Crackdown

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It looked like Crackdown was set to be the next big thing. Long delayed, the demo released in January had me ready to jump from skyscrapers and rain fiery death on criminals and hoodlums. The gaming media added to the hype machine by praising Crackdown for its infectious carnage and achievement-centric gameplay long before its February release date. Throw in access to the Halo 3 beta for the first pressings and you've got every GameStop manager's wet dream.

Crackdown is not a breakthrough I wanted, though. In truth, Crackdown is really just a mildly entertaining game that can't break through its glass ceiling. It sparkles like gold for a while, but all too quickly the shine fades.

Developer: Realtime Worlds
Publisher: Microsoft
Time Played: ~20 hours
Kinda like: GTA meets C.O.P.S.

I had a pretty decent time playing Crackdown. Certis and I made a pledge on release day that we'd clean up the streets of Pacific City together. And it was fun. The day after our great gaming experience, slogging my way through the tedium of my day job, all I could think about was how many agility orbs I had, and how soon I'd be able to play "Catch The Semi" with Certis. Indeed, everyone should play this game in coop mode, at least for a few hours, to remind yourself that working with your friends is sometimes better than chainsawing them in the face. Sometimes.

We spent the majority of our time leaping from roof to roof in search of elusive agility orbs. Among all the things Crackdown gets right, this is the best. You begin the game seeing these green orbs everywhere, but since you can only jump three inches off the ground, they'll seem unattainable. Eventually you'll find a few, gain a level in agility, and find yourself soaring through the sky in no time. But one level in agility is never enough, and those green orbs become your fix. Are the Peacekeepers waging an assault on the front gates of a crime boss's lair? Who cares? There are three orbs in that construction site across the street. The cops can take care of themselves.

The cops handle themselves so well that I wasn't sure why they needed us. When I began the game, driving out of Agency headquarters into the Los Muertos' territory, there was a big firefight between the yellow-clad gang and the cops. The announcer, an omnipotent jackass who spent most of the game chastising me for catching civilians in explosive crossfire, pleaded with me to turn back and help the Peacekeepers out. Okay, sure, I was looking for a bit of action. But by the time I'd turned the squirrelly supercar around, the cops were hanging out as if nothing had happened. I wouldn't have been surprised to see a couple of digital donut boxes in their cars.

There's no sense of urgency. The gangs only get dangerous when I come close, and tossing grenades at them is rarely as satisfying as scaling skyscrapers, looking for hidden orbs.

The other skills your agent has are never as cool as agility. Higher strength means you have more health, can lift heavier cars, and kick bad guys farther. Becoming an expert in firearms and explosives makes you more effective at shooting and blowing stuff up, but there's no reason to shoot anyone after you have two stars in explosives and a rocket launcher. Finally, driving is the skill that gets left behind. It starts so low that maneuvering the beginning vehicles is never as effective as just running and jumping to a criminal hideout, and the only ways to raise your stat is to mow down bad guys or finish tedious races. Every time you run over a civilian, GTA style, you lose precious skill points, and they seem to like herding together in front of your speeding SUV. When hurtling over buildings is so much fun, why bother with automobiles?

None of this kept playing Crackdown with Certis from being fun, but it started leaving me with a feeling that all the potential this title held had been squandered. After six hours, finishing off bosses started to feel like something we were supposed to do, not something we wanted to accomplish. And without anything else to do, the game's shiny polish started to dull. Moments like the race to the top of the Agency Tower, scaling a monstrosity of a building only to dive off the top into the water below, were overshadowed by the tedium of blowing up more cookie-cutter mobsters, controlled by criminal masterminds whose brilliant plans always involved standing at the top of a building or the back of a cave. It would have been brilliant if the designers put us up against a super-villain, someone just as powerful as us instead of hordes of trash mobs. The fun I had wasn't because of the game but what Certis and I could do in it, something that became more apparent as I went back and tried playing alone.

Realtime Worlds had an opportunity to create something unique, a real breakthrough title. They succeeded in making a fun game, but didn't give it the legs to last. If they get an opportunity to try a sequel, and the odds are looking good, maybe they'll be able to deliver a game that lives up to the hype. Crackdown is a good try, but it's not there yet.

