You know, main problem with one big free-roaming world is in most of cases games with it haven't got many "how-to-get-to-place-I-see" puzzles, instead of it they have puzzles "what-the-hell-where-is-the-place-I-want-go-to-those-buildings-and-or-trees-make-me-annoyed". And "I-have-no-more-gasoline-in-car-what-is-the-shortest-way". No. FR is very good for hubs (I don't say there should be only one, optimal is about nine, connected by normal levels or another hub, the second case if there are some dangerous things in them and it) and a small number of exploration levels, but most of stages should be linear in my opinion (but can be multithreaded, of course).
Kelvin12 said:
But you drive around in a car most times.
Now you understand? Drivin' cars isn't good main element of
platformer. Good main elements of platformer are jumpin', duckin', runnin' and countin' time in case of e.g. movin' walls. Vehicles? O.K.! But they should be an addition.
Also, makin' whole game one free-roamin' area cause very annoying thing.
Game's world is very monotonous or look very strange. In another words, independing on the time of developers and storage medium size, it can't be bigger than a medium island (of course, if game contain some gameplay. not only travellin' through world and lookin' on trees). If it will be without portals/halls of doors/airports, but it will not cover full terrain of world, it can be big as Sicily. With a kind of trick I know (it is hard to translate) it can cover full terrain of something big as Sicily.
Of course, things in paragraph above are on platformers.