American Fugitive
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Top Critic
American Fugitive hits most of the bullet points you look for in a functional open world game, but some glaring omissions, sparseness to the world, and a lack of developed characters keep it from being GTA in the boonies you might hope for. This far into the Switch life cycle, you can find better alternatives for your open world fix.
Top Critic
A likeable, car chase-riddled sandbox crime spree that updates the original pre-3D Grand Theft Auto games into a more modern play experience.
Top Critic
A new game in the vein of GTA Chinatown Wars is something that should work quite well, but while American Fugitive has some good ideas it fails to deliver on the execution, especially with the Switch version's wonky frame rate. American Fugitive takes the promise it had, prangs it on a lamp post, and gives it a wanted level.
Top Critic
If you're not looking for anything particularly original, American Fugitive is a decent adventure with enough good ideas and atmosphere to keep you interested.
Top Critic
Ultimately, I would say that American Fugitive is worth a buy if you're willing to look past its issues and just enjoy the ride. If you're looking for a title that will knock your socks off, though, this isn't the game for you.
Top Critic
This top-down retro journey into the 1980s criminal underworld pairs car chases and con artistry
Top Critic
American Fugitive is good in spots. And those spots are fun. But on the whole, the game just barely keeps up with its own scope of ambition.
Top Critic
American Fugitive is a neat take on the top-down crime drama. I like a lot of its ideas, while others hold it back. I would love to see more from this team with these ideas in mind. Clean up the padding and add fast travel and this game could really be something special. Also, give me the option to zoom the camera out a little more, as it stands it feels a little too close to avoid oncoming traffic.
Top Critic
Ultimately, American Fugitive lives and dies by its gameplay. Driving around and tearing through Redrock County is fun, destructive, and weirdly cathartic. Casing buildings and barely escaping before the police show up is breathtakingly thrilling.
Top Critic
American Fugitive is an exceptional open world playground for dumb fun, but it fails to capitalise on that when tailored mission design is brought into the fold. One too many repetitive objectives drag the experience down to a crawl, but for some, the narrative will be just about enough to make it worthwhile.
Top Critic
A charmingly old-fashioned crime epic, American Fugitive's ambitious intentions are summarily undercut by a raft of poor design decisions and technical issues.
Top Critic
Overall it feels a little like death by a thousand cuts with American Fugitive, with one too many niggling little problems letting the whole thing down.
Top Critic
Like a spiritual successor to GTA2 American Fugitive will see you running afoul of the law with a touch of Dukes of Hazard thrown in.
Top Critic
Although Fallen Tree Games is a small studio who mostly focused on mobile games until now, they managed to develop a great title using ideas and mechanisms that used to entertain us a lot, and if not for a few shortcomings here and there (probably because of budget limits) it could have done even better.
Review in Persian | Read full review
Top Critic
There is a lot to do in American Fugitive, and a lot of it works well. It hits that sweet spot where everything holds up whether you're out on missions or just driving around and exploring. You can definitely feel the game's limitations, but that doesn't feel like a problem -- many of them add to the charm that American Fugitive brings to the table.
American Fugitive is plagued by poor controls, runs inconsistently and suffers frequent and annoying game crashes. Throw in awful loading times, and you’ve got some big issues. It could have been a GTA clone; it’s just a shame that it’s not fun.
American Fugitive is solid, it does what it does well without really picking a lane and allowing the character of Will Riley to shine through. What feels like a story arc that is justifiable (you see Will not commit the crime he’s in prison for, after all), it’s soon forgotten for murderous mayhem and whilst I’ve complained about it somewhat, what’s on offer is really good fun. It’s an easy game to recommend, but I think more so than usual it’s important to know what the game is before you jump in. It’s fun and frantic and a nice love letter to that which its inspired by.
American Fugitive is a pleasant variation on GTA: Chinatown Wars that promised more than it delivered, but you can tell that the developers tried as hard as they could.
Review in Czech | Read full review
Despite the repetitive and monotonous nature of American Fugitive, I really enjoyed the story and the unique gameplay aspects. Rather than a simple twin-stick shooter or GTA classic clone, the developers introduced realistic mechanics such as breaking and entering and having to avoid being seen whilst carrying out criminal actions. There’s a lot of game to play through, although you’ll instantly feel the strain of the limited amount of gameplay mechanics on offer after a few hours. As such, I’d say this game is perfect for playing in small bursts as the missions aren’t too long, doing that will eliminate any monotonous and déjà vu gameplay.
American Fugitive is a fantastic top-down game if you want to play something fun, doesn’t take that much thought and allows you to cause lots of death and destruction. With a strong nod to GTA, this is not simply a clone of a game from yesteryear, this is a homage to an amazing game with added elements of their own thrown in for good measure. Retailing at around £17.99, come and join in the chaos and find your father’s killer! I award American Fugitive the Thumb Culture Gold Award!