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Comments

Lots of good points. I had PLENTY of fun with the game, so keep that in mind before reading.....

I beat Crackdown's 21 bosses with only about 5 minutes of driving to my agent's name. There was no point to driving. It would have been cool if there were areas that weren't easy to get to by roof-hopping and street running (like, how about a long tunnel that I can drive through without getting spotted if I'm in a civilian car, but I would get shot to pieces if on foot or in an Agency car? How about something clever like having me start a mission by driving an armored car in order to gain entry somewhere?)

The weapons are limited, and when you get that Firefly rocket launcher, there's little reason to use anything else besides that plus a machine gun.

Defeating bosses was a matter of finding a quick way into the complex, and blasting them with the Firefly a few times. Fighting any other enemies was entirely peripheral, and largely *useless* (unless you wanted to spend forever killing baddies until the gratuitous respawning started to die down).

Co-op? Honestly, I didn't like it nearly as much as some others did. This is not the must-play co-op experience Gears of War and even Rainbow Six: Vegas were for me. There is certainly plenty of fun to be *made* with two people in the world together, but having two people wade through a wave of pointless enemies to go Firefly-rape the boss wasn't all that much better from doing the same thing solo.

Your Agents isn't a crime stopper, he's an assassin. There's no City of Heroes-like "saving the chick from the 4 gang members" moments. Even if you do see "peacekeepers" fighting with gang members, there's no payoff for helping them. A handful of gang members aren't even a challenge for a 5 year old pounding buttons.

Spoiler-ish wrote:

[color=white]And yes, there's a "twist" in the ending cinematic about the whole assassin thing, but that doesn't make it a better gameplay choice. And I don't know about you, but I figured out said "twist" looong before finishing the game[/color]

Where were the enemies that could actually fight back? Beyond the first hour of the game, the only chance anyone had of killing me was if a circle of 30 of them surrounded me and unloaded clips into me at the same time (and if I fell 40 stories before meeting them, it helped). Oh sure, a few of them could rocket me or snipe me if they were a building away and I wasn't looking at them, but they were as good as dead as soon as they had my attention. I was RoboCop, but there was no ED-209 to be found.

What's so great about Vegas' co-op? Is it better over Live than split screen? My experience with it was that the co-op was so completely tacked on that I had to sit through a minute of dialog-less helicopter cut scenes every time we died in the first mission due to a complete lack of plot, objectives, guidance of any kind and checkpoints. No checkpoints in a game where one bullet can end your day is rediculous.

My friend and I had much more fun just doing the terrorist hunt missions, but with just the two of us and overly omnicient and accurate CPU enemies, its just an excersize in frustration.

Other co-op annoyances:
-goofy equipment setup (1 player adjusts equipment at a time despite over half the screen being totally blank and available for simultaneous setup)
-no story mode checkpoints
-not remembering preferences for game set up like enemy density and time limit while remembering weapon choices and map order
-no story mode checkpoints
-crashing
-no story mode checkpoints!

This concludes my off-topic rant.

Demiurge, Legion, I think you both are smoking suspicious substances. This game captures that Halo "30 seconds" school of video game design and dials it to the 9s. But I'll let Teh Man speak for me:

Bill Harris wrote:

I'm not sure how long I've played Crackdown--probably closing in on fifteen hours at this point--but I've gone through three distinct phases of interest with the game.

In the first phase, I thought it was an absolute blast. That lasted for about five hours.

In the second phase, I thought it was a one-trick pony. A fun trick, but only one. That lasted for about five more hours.

Phase two normally signals a death spiral in terms of my interest in the game. It's almost guaranteed. This time, though, in phase three I reverted back to my original opinion: the game is an absolute blast.

Last night, I couldn't sleep because I'm still having sinus problems etc. Of course, these are the glory days for not being able to sleep--I have about twenty fun things I can do in the middle of the night, and playing Crackdown was what I chose.

