Top 10 Games Like GTA You Need to Play

Grand Theft Auto redefined what an open-world game could be. Since its early days as a top-down chaos simulator through to the sprawling, cinematic worlds of GTA IV and GTA V, the series has set the gold standard for sandbox freedom: steal a car, rob a store, cause a five-star police riot, and then just… wander off to see a sunset.

That specific blend of freedom, mischief, and narrative weight is hard to replicate, but plenty of developers have tried — and several have succeeded in carving out their own identity while still scratching that GTA itch.

If you’ve been searching for top 10 games like GTA, you’re probably in one of two camps: waiting on the next mainline GTA release, or you’ve already sunk hundreds of hours into GTA Online and want something new.

Either way, this list rounds up ten of the best open-world games like GTA — crime games, sandbox games, and GTA alternatives that capture what makes Grand Theft Auto great: dense open worlds, gripping crime stories, vehicular chaos, and total player freedom.

Related searches this list covers: games similar to GTA, best open-world crime games, GTA style games for PC and console, sandbox games like Grand Theft Auto, open-world action games, best games like GTA 5, crime simulator games.

Top 10 Games Like GTA You Need to Play: Quick Comparison

#	Game	Setting	Vibe / Key Feature	Platforms
1	Red Dead Redemption 2	Wild West, late 1800s	Cinematic outlaw story, hunting, bounty hunting	PC, PS4/PS5, Xbox One/Series X\|S
2	Saints Row: The Third / IV	Fictional modern city (Steelport)	Over-the-top comedy, superpowers, absurd weapons	PC, PS3/PS4, Xbox 360/One
3	Sleeping Dogs	Hong Kong	Undercover cop story, Kung Fu-style melee combat	PC, PS4, Xbox One (Definitive Edition)
4	Watch Dogs 2	San Francisco Bay Area	Hacking mechanics, playful hacker-collective tone	PC, PS4, Xbox One
5	Mafia: Definitive Edition / Mafia II	1930s–1950s fictional US cities	Grounded mob-movie storytelling, period authenticity	PC, PS4/PS5, Xbox One/Series X\|S
6	Just Cause 4 / 3	Fictional tropical island nation	Physics-based destruction, grappling hook chaos	PC, PS4, Xbox One
7	Cyberpunk 2077	Night City (sci-fi future)	First-person RPG, hacking, branching story	PC, PS4/PS5, Xbox One/Series X\|S
8	Yakuza / Like a Dragon Series	Kamurocho, Japan	Dense side content, brawler and RPG combat	PC, PS4/PS5, Xbox One/Series X\|S
9	Mafia III	New Bordeaux (1968, fictional New Orleans)	Revenge story, territory-takeover gameplay	PC, PS4, Xbox One
10	Sunset Overdrive	Fictional city (Sunset City)	Traversal-based combat, punk-rock humor	PC, Xbox One

1. Red Dead Redemption 2

It might seem like an odd place to start on a list of games like GTA, but Red Dead Redemption 2 is made by the same studio behind GTA, and it shows.

Rockstar Games poured the same obsessive attention to detail into this Wild West epic that it puts into its crime sagas — the difference is the setting and pace. Instead of city blocks and highways, you get sprawling plains, mountain ranges, and small frontier towns, all rendered with staggering realism.

The story follows Arthur Morgan, an outlaw grappling with loyalty, morality, and a dying way of life as the modern world closes in around him.

It’s slower and more contemplative than a typical GTA game, but the open-world systems — hunting, bounty hunting, train robberies, gang shootouts — deliver the same sense of freedom and consequence. If you love GTA for its atmosphere and world-building as much as its chaos, RDR2 might be the most rewarding game on this list.

2. Saints Row: The Third / Saints Row IV

If GTA is the “serious” open-world crime game, Saints Row is its unhinged, self-aware cousin. The Saints Row series started as a fairly straightforward GTA clone but quickly evolved into something much weirder and funnier.

By the time you get to The Third and especially Saints Row IV, you’re wielding giant purple dildo bats, piloting mechs, and eventually gaining literal superpowers after your gang leader becomes President of the United States and then gets sucked into a Matrix-style simulation.

