It can be argued that the success of the Grand Theft Auto series came solely because of a change in perspective. After all, the series was already doing signature things, like licensed music mix in with absurd ads and giving you the freedom to do almost anything you wanted in an open world. Few people seemed to enjoy the top-down view, and the change to a standard third-person, behind-the-back viewpoint was all that was needed to get players interested in the title. Both the franchise and its contemporaries stuck with that viewpoint, and you saw only a few return to the top-down perspective for open-world crime sprees. Among one of the few games to try that classic GTA style is American Fugitive.

The story fits the basic mold of just about any crime-based game. You play the role of petty thief William Riley, who's dealing with a lot of familial problems, such as a crumbling marriage and estrangement from his father. He wakes up at three in the morning to answer his dad's call for help one last time. When William arrives at his father's farm, he has to break in to find his dad murdered. Just as he discovers this, the police arrive and arrest him, sending him immediately to prison after a speedy trial. After learning that the real murderer is still free, William busts out of prison and is on a mission to get revenge and clear his name, one crime at a time.

You'd think that the quest for revenge would play a big part in the story, but based on how the game progresses, that mission feels like an afterthought until the very end. Almost all of your time is spent doing stuff for everyone else, whether it's serving as an errand boy to deliver items, stealing an item, or killing someone. It's best to approach this title as one without a narrative.

Aside from taking on lots of missions, American Fugitive emulates almost everything that players have come to expect from open-world crime games, except for the fact that it takes place in a small town instead of a big city. That means your usual fare, such as jacking cars, finding ramps to jump from, and causing general mayhem. The game has a wanted system rated in stars that denote how much of the police force is coming after you, but you can change the color of your car at body shops and change outfits with what you find on clotheslines. You can utilize car crushers if you need to dispose of evidence. Overall, anyone who's ever played an open-world game will immediately know what they can and can't do.

American Fugitive features a few new ideas and isn't simply a carbon copy of other games. For instance, the game adopts some of the traits more commonly seen in roguelites. In particular, the title has a weight system, so while you can pick up things like bricks, guns and wild mushrooms, and your limit is governed by the kilograms assigned to you. You also to have a leveling system in place, where completed missions give you upgrade points, and those points, combined with available cash, can get upgrades for things like carrying capacity, health, or the ability to sneak around. While those are great, some people will dislike the death system, which revives you with your upgrades and cash in place but takes away every other item you're carrying.

The other new idea is the ability to rob houses and other establishments. Just about every building you see can be broken into and robbed of its valuables, and getting into a building means you'll either have to take the key from the homeowner or break a window. It's safer if you case the location first to see if anyone is inside. If there are people present, that reduces the amount of time you have to rob the place, but it also means that you have a few more options at your disposal, such as tying up the person, calmly taking them into submission, or simply holding them up at gunpoint.

The idea sounds great, but the execution is rather dull, as you only get a blueprint of each building after you go inside. It is effective to quickly search for items, but it feels like a dull reward for casing the joint in the first place. It also feels rather strange that the cops are alerted to you breaking and entering a house, even if neighbors are nowhere in sight and the house itself is empty. In fact, the heightened sensitivity of when the game determines that a crime has been committed is quite suspect. Stay near a scene where someone gets run over, and you're a suspect. Get near any property, and you're considered to be trespassing even if you're a few feet outside the fence. The same thing happens if you hit a pole or a street sign despite no one being there, making it difficult for those who don't quickly come to grips with the loose driving system.

At the same time, this hyperactive police force doesn't mean much thanks to some suspect AI. Get into a high-level police chase, and you can easily ditch the cops by hiding in a bush. Choose to change clothes in front of them, and they'll note it but won't do much to chase you down. Despite the sensitivity to property damage or any other minor crimes you commit, they seem completely fine with you hitting other cars so long as it is part of a mission. Get into a firefight, and you have a good chance of saving your ammo since everyone does a good job of shooting their own cars and blowing themselves up.

That can end up being a good thing, since the shooting in American Fugitive is far from accurate, causing you to miss a few shots even if you're aiming in an enemy's direction. The dual-stick system for shooting is decent, but the camera shake and zoom whenever you're firing a gun makes combat unnecessarily difficult unless you're sticking to melee attacks. Aside from that, there was at least one incident when a mission needed to be restarted since the game misidentified where some additional objectives were. For a title that is over 10 hours of not-so-exciting missions, that sort of thing further decreases the excitement.

The graphics teeter between decent and laughable. The environments and vehicles look fine, with a bunch of detail seen in things like bushes and fences when they break apart. Considering that they all have a nice physics system attached, that shows how much care was put into the world. The frame rate is locked to a good 30fps, and the lighting system is nice, especially at night with various house lights and police spotlights dotting the area. On the other hand, the cut scenes sport a cel-shaded style that contrasts heavily with the more traditional graphics in the rest of the game. It doesn't help that the character portraits shrink and shift when walking away or stretch and fall to the ground when someone gets hit. It looks laughable, and there's enough of this occurring to make you wonder if this was originally meant to be a parody rather than something semi-serious.

The story is the same when it comes to the audio. The sound effects sound more muffled than punchy, so firing from a submachine gun, for example, sounds rather weak, while every car you drive sounds clunky and beat-up even if you're driving what looks like a brand-new muscle car. The lack of voices is a shame, since some of the text is tiny unless you're sitting close to the television. The music is moody country stuff minus the lyrics, but the lack of song variety is noticeable. There are also a few times when the music is completely wrong for the situation, such as when a lively banjo jam plays during a shootout against corrupt cops, making a serious situation too silly for its own good.

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.

Score: 5.5/10