Neither one of you spoke in length about the crazy fun of leaping around skyscrapers hundreds of feet off the ground. Gamers who don't like Crackdown's jumping game might as well call Mario and Luigi's mum dirty names. Pacific City is a jungle gym - the biggest, brightest set of monkey bars I've ever seen. It has a tough act to follow - GTA's cities were particularly inspired; with their constant pop references they looked familiar and new at the same time, and more alive then they actually were. Yet to Crackdown's credit it doesn't even try to imitate GTA. It's not full of the flash but Crackdown doesn't really need it, either. If you don't like the gangsters, kill the bosses already and turn them all off!

Finally, driving is the skill that gets left behind. It starts so low that maneuvering the beginning vehicles is never as effective as just running and jumping to a criminal hideout, and the only ways to raise your stat is to mow down bad guys or finish tedious races.

The SUV is the best kept secret in this game. It seems like a gimmick at first but has quite a deep learning curve. It's like Crackdown's agility game extended to vehicles.

I agree that leveling up your driving skill is boring - RPG driving stats didn't work in San Andreas and they don't work here. However, once you get the super vehicles, they make the best toys in boss battles. The truck cab is basically a giant battering ram, and the next time you start from scratch I recommend you level driving first just so you can use the truck cab on bosses. The supercar is fun but I wish the machine guns were on a turret that your co-op passenger could control. They are too hard to shoot where as the other guns are too easy.

Beyond the first hour of the game, the only chance anyone had of killing me was if a circle of 30 of them surrounded me and unloaded clips into me at the same time (and if I fell 40 stories before meeting them, it helped).

Sounds like you played on the easiest setting. On Psychotic you'll be lucky to make it past the first corner without dying. It's like the difference between Casual and Insane in Gears.

One complaint I don't quite understand is that Crackdown's targeting system removes the skill from shooting - so don't use it! Aim manually and Crackdown plays just like Saint's Row, which had a damned fine shooting game. With jump double mapped to the right thumb stick, you can still leap around while you aim. Crackdown will never have the challenge of a game that balances your health with that of your enemies, but that was never really the point.

Crackdown literally throws your playing style back in your face at you. That's the price of a world without boundaries. The game doesn't force you to fight through all the henchmen, take the back entrance and skip all of it, or go through the front door and kill 'em all. It's your choice, it was only ever your choice.

I don't think the game is anywhere near perfect. Firearms need to be balanced, but the strength game is the sorriest. Crackdown has all the right tools to do something amazing with physics and really big objects, but it lack finesse of something like the gravity gun in HL2. I want do more than throw things into a crude pile, I want to swing telephone poles like clubs, I want to build castles out of cars, use giant catapults to fling missiles across the map, and basically turn Pacific City into a giant Rube Goldberg mousetrap. Gimme that and I'll give this IP a 10.

polypusher wrote:

What's so great about Vegas' co-op?

Nothing in particular except the inherent fun of four friends shooting terrorists. The execution is flawed as hell, but the fun we've had with that is SO much greater than we've had with Crackdown co-op.

souldaddy wrote:

Sounds like you played on the easiest setting. On Psychotic you'll be lucky to make it past the first corner without dying. It's like the difference between Casual and Insane in Gears.

I've played on the low and middle difficulties - but cardboard cutout enemies that now deal a lot more damage don't make for interesting enemies, leaving me little interest in playing on the hardest.

Neither one of you spoke in length about the crazy fun of leaping around skyscrapers hundreds of feet off the ground.

That would fit under the "I had PLENTY of fun with the game, so keep that in mind before reading....." line, now wouldn't it?

The only thing I can say is that I want this game for the PC.

I agree that the game can be improved, but I'm still absolutely loving it. I've spent most of my time getting orbs, and just last night I finished off Los Muertos. Then my wife called me to bed before I could move to the next gang...

I totally agree with Souldaddy that anyone's experience with the game needs to be shared in light of the difficulty they are playing with. Easy was TOO easy in the demo, so I've been playing Medium since day one, and I die a lot - mostly when assaulting bosses, but other times as well. I rarely replay games, but I'm already thinking about this one, though I think I'd be afraid to try the hard difficulty. Any lacking sense of danger some of you are feeling is due to difficulty selection, imho. Dial it up until you die five times on the same boss.

