Games like Gangstar Vegas: open-world crime games to try next

Gangstar Vegas has been on a lot of phones for a long time. Its own Wikipedia page puts its downloads at over 200 million across Android and iOS, and plenty of players in Nigeria and the US still search for it today. If you have played it to death and want something in the same spirit, an open-world crime game with a city to explore and a story to follow, here are our picks.

As always, these are picks, not a ranking. Every fact about another game was checked; sources are at the bottom.

First, what Gangstar Vegas is

Gangstar Vegas was made by Gameloft Montreal and published by Gameloft. It came out for Android and iOS in June 2013 and was later released as free-to-play, with bonus content sold in the game. It is a third-person open-world action game set in modern Las Vegas, with driving and shooting, more than 80 missions, and side activities like gang wars, bank robberies, street races and underground fighting tournaments. You play Jason Malone, a mixed martial arts fighter who wins a fixed match by accident and gets dragged into a war between two mob families. It is single-player.

It belongs to Gameloft’s long-running Gangstar series. Most entries are set in American cities, with a few exceptions such as Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo.

Our picks

AJ Cities

Ours, so weigh this entry accordingly. AJ Cities is a free open-world game that runs in your browser on a phone or a computer, with nothing to download. It is 18+.

If Gangstar Vegas is a big Las Vegas action movie, AJ Cities is closer to a street drama. You play AJ, deported from London to Lagos, beaten in a police cell, and now starting again in a rooming house on June 12 Street, a walled estate on the edge of Ajegunle where Navy Town meets Kirikiri. The open world is one estate, its street and the land beside it, rather than a whole city, and it is full of people with routines:

• Fighting. Punch with a left click and kick with a right click on a computer.
• The shotgun. Only in the bush beside the estate, borrowed from three officers on a smoke break for bottle practice, and given back before you leave.
• Money and missions. Earn ₦1,000 a break as a ball boy at the street football, bet that story money on the match, and pay the gate police the ₦2,500,000 they want before they open the north gate.
• A crime boss. The Warden, a retired Kirikiri prison warder, owns Prizm at the end of the street, brokers deals at his back booth and takes ten percent for the table.

There is also a live multiplayer side, an estate party inside the game where signed-in adults make their own character and meet other players; it is virtual, with no real venue or ticket outside the game. The story itself is single-player and needs no sign-in.

Gangstar Vegas fans in Nigeria may enjoy one thing in particular: the jokes. The gate police tease AJ that he walked home from Libya, his neighbour sells BreakCoin, and nobody, ever, rounds a debt.

Sleeping Dogs

From United Front Games and Square Enix, 2012. You are Wei Shen, an undercover police officer inside a triad in Hong Kong. Like Gangstar Vegas, it puts a crime story in a big city. PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 at launch; a Definitive Edition came to PS4 and Xbox One in 2014, and a Mac version followed.

Mafia: Definitive Edition

Hangar 13 and 2K’s 2020 remake of the original Mafia, on PS4, Xbox One and PC. You are Tommy Angelo, a cab driver who rises through the mob during Prohibition. If the mob-family story was your favourite part of Gangstar Vegas, this is that story told slowly and seriously.

Yakuza 0

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio and Sega, released in Japan in 2015 and worldwide in 2017. Set in 1988 in Kamurocho, a fictional version of Tokyo’s Kabukichō, and in a district based on Osaka’s Dōtonbori. It follows a young Kazuma Kiryu and Goro Majima, and it is a prequel in the long-running Like a Dragon series.

Torn

Not an open world in 3D at all, but if what you liked was the crime-life side, Torn is a free text-based crime RPG in a browser, with factions and other real players. Its site says it has no advertising.

What to look for in a Gangstar Vegas alternative

Think about which part of Gangstar Vegas kept you playing. If it was the freedom to roam, look for a world with places worth walking to, not just a big map. If it was the story, look for characters you remember after you close the game. If it was playing on a cheap phone without filling the storage, look for something light. AJ Cities was built phone first, with slow, low-data connections in mind, and it opens in a browser tab, so there is nothing to install and nothing to delete afterwards. The big console games above need a console or a capable PC, and they cost money, but they offer much larger cities.

Which one?

• Want something free, now, on your phone’s browser? AJ Cities, or Torn for text.
• Want a bigger city on a console or PC? Sleeping Dogs or Yakuza 0.
• Want a mob family saga? Mafia: Definitive Edition.

More open worlds: open-world crime games for your phone and free open-world crime games in a browser.

Who made Gangstar Vegas?

Gameloft Montreal, published by Gameloft. It came out for Android and iOS in June 2013 and later became free-to-play.

Is there a game like Gangstar Vegas in a browser?

AJ Cities is a free open-world crime story game that runs in a browser on a phone or a computer, set on the edge of Ajegunle, Lagos. It is 18+.

Is Gangstar Vegas multiplayer?

Its Wikipedia entry lists it as single-player.