American Fugitive Reviews
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.
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.
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.
If you ignore the bad artificial intelligence of the police and actually the whole city, American Fugitive is quite a fun game, accompanied by a great musical background and its art graphics processing is great. The developers tried to create a game inspired by the good old classics and they succeeded to some extent. You can buy the game on Steam for €19.99.
Review in Czech | Read full review
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.
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.
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
A charmingly old-fashioned crime epic, American Fugitive's ambitious intentions are summarily undercut by a raft of poor design decisions and technical issues.
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.
This top-down retro journey into the 1980s criminal underworld pairs car chases and con artistry
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.
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.
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.
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...
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 Slovak | Read full review
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
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.
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.
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.