Still lovin' it here.

Are ye not entertained?

Two questions: Was this game fun, and did it last long enough to be worth the 60 bucks?

I think everyone agrees the game is fun, and I do believe it has somewhat short legs, but I've already played it for 10-15 hours and am still really enjoying myself (and I've only beat one island). So maybe it has longer legs than most games I know. Even with all this I recognize it could be "so much more" - which is the blessing and curse of being a developer who makes a sandbox game. When you open up a world to do whatever you want, you risk the creativity of people finding limitations to your virtual world, and start asking the "what-if" questions all too frequently.

I hope some cool DLC comes along that offers some neat scenarios to play through, and maybe have some neato new bosses to fight (how about your agent verse Godzilla???). In our DLC world, this stuff is possible now, and I hope we don't have to wait for Crackdown 2 to see some of these improvements.

My only complaint would be the bosses. Like WyattERP, I agree that the game could've benefited from more diverse group. Why have none of these ridiculously wealthy crime lords had themselves genetically altered like your supercop? Could you imagine an AI character with 4-star agility? That would have been a good boss fight; chasing each other from rooftop to rooftop. The game tries to flesh out each as different from the last, but it's hard to see their personalities come through when you're pumping them full of rockets from 50 yards away.

Other than that minor complaint I've been completely happy with the purchase. Love the co-op and the Achievements really help flesh out the solo game for me.

I should try co-op.

I get the idea that people who power through games quickly tire of Crackdown. For my part, my 5 three-hour sessions with Crackdown have been glorious fun. And that's what I'm after-- in my precious, small gaming time I want to be entertained. I don't have the time (or interest) to memorize map tactics in Gears of War, or unit relationships in Age of Empires III. I want to put in a disk and have fun, and Crackdown has delivered that in spades. Even if my Crackdown experience suddenly turns sour, these first 15 hours have delivered exactly what I'm looking for in a game.

Could it be better? Sure, I could probably come up with stuff that I'd change. But so far, Crackdown = pure fun, which is everything I could ask for.

I've played the game top to bottom 2 times now, both times developing my agent to "master agent" status, probably logged 50ish hours in and I'm still playing it almost daily. Absolutely fantastic game and I cannot wait to see what the sequel will bring.

What Souldaddy said. My only complaint about Crackdown is that the world isn't pliable enough. I want to get in the missile truck and launch a missile. I want to put a bunch of missile trucks in a row like dominos and create a big chain reaction of boom. I want to build a car fort on the freeway. The game is plain fun. I think the Mario comparison is a great one.

I think we as gamers sometimes play the game as critics and not just as gamers. It's fun. Is the AI poor? Sure. Are some of the weapons pointless? Yes. Is driving pointless? Pretty much. Am I going to restart again someday and proceed to begin leaping on rooftops again? Yes. Will I buy Crackdown 2? Yes. Would I buy expansion islands? Hell yeah. The game is plain, silly, ridiculous fun. It's like what a game about the Matrix should have been.

My only complaint is that you can't do more in the sandbox. But the sandbox is pretty righteous.

Yesterday I played at a friend's house and watched him climb the agency tower. Then I did it myself last night. Then a friend logged in and asked me to show him how. So I basically just watched or climbed the agency tower all day yesterday. That was a good day.

Poppinfresh wrote:

I get the idea that people who power through games quickly tire of Crackdown. For my part, my 5 three-hour sessions with Crackdown have been glorious fun. And that's what I'm after-- in my precious, small gaming time I want to be entertained.

I think that's the most salient point. I, as a gamer with job, only have limited time to game. I would love to play giant sprawling RPGs, but I really don't have the time or energy to memorize all the sidequests and where I am in them. And it doesn't matter how great a story is. I'd rather read Dune. Crackdown is quick, glorious fun that you can play for 8 hours or 30 minutes at a time.

A great quote from today's Penny Arcade. Emphasis mine.

