Ever tell yourself that the only way you would sit down to play a certain video game is because of some unforeseen yet tragic catastrophe that leaves you either bedridden, or bored as hell?
Me too.
Coincidentally, I was in fact recently board as hell. I cracked open my roomate's copy of Crackdown 2 that had recently been shipped from Gamefly.
It was awful.
I played it for a few hours, and kept telling myself that it would get better. Maybe the controls would get easier as I played, or at least I might get used to them. I kept telling myself that maybe the incredibly annoying narrator/central command agent that was constantly telling me what to do, where to go, and even what not to do would shut the hell up!
He didn't.
And I was so, SO upset because of this.
Crackdown 2 is klunky. Even the main character is badly designed. I say this for two reasons, which directly relate to what you're character is supposed to be (but isn't). Your character wears a suit of power armor. It is supposed to enhance his durability and athleticism. I found that they hit the nail on the head in the durability factor. It's so incredibly hard to kill, it takes much of the adrenaline out of playing an action game in which you cannot lose. Even when you do get killed, there is little to no penalty for doing so. You just re-spawn nearby, AND get restocked with ammo, weapons, and vehicles as you see fit. With those kinds of 'penalties' why wouldn't you want to die when you run out of ammo? The enemies don't respawn, and you can just drive back up with a fresh car and some fresh gear. Bad game designers. Bad!
Okay, sure you can jump like fifteen feet in the air, and you can leap from the tallest buildings without fear of death, and you can scale buildings left and right. But if your character is that athletic, and enhanced by power armor, then why does he move like he's walking around inside a giant fat kid? I don't think I need to say anymore on the subject.
Let's talk about the collectibles and advancement in the game. You're character's skills increase by getting kills with either weapons, explosives, driving, or your fists. Fine. I can see that. When you 'level up' one of your skills, you gain access to the next tier items, which you can just have air dropped nearby for you. Sure. You're better at shooting? You can now handle a better gun. I accept. Unlike other games, you actually have to level up your ability to platform (your athleticism, if you can call it that) by picking up these glowing green orbs. Leveling this ability allows you to run faster and jump higher. But the orbs you get, barely contribute much if anything to leveling it. The increases are not significant, and yet are essentially the most important skill you can level up. So why make it so slow in progression? Oh, and lets not forget your reward for being a power armored super soldier: You have the option to collect a different type of athletics orb which gives you an even higher boost (not really) to you score. The catch - it runs away from you. The game designers thought it was a good idea to make these orbs so incredibly hard to capture that ... oh, there aren't words for the frustration I had to endure. I spent no less than thirty minutes chasing ONE orb. It had the bad habit of following the same path over the same four rooftops. When you get near, it speeds up. When you're far, it stops. So you can't even chase it from a different direction. I once tried to head it off at the pass by leaping between the two corner buildings and grabbing it while it was in the void between the skyscrapers. It stopped in mid air rather than continuing on it's path and through my character. It's like they want me to hate playing this game. My only reward for trying to grab the orb through an unorthodox method was a swift fall back to street level from where I had to spend five minutes climbing again. I have to move on, because I think I'm going to vomit if I cover this section much longer.
Goals. Yea, this game has'em. Yea, they suck too. The game gives you the location of your objectives. But never really tells you how to get there. Except for the first time you encounter that type of objective when it has you "follow the white line". After that, you're stuck guessing as to which building it might be on, and where you can climb. You can't even look at your map, because It's just a black square with white lines, and there's no way you can tell the difference between roads and buildings. And once you locate the building you've got to climb, good luck doing so. It turns out that the only possible way to ascend that building is by jumping from an adjacent one, and so on, until you find the only building you CAN climb, about five blocks away.
I really can't convey how irate I am at this game with words. They just don't do me justice. This game sucked. Pure and simple. I'm just glad I had a few beers that night to take the edge off the pain it caused me.
I'm tempted to not even grant this game a rating, but if you have to know, I'd give it...
1 pulsating mutated virus infected freak...out of 5. No. 10. It was that bad.
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