It’s absurd, over-the-top, and doesn’t take itself seriously for a second — which is exactly the point. If you’ve ever wished GTA leaned harder into its more ridiculous side missions, Saints Row is built entirely around that impulse. The open world is smaller and less detailed than Rockstar’s efforts, but the sheer creative chaos more than makes up for it.

3. Sleeping Dogs

Sleeping Dogs is often overlooked, but it deserves far more recognition. Set in a beautifully realized version of Hong Kong, the game puts you in the shoes of an undercover cop infiltrating a triad gang.

What sets it apart from GTA is its combat system — rather than relying mostly on gunplay, Sleeping Dogs features fluid, Kung Fu-inspired melee combat clearly inspired by Hong Kong action cinema.

The world feels alive and dense, packed with street food stalls, neon-soaked alleyways, and a genuinely engaging undercover-cop narrative that explores loyalty and identity.

Car chases, boat pursuits, and gunfights are all present, but the martial arts combat is the real standout, giving Sleeping Dogs a flavor and rhythm that’s distinct from anything Rockstar has made.

4. Watch Dogs 2

The original Watch Dogs leaned too heavily into a dour, self-serious tone, but Watch Dogs 2 course-corrected in a big way. Set in a vibrant, colorful recreation of San Francisco and the Bay Area, the sequel swaps grim vigilantism for a more playful hacker-collective vibe, following Marcus Holloway as he joins a group fighting against mass surveillance and corporate overreach.

The open world is dense with things to do, and the hacking mechanics offer a genuinely different way to interact with the sandbox — you can manipulate traffic lights, hijack cars remotely, hack phones for information, and use drones to scout areas without ever pulling a trigger.

It still has plenty of driving, shooting, and chaos when you want it, but the tech-driven approach to mayhem makes it feel meaningfully different from GTA’s more traditional criminal underworld.

5. Mafia: Definitive Edition (and Mafia II)

For players who want the “crime saga” side of GTA without the modern-day chaos, the Mafia series is essential. Mafia: Definitive Edition — a full remake of the 2002 original — tells the story of Tommy Angelo, a cab driver who gets pulled into the world of organized crime in the fictional 1930s city of Lost Heaven.

It’s a slower, more grounded, and heavily narrative-focused experience compared to GTA, prioritizing period authenticity and character drama over sandbox chaos.

Mafia II, set in the 1940s and ’50s, continues this tradition with a story about family, betrayal, and the American Dream gone sour. Neither game offers quite the same breadth of side content as GTA, but if what you love about Rockstar’s games is the mob-movie storytelling, the Mafia series delivers some of the best crime narratives in gaming.

6. Just Cause 4 (or Just Cause 3)

Where Saints Row turns the chaos dial up on GTA’s humor, Just Cause turns it up on GTA’s physics-based destruction. Playing as Rico Rodriguez, a one-man wrecking crew armed with a grappling hook, parachute, and wingsuit, Just Cause games are less about narrative and more about pure sandbox spectacle. You can tether a helicopter to a fuel tank, launch enemies into the sky, base jump off mountains, and blow up entire military bases just because you can.

Just Cause 4 refines the traversal systems from Just Cause 3, giving you nearly unlimited freedom to explore its tropical, storm-ravaged island setting. It doesn’t have GTA’s grounded crime-story feel, but if what draws you to GTA is the freedom to cause absurd, explosive chaos across a massive map, Just Cause might be even more satisfying.

7. Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 had a rocky launch, but years of patches and the excellent Phantom Liberty expansion have turned it into one of the best open-world sandbox games available — and a favorite pick among fans searching for GTA alternatives.

Set in Night City, a sprawling, vertical, neon-drenched metropolis, the game swaps GTA’s crime-family drama for cyberpunk mercenary work, corporate espionage, and body-modification culture.

It’s played primarily in first-person, which gives it a very different feel from GTA’s over-the-shoulder perspective, but the scale of freedom is comparable: you can steal cars, get into shootouts, hack security systems, and explore a dense, multi-layered city full of side stories and hidden content.

The RPG elements — skill trees, gear, and branching dialogue — add a layer of character progression that GTA doesn’t really have, making Night City feel like your character’s story rather than a fixed narrative.

8. Yakuza / Like a Dragon Series

The Yakuza series (rebranded as Like a Dragon in newer entries) offers a different flavor of open-world crime drama, rooted in Japanese culture and centered on the fictional red-light district of Kamurocho.