Eventually, I came to view the criminal element as chores: something my mother might yell from the top of the stairs, to be put off until another time. What I need to do right now, what's best for the city, is to set up a huge ramp and then jump over the highway in a stolen car. It's critical that this get done today. If you have a problem with that, I suggest you keep it to yourself. I can lift a garbage truck and I'm immune from prosecution.
DSGamer wrote:

It's like what a game about the Matrix should have been.

Yeah, one minor complaint that I have is that while the jumping is awesome, I'd like to see it get even awesomer. How about downloadable content that lets me get my agility up to 10 so that I can REALLY jump like the Matrix, and (perhaps just for a limited time) run around like The Flash? It would actually be awesome to have super-speed, which is represented through slowing down everything around you. You could run up to badguys and kick them into next week - some kind of combos or juggling moves would be great there. Okay, so maybe we're now talking about Crackdown 2. That's cool, I'm onboard for Crackdown 2.

So yeah, between jumping even more ridiculously far and moving at super speeds, I'd like this game to be even more like The Matrix. I don't ever need to fly or be able to stop all bullets like Neo at the end of the movie, but maybe get me to somewhere before that metamorphosis.

And better boss fights, like everyone has mentioned. Make driving better - and improve the viewing angle for the love of noodles!

DSGamer wrote:

I'd rather read Dune.

Another frightening point of agreement. Except that I do want really good stories in my games. But still. The Dune books get better over time, and I feel like I'm getting smarter when I read them.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

improve the viewing angle for the love of noodles!

Please do. That's probably my biggest complaint with the game.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Yeah, one minor complaint that I have is that while the jumping is awesome, I'd like to see it get even awesomer.

I think that's the bottom line to me. My main complaint about this game is that indeed it needs to be much more "awesomer". Go work on that Realtime Worlds, and get back to us with Crackdown 2 soon.

Fedaykin98 wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

I'd rather read Dune.

Another frightening point of agreement. Except that I do want really good stories in my games. But still. The Dune books get better over time, and I feel like I'm getting smarter when I read them.

Are you keeping track of these "frightening points of agreement"? And for the record, what did I say in the past that makes said points of agreement frightening?

Anyway, that's the thing for me. That's why I love Strategy RPGs, but I'm kind of meh on regular RPGs. Because no RPG story is really going to interest me as much as books do. So books always win that battle. So the game just needs to be fun. Still trying to decide if Oblivion would be worth it for me in that context. If I could play it in short bursts or if it would become tedious and long.

Overall, I'd call Crackdown a $40 game. It's good, mindless fun, but not great. It's got tons of potential, but it mostly wasn't realized.

Leaping around is a ton of fun, and throwing cars ain't bad, but it's the missions and story that make a game really come alive to me. There is only mission: find people and kill them. The details differ a bit, but the, ahem, execution is always very similar. Enemies, particularly bosses, have absolutely zero flavor, beyond a few constantly-repeating taunts per boss.

The world never really comes to life; it's made of cardboard and is completely unconvincing.

With this foundation, they could go on to make a Truly Great game, but as is, it's just a good one. It's at best a qualified success in every area but one: leaping around from building to building is pure fun on a stick. That's what makes this game work.

WyattERP wrote:

Two questions: Was this game fun

Yes, in the way going to a Cleveland Browns game is fun - it's great watching NFL football, but that ain't Tom Brady on the field.

and did it last long enough to be worth the 60 bucks?

No. Thankfully I rented it from GameFly - I would be a lot more unhappy if I had spent $60 on it.

DSGamer wrote:

Are you keeping track of these "frightening points of agreement"? And for the record, what did I say in the past that makes said points of agreement frightening? :)

Oh, I dunno...no need to rehash past disagreements when we're on a roll!

DSGamer wrote:

Still trying to decide if Oblivion would be worth it for me in that context. If I could play it in short bursts or if it would become tedious and long.

