30 Reviews in 30 Days, Day 19: Crackdown
You almost have to feel sorry for Realtime Worlds. The studio created what it thought was a great game when it made Crackdown. On top of that, it had to think getting the Halo 3 beta as part of it meant there was going to be a huge group of gamers out there who would play it. The problem is many gamers played the beta and then sold the game, never even looking twice at the main content of the disk.
Maybe we are looking at this all wrong, however. Maybe the ones we need to feel sorry for are the gamers who never even gave this game a try. After all, anyone who actually played Crackdown can tell you it is still one of the more enjoyable games to come out for the 360.
Hero of Pacific City
Crackdown takes place in Pacific City, a city overrun by three gangs: the Central American Los Muertos, the Eastern European Volk and the Asian Shai-Gen Corporation, which masquerades as a legitimate company. The people of Pacific City have turned to the Peacekeepers, their version of the local police, for help, but this group is seriously outmatched. A new weapon is needed in this war against crime: you.
Your character is a genetically altered Agent, working for a mysterious organization known as The Agency. Your job: clean up the streets of Pacific City while doing your best to keep civilian casualties down to a minimum. To aid you in this quest, you will be equipped with the best weapons and vehicles The Agency can provide.
Once you power up your Agent, the real fun begins.
You also have the ability to power up your Agent, making him a super soldier in the war against crime. You do this many different ways. You can find orbs scattered throughout the city, some that will increase all your capabilities and some that will only increase your agility. You can try to complete the challenges scattered throughout the city, each designed to help build different abilities. Or you can just kill the gang members. What makes this a little more interesting, however, is how you choose to kill them determines how you level up. If you attack them with hand-to-hand combat, your strength improves. If you shoot them, your weapons accuracy improves. Run them over and your driving improves. Basically, however you choose to take someone down has a direct effect on how your character’s abilities increase.
Super powered Agents
Part of what makes improving your Agent’s abilities fun in Crackdown is your character can become, for lack of a better way to put it, a super hero. When you start the game, you are strong enough that you can beat someone to death. After you level you strength up, you can grab objects, including light poles, and use them to hit people. Get a little stronger, and you can start kicking cars back on the gang members, which is truly a blast. Get leveled up all the way, and you can start picking up the cars and throwing them.
Needless to say, this game really gets to be fun when you get leveled up. I have already talked about what you can do when you have your strength maxed, but it is just as much fun watching how high you can jump when your agility is fully powered or the size of the explosions you can created when your demolition skill is at its peak. Like I said, you basically become a super hero.
And in this game, you are going to need it. The third-person, sandbox gameplay can start to truly get challenging as you get closer to the end, especially when you face the Shai-Gen. Heck, just trying to make your way to the top of their high rise to battle the last boss for the Shai-Gen is tricky.
Play Your Way
One of the the truly impressive things about Crackdown is it truly lets you play the way you want to play. Want to snipe enemies from a distance and take them on in smaller groups, you can. Want to charge in headlong and run them over with the nearest vehicle? Feel free. Want to go after the leader of a gang before you have taken out all of the other generals? Feel free, though you may find it much more difficult than you would if you take them out first.
If you missed it the first time, do yourself a favor and play Crackdown.
There are a lot of sanbox style games out there, but few give you the freedom Crackdown does to just do whatever you really want to do. This feeling was expanded upon even more when Realtime Worlds gave players the “Key to the City.” This download allowed players to add or remove the gangs, set up the world around them, and pretty much do what they pleased. Add to that the co-op gameplay available both in the campaign and in this new mode, and you can really do just about anything you can think of.
Don’t believe me? Go on Youtube and look up videos on Crackdown.
And now the bad news…what there is
As good as Crackdown is, it is not all fun. Many people had real issues with the orb collecting in the game, more specifically the agility orbs. These are scattered throughout the city, and they can be a little hard to find among the various buildings. Many felt they could not level up their Agent’s agility because they could not find enough of these orbs. I did it by shooting enemies from great heights, so this did not really bother me.
One thing about the game did bother me, however: the driving. I never got the hang of it, even when driving the Agency vehicle that powered up as my driving improved. The controls just always felt imprecise, as if they were an afterthought in what was overall a well designed game.
Worth a look if you passed it up
Gamers can be a cynical bunch. Though we often have high hopes for games, we tend to be suspicious when things look like they could be a bit shady. I think that is part of why people weren’t really ready to give Crackdown a chance. People thought it was just some filler, throw away game that was really just there to distribute the beta for the 360′s killer app.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. Crackdown flew under the radar for many gamers, but those of us who decided to give it a try found a game that was so much more than anyone expected. Crackdown gets a 5 out of 5.
