American Fugitive
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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 a fun romp through a colourful, top-down GTA-inspired open-world crime-fest. While the game has some issues, such as repetitive missions, as well as stability problems on the Switch, it doesn't stop it from being an all-around fun and engaging title when you're actually playing.
Top Critic
With all the variety of story quests and nice graphics, American Fugitive is a very buggy and boring game
Review in Russian | Read full review
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
American Fugitive is fine if you can overlook its slew of flaws. From shaky AI to an overzealous crime detection system and spotty controls, there's enough here to make one quit the game rather quickly. It helps that the core aspect of the open-world gameplay and the small town setting are enough to keep some people interested. If you really want a throwback to the old GTA system, then this will do, but don't expect something as polished and varied as Retro City Rampage.
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
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.
A few technical issues – and the over-reaching arm of the law – tarnish American Fugitive slightly, but it’s a game with a wonderful sense of place, impressive levels of detail, and a slew of engaging gameplay mechanics.
Overall view of American Fugitive is that this could be a brilliant game on the Switch, it’s presentation is brilliant and it looks beautiful, there’s destruction to be had all around Redrock but the issues with the game mentioned above kind of hold this back, plus the bizarre choice when respawning after death just brings the game down from all out gang warfare to playing with super soakers. If you can get past the annoyances, I would say go for it and give the game a try, it does have potential but again, the downsides can’t be ignored.