Well, Oblivion is definitely the open-world playground game of RPGs; in that sense it makes a little bit of sense to compare it to Crackdown. However, I'd say that anyone buying Oblivion needs to be pretty stoked about setting off on an epic quest to save the realm. That said, I haven't done the first thing to help the realm in the whole time I've played. I've quested as a thief, a member of the mage's guild, I've fought in the arena, and I've even assassinated someone. But he was bad.

If you can enjoy KOTOR, then you can probably enjoy Oblivion, because both are western RPGs that let you develop and play your character as you see fit, except that Oblivion is far more open in what it allows you to do along the way. In KOTOR, you generally go to a planet, solve all the quests, and then move on. In Oblivion you can find a favorite planet (town) and set down roots - become the town hero by solving the populace's problems, or rob them all blind in the middle of the night - or both, they'll never know who stole the china! Save the world or just randomly explore it, fighting varied and interesting opponents as you explore dozens of dungeons and discover mad loot. Spend countless hours gathering flowers and other alchemical ingredients and experiment with making all sorts of concoctions.

/fanboy

Considering that I've done pretty much everything that the game has to offer (except for co-op)... was it worth $60? Absolutely! ...because I had a ton of fun in the 50+ hours that I've put into it. For me at least the game delivered on what I was looking for and sure it could have been more but at the current state... it's perfect. I mean, any thing that I've done in the game was fun whether I'm looking for Orb, Stunt Markers (which boosted my opinion on driving from 'meh' to 'awesome'), more Orbs, etc...

Here for DLC and Crackdown 2!

Okay, I've beaten Los Muertos and raised my Agility pretty high, but the only stunt marker I've seen is the one as you exit the Agency garage. Any tips on how to get into stunting? (please no hip hop jokes now :wink:)

I think the game is a total blast, but ends too soon, with me wanting more variety in the missions. I too wish the abilities increased to god-like levels; i'd like to jump over an entire city and swing a building into some thug's head. That's content i'd definitely pay to download.

I've thought about how cool it would be to be able to blow up buildings, but then I realized that one would then give up the climbing/jumping game, and even if you were willing to make that ridiculous sacrifice it would make designing the game much more of a pain for the devs (and could you imagine realizing that you had stranded the final Agility Orb (cue Sinatar) on some now-unreachable rooftop? For these reasons, I'm willing to do without destructable buildings.

Fedaykin98 wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

Are you keeping track of these "frightening points of agreement"? And for the record, what did I say in the past that makes said points of agreement frightening? :)

Oh, I dunno...no need to rehash past disagreements when we're on a roll!

Fair enough. I just think it's funny, because other than my obvious feuds in P & C with JMJ, I don't remember really getting frustrated or annoyed by a single person here. So I was actually kind of curious. Oh well, glad that "we're better" now.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Well, Oblivion is definitely the open-world playground game of RPGs; in that sense it makes a little bit of sense to compare it to Crackdown. However, I'd say that anyone buying Oblivion needs to be pretty stoked about setting off on an epic quest to save the realm. That said, I haven't done the first thing to help the realm in the whole time I've played. I've quested as a thief, a member of the mage's guild, I've fought in the arena, and I've even assassinated someone. But he was bad.

If you can enjoy KOTOR, then you can probably enjoy Oblivion, because both are western RPGs that let you develop and play your character as you see fit, except that Oblivion is far more open in what it allows you to do along the way. In KOTOR, you generally go to a planet, solve all the quests, and then move on. In Oblivion you can find a favorite planet (town) and set down roots - become the town hero by solving the populace's problems, or rob them all blind in the middle of the night - or both, they'll never know who stole the china! Save the world or just randomly explore it, fighting varied and interesting opponents as you explore dozens of dungeons and discover mad loot. Spend countless hours gathering flowers and other alchemical ingredients and experiment with making all sorts of concoctions.

/fanboy

I know they're not an exact comparison. I just thought of it in the sense that I'm enjoying these open-ended games. KOTOR, to be honest, I ended up giving up on 30 hours in. I got tired of the sidequests that I had to perform in order to move the story forward. I would have been happy to have been a good Jedi running around doing sidequests and once in a while engaging the story. But I think as I am personally constructed currently I'm not built for games that require that much attention. I think that's why Crackdown appeals to me so much. I just pop it in and start blowing stuff up, throwing stuff, kicking stuff... ummmm.. throwing stuff on top of stuff. Throwing stuff in the air and shooting it with missiles. Jumping onto buildings and jumping off to shoot at stuff. Lots of stuff you can do with stuff in that game.

