Crackdown – An Action Game on Crack (Free via XboxLive)

The free game on Xbox Live this month is Crackdown and to be quite honest if this game wasn’t free I would probably never play it because it is terrible. People like to make GTA comparisons to this game but to me I’ll take GTA any day of this garbage (In GTA V, I can by stock and real estate. In this game I’ll be lucky to dodge some random explosion with the frustrating stiff controls).

Crackdown is a 3^rd person, open world game of “action” where you play a bio engineered agent trying to clean up the city from bad guys. Yeah, sounds like fun but this got old quicker than Assassin’s Creed 1 (and AC actually has a plot). You basically go around doing whatever you want in the city (open world), leveling up your 5 skills (agility, strength, driving, firearms, explosives) to take down the bosses. Sounds simple enough, right? It fact it is too simple. You would think simplicity would make the action stuff stand out but it seems like they took too much time making things that ‘go boom’ look good that they forgot to actually make a game worth playing after a few hours (as soon as I gather enough achievements a play through the full game because it was free, I’m done).

The AI seems to be more confused than the FIFA Goalkeepers in previous FIFA games (FIFA players know what I’m talking about) but still manage to shoot at you from rooftops and weird angles, enough to make wish you were Master Chief fighting the flood and prometheans at the same time (equally annoying). I guess being creative on how you go about the game brings some fun and excitement but I’ve played the game maybe one hour and I’m already bored (I’d rather do this in AC2, never gets old).  I wouldn’t think to pay full price for this game (which is why Im fortunately playing it for free) and its obvious limitations.

The worst part about this game is probably the driving. Most cars handle fairly poorly, as if the driving controls where made for a 2-year old NASCAR driver (and if he manages to the stay on the track he still wouldn’t win). I mean seriously, you think in an open world game the cars would handle better since it is one of the ways to getting around besides running (driving around going 45mph like a bus driver in a sports car isn’t appealing just not to hit anything). I don’t know how fast the agility skills make you but you still wouldn’t reach speeds you could in a vehicle  so have fun running over civilians and crashing into walls (even if you aren’t trying to). Next is the orbs, 500 agility orbs and like 300 hidden ones (Are you serious? Close to 800 objects). If you thought the flags in Assassin’s Creed were annoying, be prepared. Sadly, finding these stupid things is a way to upgrade the agility skill (wow, a challenge that is more useless than the game itself). Many of them are not hard to find but on occasion you will find yourself not being able to jump high enough for some orbs and completely missing ledges or target landing areas because you have become too awesome or too retarded from all that bio engineering.

The game isn’t all bad but I expected more. Making things go boom, getting rid of bad guys, executing crazy situations, stunts and just overall being a badass for a while, thumbs up. Allowing people to join and leave your game to aid you or just cause mayhem on their own in your city, plus. Other than that, why? Just, why? This gets a 2 on my scale of 5 and that’s being generous. YouTube channel updates coming soon.