Why Video Games Are More Than Just Entertainment
With all these rumors and talks about Video Games becoming movies, it produces a lot of hype and excitement. As a gamer however, I have a different outlook on it.
The Story
I have found that some of the best stories are not found in books or movies, but rather Video Games. The fact that you are essentially the character, only adds to the story. With games like Fallout 3, the player makes the choices and those choices affect the players outcome individually. With a movie, the outcome is decided for everyone and makes a much less personal experience.
The Experience
Experiencing something and seeing something are two completely different experiences. One of the things I love about Video Games are the way they can immerse the player into another world. Whether it be fighting the Covenant or surviving the wasteland. There is no denying this can carry you off to an unknown world. One of the main problems with Video Games becoming movies, is the fact you wouldn’t be able to experience it in the same way.
See, when you pick up that controller and begin to play, YOU get to decide what your character does. Who he (or she) interacts with. You essentially become that character. You can’t do that with a pre-determined movie script.
The Barrier
While movies can be extremely imaginative, that screen would ultimately become a barrier. You couldn’t choose what would happen. Only watch, and where is the fun in that? You would lose the experience of being the character.
The End Result
Video Games can provide some of the most unique experiences. Experiences that would be lost in the big screen. The fact is, when you are the character, you feel more emotion and immersed. You go on that journey, not watch some actor do it for you. So, I hope that more people will realize it’s not worth losing the experience, the emotions and the journeys that you ultimately embark on.
Good Grief: Bad Things in Good Games – Halo 3 Skulls
Good Grief: Because sometimes even good games make you want to drop kick them out the window. They’re too good to despise forever but these are the things that made us hate them, even if just for just a little while.
*Halo 3 Skulls*
Pop quiz. What is the FPS genre best suited for? A: Fast paced tactics and frenetic, run and gun action. B: Tedious, slow, nose to the ground, level scouring, scavenger hunts. If you answered “A” you’re correct. If you answered “B” you actually enjoyed spending hours painstakingly combing the vast levels of Halo 3 for some tiny, infinitesimal, freakin’ minuscule skulls that could be anywhere, and often were. This is my single greatest gripe against one of the biggest, best, and most beloved games of 2007: Why in the name of all things fun and wholesome would you include in an action game a tedious side quest that requires players to literally spend hours searching every nook and cranny of the massive levels for an item smaller than a grunts IQ?
Warning! This article may contain minor spoilers. I use the word spoiler loosely. Because the only thing I’d be spoiling for you is hours of frustration and annoyance. Schucks. Otherwise if you enjoy torturing yourself divert your eyes.
To be fair, the skulls sound like a good idea as a concept; little easter egg items that can unlock achievements and different options for the campaign and contribute yet another dimension of prestige and camaraderie amongst Halo brethren. My problem is that the reality is far less quaint. Let’s think about this.
First: As I said, they are tiny. The levels in Halo 3 are not. The skulls can look like any other rock or debris and would be well hidden in the vast terrain even if they were placed practically anywhere. Second: They’re not just anywhere. Bungie bent over backwards to ensure they would be difficult to find, and they are, very. Often times finding them isn’t enough. The skull will be visible but out of reach unless you perform a special maneuver, stand on a co-op buddies shoulders, or mangle a pile of vehicles against the wall like a moron so that by standing on the heap you can jump up to reach it. Sheesh. And third: IT’S A SHOOTER! Leave the scavenger hunts to Banjo and Kazooie!
My biggest complaint, however, is a combination of these factors: the size of the skulls, the size of the levels, the nature of the shooter genre, and Bungie’s devious sense of placement. Fetch quests, excessive backtracking, and search and find item hunts are fine in a platformer, RPG or an Easter picnic but tend to grate against the very nature of first person shooters. Shoot, kill, repeat. Good, fast, fun. Search quests contradict the fluency of this most satisfying of formulas, bringing it’s kinetic energy to a grinding halt. The levels, gameplay, and controls aren’t designed for it and become cumbersome or awkward when used in that context. It’s like trying to play hopscotch with an SUV.
For a completionist like myself or anyone who appreciates a fair challenge and doesn’t want to have to resort to online walkthroughs or cheats, the skulls are a menace, a terrible blight on an otherwise great game.
It might not be so bad if they where slightly easier to find, but I can guarantee you, you’re not going to innocently stumble upon them in the natural course of the game. You end up having to clear the immediate area of enemies, because it’s hard to search for the proverbial needle in a haystack when the farmer’s jabbing you in the rear with a pitchfork. After you wipe everything out, which is the fun part, imagine that (sarcasm), you have to stop, backtrack, then slowly wander the empty region with your head to the ground like an idiot scanning every square inch of land. Now that’s what I call fun! (more sarcasm).