The open areas are much smaller than GTA’s sprawling maps, but they’re absurdly dense with things to do — karaoke, batting cages, arcade games, restaurants, side quests ranging from touching to utterly bizarre, and a combat system that ranges from brawler-style beatdowns to, in newer entries, full turn-based RPG battles.

What Yakuza lacks in map size, it makes up for in narrative depth and tonal whiplash — one moment you’re in a gut-wrenching crime drama about loyalty and betrayal, the next you’re helping a stranger find their missing cat for a side quest played entirely for laughs.

If you love GTA’s mix of serious crime storytelling and off-the-wall side content, Yakuza offers one of the most fully realized versions of that formula.

9. Mafia III

Set in 1968 in the fictional city of New Bordeaux (a stand-in for New Orleans), Mafia III follows Lincoln Clay, a Vietnam veteran seeking revenge against the mob family that betrayed him. Unlike its predecessors, Mafia III embraces open-world systems more fully, built around a territory-conquest structure where you dismantle different mob operations piece by piece across the city.

The game tackles heavier themes than most entries on this list, including racism in the American South during the civil rights era, giving its crime story real weight and stakes.

Combined with a killer period soundtrack and a moody, atmospheric city, Mafia III offers a grittier, more mature take on the open-world crime genre.

10. Sunset Overdrive

For a completely different flavor of open-world mayhem, Sunset Overdrive swaps guns-and-cars crime drama for pure, colorful, punk-rock chaos.

Set in a fictional city overrun by mutants after an energy-drink disaster goes horribly wrong, the game hands you a wildly inventive arsenal — think vinyl-record launchers and teddy-bear-bomb guns — and a traversal system built around grinding on power lines, bouncing off cars, and wall-running across rooftops without ever touching the ground.

Where GTA is grounded and cinematic, Sunset Overdrive is loud, self-aware, and dripping with irreverent humor, constantly poking fun at open-world game tropes while still delivering the core sandbox thrill of exploring a dense city and causing as much destruction as possible.

The combat rewards constant motion, turning traversal itself into a combat mechanic in a way few open-world games have matched. If you love GTA’s sense of freedom but want something faster, funnier, and less tethered to realism, Sunset Overdrive is a criminally underrated pick.

Final Thoughts on the Best Games Like GTA

What makes GTA so enduring isn’t just the crime stories or the driving mechanics — it’s the sense of total freedom within a living, breathing world.

Every game on this list captures a different facet of that appeal: RDR2 nails the atmosphere and narrative weight, Saints Row, Just Cause, and Sunset Overdrive lean into pure chaos, Sleeping Dogs and Yakuza bring distinct cultural settings and combat styles, and Cyberpunk 2077 pushes the formula into a full RPG direction.

There’s no single “best” substitute for GTA, because the series itself blends so many different elements — crime drama, dark comedy, driving, shooting, exploration — into one package. But if you’re craving more of that open-world freedom, any of these Top 10 Games Like GTA You Need to Play will scratch the itch in their own way.

Whether you search for open-world crime games, sandbox games like Grand Theft Auto, or the best GTA alternatives, this list has something to introduce you to a new favorite genre staple.

FAQ

1. What are the best games like GTA right now?

Red Dead Redemption 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Saints Row: The Third, and Sleeping Dogs are among the best open-world games like GTA, each offering a similar mix of freedom, crime, and chaos in a distinct setting.

2. Is there a game exactly like GTA?

No single game copies GTA exactly, but Saints Row comes closest in tone and structure, while Sleeping Dogs and Mafia offer similarly grounded crime stories in an open-world sandbox.

3. What is the best free or cheap GTA alternative?

Older titles like Saints Row: The Third, Sleeping Dogs, and Just Cause 3 are widely available at low prices during sales and deliver a very similar open-world crime experience to GTA.

4. Are there any GTA-style games with superpowers?

Yes — Saints Row IV and inFamous both blend open-world crime-city settings with superpowers, offering a more fantastical spin on the GTA formula.

5. What's a good GTA-like game for PC and console?

Cyberpunk 2077, Watch Dogs 2, and Red Dead Redemption 2 are all available on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox, making them accessible open-world picks no matter your platform.