isn’t the online experience.

Bioshock has one of the most compelling stories ever told in gaming. You visit the city of Rapture, once a haven for creatives and geniuses from around the world which has since turned into a nightmare full of junkies and monsters in deep-diving equipment.

There are so many layers to unfold making this one of the best games ever created, and a fantastic option if you’re waiting out GTA 6.

Image from thexboxhub.

It’s hard to think about, but we are likely still years away from the next Grand Theft Auto game. With GTA Online still printing cash, there’s little impetus for Rockstar to hurry down the development path. What can you do about it? Not a damn thing, but you can play these games. Enjoy!