What really makes me mad is that if the whole effort just to cover every area isn’t obnoxious enough, Bungie actually made it so that a few skulls are only accessible for a certain period of time, sometimes just a few seconds, or in some cases only if you perform a certain action or fulfill specific criteria. It’s old news now so I’m sure I wouldn’t be spoiling anything, but just in case you don’t want the skull locations revealed I’ll be vague in my descriptions. I wouldn’t want you to miss out on the fun of finding them on your own (definite sarcasm).
There’s one skull: it’s placement alone, perched atop a plateau, can make it tricky enough to reach, but located nearby is a wraith that can make snagging it even more complicated. The logical thing is to take out the wraith before your go for the skull except, no, you can’t. As soon as the wraith is destroyed the skull disappears! *Insert facepalm* Why make the skull disappear unless you’re trying to make it annoying?!
Another one (and get this, this is a personal favorite) is dropped by an enemy when you shoot them, but not just any enemy, no. That would be way to easy. The enemy in question leaps overhead and can only be hit for a few seconds before he’s gone. He’s not even all that visible. You can see him easy enough, but it’s not like it’s obvious. I’m sure out of the millions of people playing the game, someone was bound to discover this, but my question to Bungie is, “How in the world am I supposed to guess that on my own?” What are the chances I would? Since the enemy is no apparent threat why would bother with him. I spent hours carefully sleuthing that level only to give up in exasperation and look up the skulls location online. I couldn’t believe it! Not only is it in a ridicules location, but even once you know where it is, it’s a challenge unto itself nailing the guy and getting the skull to fall correctly. Could they make it any more complicated?
My all time favorite, though, is a skull so incomprehensible it defies me to even begin to describe it’s absurdity. It’s not even visible until you leap through a series of rings in a specific order like a circus poodle. This of course is after you have cleared the area of an outright infestation of baddies, but don’t you dare accidentally go through one of the rings while doing so. If you jump through one in the wrong order the sequence won’t work at all. Sorry, you’ll have to play the entire level all over again. Did I mention it’s located at the very end?
This entire sequence…is…asinine. The room is long and the order of rings is complicated which means you’re running back and forth to hit all the rings. Good…Grief. This isn’t like Super Mario either, where the next ring lights up. There’s no good chime, bad chime or anything to indicate if you’re doing it right or that that’s what you’re even supposed to be doing at all. It’s so ridiculous that, if you don’t already know what I’m talking about, I could tell you exactly where it’s at, but unless you know the combination of the rings it will still take you hours to figure out. I ask again, “How am I supposed to figure this out on my own?” How is this fun?
After a while I got smart and started using the video replay feature to search the levels out, but a lot of the skulls are so well stashed away that even that didn’t always work. That’s when I gave up and invoked the gamer’s secret weapon: Google. Seriously, why would I waste hour upon boring, frustrating hour when I can just cheat. Some of the skulls that are just hidden I can understand, but the rings are absurd and you know that 99.9% of the people who got that one looked it up online. You know it. I know it. Bungie knows it, and, I’m sure, would even encourage this kind of friendly corroboration within the Halo community, but why bother hiding them so well?
You know, all this effort might be worth it if the skulls did something really cool. You know, like when games used to have awesome cheat codes like “All Weapons” and “Invincibility” but the cherry on top of this dirt Sundae, the beautiful, magnificent, twisted irony is that after hours of agonizing tedium, activating the skulls you’ve busted your hump to find, only makes the game harder. Now that’s funny.
Hold LB to flip…wait, what? How did you do that?
The other night I decided to play some Halo 3. I played a few rounds of big team battle and then decided to go in Sandtrap alone. The reason I wanted to go alone was to accomplish my biggest feat ever. I feat I am sure not many have accomplished. I went into Sandtrap with one goal and one goal only…to flip the Elephant. A while back I had almost done it during a team deathmatch in Sandtrap so I wanted to come back and see if I could do it without all the chaos around me. Just me and the Elephant. I was in the room by myself for about an hour. I had found the perfect spot. I just had to find the perfect angle. You also have to use your sense of physics and a little bit of luck too. Finally after many tries I managed to flip the elephant bottom up. I was very proud of myself so I took a lot of screenshots and even a video clip of it. I also managed to drive a warthog onto the thing afterwards. A very funny prompt came up in the corner of my screen when I was got close to the flipped Elephant too. Check it out. Click the screens for a larger version. For the rest of the screens check out my Halo 3 service record.
*Note: I did not do this in forge, I am not sure if it’s even possible.