Yes, Crackdown is awesome in its ability to reward 5 minutes or 5 hours of play. Well, I don't think that I've played for more than 2 hours at a time, but I've never quit because I got tired of it. I haven't really had the opportunity to gorge myself; it came out the week of my wedding.

So Oblivion is more like Crackdown than KOTOR in that you can do a wide variety of things, some of which may amuse you more than others, and some of which may be entirely freeform (like robbing people, or exploring non-quest related areas and dungeons), whilst there is certainly plenty of main-quest and side-quest material. But it probably won't reward 5 minutes of play, and really I wouldn't want to sit down to it for less than half an hour - though I think that I have sometimes, when in the worst parts of my addiction.

In general, I recommend Oblivion to anyone who thinks that they might like it.

And you know, DSG, given your recently discussed penchant for selling things, have you considered signing up for a game rental service? Seems like you could accomplish many things with one act there. It would certainly aid you in sampling some of the back catalog of Xbox games that you may or may not like.

I wish I could take my Crackdown agent into Oblivion and jump around the scenery, and kick stuff off the mountains. I'm down for Crackdown 2, but I'd like a more superhero feel to it. I'd love to be able to pick some powers like laser sight, or flame blast, but if I want to go all punisher I can still use guns.

They should make it more like the old Champions or Villains and Vigilantes pnp game. You could make some really interesting Heroes with those rules.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Yes, Crackdown is awesome in its ability to reward 5 minutes or 5 hours of play. Well, I don't think that I've played for more than 2 hours at a time, but I've never quit because I got tired of it. I haven't really had the opportunity to gorge myself; it came out the week of my wedding.

So Oblivion is more like Crackdown than KOTOR in that you can do a wide variety of things, some of which may amuse you more than others, and some of which may be entirely freeform (like robbing people, or exploring non-quest related areas and dungeons), whilst there is certainly plenty of main-quest and side-quest material. But it probably won't reward 5 minutes of play, and really I wouldn't want to sit down to it for less than half an hour - though I think that I have sometimes, when in the worst parts of my addiction.

In general, I recommend Oblivion to anyone who thinks that they might like it.

And you know, DSG, given your recently discussed penchant for selling things, have you considered signing up for a game rental service? Seems like you could accomplish many things with one act there. It would certainly aid you in sampling some of the back catalog of Xbox games that you may or may not like.

We may have to talk at some point. Maybe over PM. I like Crackdown and Uno, but after sampling the rest of the XBLA I'm starting to wonder if I'm going to like the system long term. Not being a fan of violent games. Getting a PS2 is looking more and more attractive because of the adventure games, games like Katamari, etc. I haven't purchased Lumines or anything other than Uno. But the Demos haven't given me the distinct impression that I'd want to. So I don't know. Maybe Crackdown is the high point of my 360 gaming career.

I hope not, but I don't see many other games on the horizon with the same pick up and playability that aren't shooters or sports games or racers.

DSGamer wrote:

We may have to talk at some point. Maybe over PM. I like Crackdown and Uno, but after sampling the rest of the XBLA I'm starting to wonder if I'm going to like the system long term. Not being a fan of violent games. Getting a PS2 is looking more and more attractive because of the adventure games, games like Katamari, etc. I haven't purchased Lumines or anything other than Uno. But the Demos haven't given me the distinct impression that I'd want to. So I don't know. Maybe Crackdown is the high point of my 360 gaming career.

I hope not, but I don't see many other games on the horizon with the same pick up and playability that aren't shooters or sports games or racers.

I say this with ONLY love.... go at least a week or two before beginning the spazzing! There are years of 360 games still coming to you, don't crack so soon.

Maybe we'll start a "get DSGamer a PS2 so he can relax" pool going.