American Fugitive Reviews
American Fugitive, simply put, is fun. Fallen Tree Games has added its own unique twist to a classic gameplay formula, and utilised a simple but engaging narrative and a beautiful original score to maintain the player's interest until the very end. Despite a few minor flaws in gameplay, the game stands strong against its competition. Players looking for a fast, fun, and mature sandbox game should not miss American Fugitive.
A likeable, car chase-riddled sandbox crime spree that updates the original pre-3D Grand Theft Auto games into a more modern play experience.
A charmingly old-fashioned crime epic, American Fugitive's ambitious intentions are summarily undercut by a raft of poor design decisions and technical issues.
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.
This top-down retro journey into the 1980s criminal underworld pairs car chases and con artistry
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.
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.
Will Riley (the game’s main protagonist) has been caught standing over the body of his recently murdered father. Innocent of the crime of patricide, Will, unfortunately, ends up on the guilty side and gets some hard time. Taking inspiration from an excellent TV series about prison breaking (cough), Will takes a sharp exit out of a window in the medical bay and escapes from his recent incarceration.
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.
Way back in the days of the original top-down Grand Theft Auto a new genre was roughly born, one that put an emphasis on a little crime, chaos, and fun along the way...
Curve Digital's new Nintendo Switch game American Fugitive calls back to the original GTA series, with a healthy dose of B&E and country carnage.
While it initially looks like a simple top-down arcade game, American Fugitive hides a lot under the hood.
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.
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.
Older ones will be nostalgic about it, younger ones will see it as an "old-new" way. Some will even risk saying it is a remastered version of GTA 1 & 2. The fact is, 20 years have passed and GTA 2 has become a CASUAL GAME. As it is American Fugitive. It’s an extremely EASY game that allows you to chill, lay back and play with the measure of violence it requires. Set expectations correctly, and you will have a good time.
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.
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
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.
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!
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.