American Fugitive

Best $2 ever spent. Game is worth it's original price. Top down Grand Theft Auto. I have more fun playing this than the latest Saints Row.

100% recommend. Was a little hesitant after reading some of the other reviews. This game is a blast to play. absolutely would buy again. I want a sequel or some DLC.

Really nice. Reminds me of GTA Chinatown Wars.

American Fugitive is a GTA 1-2 clone with a simplistic story. To be fair you could skip the whole story and you wouldn't miss much as it's nothing you haven't heard of before.
Positives for me was: The gameplay. It has tight controls, fun driving akin to old GTA style and combat (which is not amazing but I enjoyed it).
Negatives for me were: I wish there was more variety with the missions as they become repetitive after first 2 hours. Missions mostly consists of driving, robbing stores and killing people. Game also ends very abruptly so that's another minus I could write down for it.
Personally I think the positives outweighs negatives and if you are looking for a short and fun game that you can play with a podcast on American Fugitive is great. Also plays perfect on the Deck.

Modern take on oldschool GTA games. For the slightly younger folks, this is comparable to GTA Chinatown from the NDS.
The game can be a bit buggy in a very funny way.
You can toggle to retain your inventory after dying or being arrested, which is a good QoL for people that want the game to be a bit more relaxed.
Imagine you have to prove your innocence in the murder of your father, so instead you murder half of the town you live in.

American Fugitive may be one of the better and more consistent Grand Theft Auto clones, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have its fair share of problems.
American Fugitive has you stepping into the shackled shoes of Will Riley, an escaped convict desperately trying to clear his name after he's framed for the murder of his father. Will tears up, shoots up, and moves up the criminal underworld of Redrock County, a stand-in for just about any place in Midwest America. The overall map of Redrock County is pretty small, but it does feature a decent variety of geographic and urban regions like mesas, forests, residential neighbourhoods, and construction sites.
American Fugitive is presented from a semi-isometric-top-down perspective. It's not fully top-down, but it's not fully isometric... if that makes sense. Either way, the chosen perspective doesn't always work in the game's favour, especially when driving. There were several times when I was racing down a dirt road with the police hot on my tail and I really wished I could see more than 15 meters in front of me. Perhaps this choice in presentation was intended to be an homage to the game's inspiration, Grand Theft Auto (particularly 1 and 2), but I saw no practical purpose for it. Shooting operates on a twin-stick system because of this perspective, and since I'm absolutely abysmal at twin-stick shooters I found myself relying on the wide spread and devastating stopping power of shotguns more than any other weapon.
Gameplay in American Fugitive can be fun (when it isn't being restrictive). Like any GTA clone, you'll complete missions for a variety of shady ne'er-do-wells and collect nice payouts to spend on weapons, cars, and other such things. Most missions involve driving from one location to another, getting into fistfights or shootouts, or simply completing a required action. They're not always the most exciting, but they are serviceable for the kind of scale the game is going for. For example, one of the more engaging mission types are home invasion missions.
You start by casing a location, peeking through windows, and making sure your target is empty. Then, you can either break in (which results in a police response) or you can use a lockpick to stealthily and silently enter (no police response). From that point on, depending on how well you cased the place (if at all) you can move through each room and search them for any goods and valuables to pilfer. If you broke in, you'll have a limited amount of time to ransack the place before the cops show up. If you used a lockpick, you'll have unlimited time to take what you want, as long as you don't run into any occupants (whom you would have spotted during your initial case). If someone in the house catches you, you can either flee or attack them. These actions operate on a chance system, and the game will tell you what your odds of successfully escaping or attacking will be. To sum up, as long as you treat this like an actual home invasion you should be able to get off scot-free with a nice bag of goodies to sell to your local pawn shop. You can also use this method for holding up stores. Upon entering a store you'll be given the option to either SHOP or HOLD UP.
Police operate in largely the same way as in Grand Theft Auto. If you're caught committing a crime, you're given a wanted level and a radius that you must escape to clear your wanted level. The higher your wanted level, the larger the radius and the more intense the police presence will be. Much like GTA, if you annoy the authorities enough they'll have no choice but to send in the big guns (i.e. tanks and helicopters). It does sometimes feel incredibly easy to escape the law, as you only need to be out of their radius for a few seconds before it completely clears. It always felt odd to me that I was outrunning the police chopper and dodging tank shells one minute, and I'm as free as OJ Simpson the next. Only in America. If you do get arrested or killed, you restart at the nearest "checkpoint," which are sewer openings a la The Shawshank Redemption, with none of your previously-held items and back in your orange prison jumpsuit.
However, even though American Fugitive has plenty of side missions, races, and rampages to complete, they all end up feeling largely similar by the end of the game. There's only so many times you can drive from point A to point B and back again before it becomes tedious. I understand the game has limitations based on its engine, budget, and/or development team, but I feel like a few of the more monotonous and repetitive missions could have been cut to make for a leaner, more fun experience.
Another irk I have with the game is its driving physics. Vehicles make no sense to me in American Fugitive. I've driven every vehicle in the game (and I have the rare achievement to prove it!) and there's no consistency between their handling, speed, and acceleration. The worst offenders are muscle cars, which handle like they're driving on roads slathered in butter and with oil-slicked tires to boot. I've never had to counter-steer this much in a game, boy I tell ya. That being said, I do like how much of the environment is destructible. Most fragile structures like waist-high brick walls, fences, wheat fields, lampposts, and gates can be driven through and destroyed. It's a small feature but it makes chases and races a little bit more exciting when you can plow through someone's white picket fence and tear up their petunias.
Overall, American Fugitive is a fun game. I know I've harped on it quite a bit, but I did enjoy it for what it was. And if you're someone who's tired of GTA Online or can't wait for the GTA 6 trailer to drop, I think you'll find enough enjoyment in the simplicity and arcade-y fun of American Fugitive.

Reminds me of GTA I/GTA II. Not bad.