Sandbox-style FPS games

Anyone know any FPS games that have that "open-world" feel to them, besides Postal 2 that I've played for far too long? I know that Far Cry had some open-ended, sandbox elements to it, but are there any from the current and upcoming generation of FPS games that will give endless possibilities of what you can do?

Deus Ex!! Come on! Don't play the second one though 8(

Crysis and Assassin's Creed both claim to be flexible.

I don't know of any truly 'flexible' sand-box FPS games, but I do know STALKER is pretty damn close, bug-ridden & 'love it or hate it' as it is....

Great, I'll most certainly look into one of those, if not maybe two by the time my PC build is complete.
I hear that Bioshock isn't necessarily the game we all thought it was gonna be, so that may or may not be the one to go with. Crysis and Stalker may probably be amongst the best to think about, I'll keep those in mind.

I've enjoyed F.E.A.R. and Half-Life 2, and enjoyed the open interactivity there, but just felt that after a while, even tho the quality was great, the openness was just a little off, imho. Heh, it almost seems like hardly anything was as open-ended as old Duke 3D and/or Doom II used to be, but some are good enough now, but boy, seems like the prime of FPS games seemed to have lost its touch almost 10 years ago. Sad, but true.

I think developers need to stop thinking "How can I make this level operate like an open-ended simulation?", and instead think "How can I make this open-ended simulation operate like a level?".

Instead of making predefined goals and objectives that you need to achieve, just set up an interesting situation in a complex simulation and let the player resolve the issue on their own (with some "procedural objectives" being created for you if you want). Of course, this would be extremely difficult and complex to achieve with any level of detail and quality, but I think the results would be worth it.

(And this applies to any game genre, not just FPS)

Tabula Rasa or any MMOFPS

Oblivion...

Oh wait, that's not a shooter. :)

The newest one using this approach is Medal of Honor: Airborne, where you are parachuted right into the action... the map is not linear, and in fact you can even guide your parachute and decide where to land. Actually you can find yourself dying and being parachuted again just to notice that the second time you are reaching the objective by following a totally different route.

Being an airborne soldier there isn't much you can do but secure and advance, though it limits the impression of fighting against scripted enemies (while there surely there are lots of scripted elements) with non linear maps and by having an aggressive AI.

GTA vicecity etc are really the best example of a sandbox game, if it was FPS. I think theres a problem with open levels alot them turn into, "Get to the red dot on the mini map". which gets dull real quick.

Battlefield 2

The various GTA games are the best examples of sandbox shooter type games - stuff like Battlefield 2, Far Cry, MoH Airborne etc.. just have large maps, but there's not much scope for doing stuff apart from the mission assigned.

Having completed Bioshock, I would say it isn't particularly open-ended at all. I wouldn't ever bother re-playing it, I don't think. That said, it is a very well produced FPS, with a great story, interesting gfx that make you want to stand around and admire the scenery, decent gameplay and loads of power-ups, so I still recommend it.

Well, along with a few mods and some custom mapping, most current addons for Duke 3D that I've seen may let you make a level in such a way that you can go anywhere in a map and do anything, like build a whole city setting, as long as you have a powerful enough machine for the FPS rates to be high enough, and be able to go into any building that has interactivity in it. I dunno how that would work, but a game from 10 years ago could probably have more of that sandbox feel over anything like Doom 3 or Deus Ex.

Sorry Guys, other than runninq around a level with respawning enemies, I don't understand how this could be fun in a FPS. Can someone share their view on this Sandbox concept?

Tabula Rasa.

See above.

Upcoming, there is FarCry 2, which sounds very unique. Their presentations make the game seem like just a single huge (50 km) sandbox with seamless loading. Still waiting for the "gotcha", which probably exists (or will exist), but even so it is definitely going to be very open-ended.

I liked far cry, its a bit long in the tooth now, but I liked the possibilities on the islands, the AI wasn't the greatest but there were enough variables to give you lots of opportunities to be clever and use stealth. That plus it was one of the few games to offer decent sniping capabilities across long ranges.

I Quite liked Medal of honour Airborn too, I wasn't expecting to like it. The last good one was the first game. Too short but a lot of fun whilst it lasted.

I Looked at some videos of Tabula Rasa and it just doesn't look interesting. Seems to be a king of MMO FPS game, like the LOTR one, only with guns.

Far Cry was a cool game, but I don't think the stealth aspects of it worked too well though. It almost seemed like whenever I sniped someone, the whole entire base camp knew exactly where I was right away...

yeah, I felt that with farcry. I'd be running away, and the enemy would keep running straight towards me, it was like I have a flashing siren on my head.

crysis (which looks freaking awesome and has a demo coming out in 4 days) is supposed to be mega-sandbox

Yep, will most certainly be looking forward to Crysis, may pick that up, as well as S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Haven't gotten anything for a while, since I'm stuck with this dead-end laptop, and had an X360 and Wii to play with. Now it's about plumb time I came back to the PC again. How much I miss FPS gaming on the old keyboard/mouse, but I felt it was right to come back to a desktop again. Might as well see what else we can expect...