A Roundup of 5 *GTA* Alternatives: Which One Can Hold You Over Until *GTA6*?

Night presses down on the street corner, and the neon looks as if the rain has soaked and blurred it into a hazy layer. Headlights drag long reflections across the road. Whenever I look at games like this, I always pause first to find the right angle—to see whether the alley has a damp, breathing presence, to see whether the city feels truly alive; if an open world can’t even answer the question of “would you want to live in it,” then no matter how many gunfights and missions it offers, it’s still just a lively empty shell. There are still more than six months to go before GTA6 launches on November 19, and many players have already started looking for something to fill the gap. ComicBook recently picked out 5 games that can ease “GTA withdrawal,” ranging from new indie titles to old-school classics, and the list is actually pretty interesting.

Let’s start with the wildest one, 171. It’s still in early access, set in Brazil, and it definitely carries a strong GTA vibe, though with an extra layer of local roughness. You can take on legitimate side jobs, or gradually slide into criminal business—drug dealing, gang wars, expanding your own turf—and even the vehicles, characters, and weapons can be customized. Most importantly, the city’s districts feel vividly built, and the atmosphere along the roadside isn’t just one neat texture pasted everywhere. That said, it doesn’t have a full story yet, so it feels more like a neighborhood still under construction, but one where you can already smell life in the air—ideal for players willing to stick with the dev team and wait patiently for updates.

If you’re after the weighty crime feel of an old gangster movie, The Godfather II still holds up remarkably well. When Visceral Games made this film adaptation, it didn’t focus only on gunfights; it gave gang management a major role as well: from protecting shops, to seizing territory, recruiting people, and taking out rival bosses, the whole process feels like an empire slowly rising with the tide. Unfortunately, because of licensing issues, it never made it to modern platforms. If you want to play it now, you’ll need to track down an Xbox 360 physical copy or an old PC version. It’s not the easiest substitute to get your hands on, but it may be the one with the strongest sense of “building a family business”—like an old overcoat in winter: not new to look at, but the moment you put it on, you feel its weight.

Saints Row: The Third goes in a completely different direction. It twists the GTA-style open-world crime formula into something exaggerated, cartoonish, and almost absurd. The vehicles are varied, the story is outrageous, and the gunplay is explosive, like cramming an entire city into a box of fireworks gone out of control. If what you need right now is pure release rather than an immersive turn as a street-level resident, then it’ll be more cathartic than many “serious crime games.” Put simply, what it sells isn’t credibility—it’s the density of pure fun.

But beyond graphics, the two I most want to recommend revisiting are still Sleeping Dogs and the first Watch Dogs. Sleeping Dogs from 2012 captured the streets of Hong Kong with real warmth—humid, crowded, dangerous, yet still carrying that stubborn spark of lights that refuse to go out. As an undercover cop caught between the triads and the police force, you also have a dual “Cop/Triad” reputation system; add in the close-quarters pressure of environmental takedowns, and the immersion is incredibly strong. Sadly, it didn’t meet sales expectations back then, the sequel was canceled as a result, and the studio later shut down. A city this beautiful and fun now feels more like an old map that will never be expanded again.

The first Watch Dogs, meanwhile, is the kind of game that reveals more flavor when you revisit it years later. Its Chicago is dark, and when the wind cuts through the gaps between skyscrapers, even the car chases feel cold. The hacking mechanics aren’t just for show either—you can infiltrate city infrastructure to create chaos, shake off pursuers, and hunt targets. That design, where you use the city itself as your weapon, still feels fresh even now. The original article even regarded it as one of the “most underrated” GTA-like alternatives, and although the Watch Dogs series has already been canceled, the first and second games are still well worth revisiting.

Coming back to the games themselves, if we’re judging purely by “what you can buy right now to satisfy the craving,” I’d break it down like this: if you want novelty and long-term potential worth watching, choose 171; if you want a complete and intense street-level immersion, choose Sleeping Dogs; if you want a differentiated hacker-style experience, choose Watch Dogs; if you just want to shut your brain off and go all-out, Saints Row: The Third is the best fit. The Godfather II is more of a collector’s recommendation, assuming you’re willing to deal with the barrier of older platforms.

There’s still a long wait until GTA6, and a substitute will never become the main course—but a good one should at least have its own scent. For someone like me, who wants to stop and take screenshots the moment I see a new scene, whether a city can make me instinctively hold my breath matters more than how many cars it lets me blow up; and among these 5 games, what truly lingers are precisely those streetlights, rainy nights, alleyways, and the sound of the wind.