[XBOX 360] Crackdown

 

 Crackdown is an exclusive for xbox 360 and the first game by the developer, it has one of the developrs of GTA 1 and 2 and its one of the few games in existence for open world campaign CO-Op , i played it a lot when I was little but that was almost 15 years ago so lets see how it holds up

The premise is simple, youre a 'peace keeper' aka police, to clean up the city from criminals. Theres 3 gangs, and they are in 3 different areas sorted by colors. All you do is spawn into the game, roam around the map until you find a boss, infilitrate the boss HQ and take out soldiers and then kill boss, then move onto the next. Theres 20 something in total. Its got a skill upgrade system where you level up different areas like guns, melee/health, jumping ability (which makes you jump really high), cars, etc.

On paper the game sounds pretty cool, like a relaxing game to jump into some mindless co-op with your buddy and roam around open world killing bosses. Unfortunately, its got some massive flaws that hinder almost all enjoyment.

First of all you might think the idea of the skill system could feel rewarding and fun, but unfortunately it probably just makes the game worse. For example, the health is tied to the Melee stat, so the only way to get more health is by awkwardly using melee to kill the enemies. This becomes a big deal because when you get further the enemies can kill you super quick and if you didnt spend tedious amounts of time grinding melee kills your health will be tiny and you wont survive. So then we had to just spend time going around grinding melee kills which just felt stupid. The melee in general is worthless and only valuable because its tied to health. So thats strike one.

The other stats like Agility, are probably the biggest part of the game. Theres these orbs all over the city which actually are cleverly designed to entice you to actually spend time exploring and jumping all around the city to collect them, because collecting them makes you level up the Jump/run speed ability which is integral to success. So it is pretty fun just jumping around rooftops collecting these orbs, however it has a sort of fatal design flaw of making the Driving ability pretty much completely worthless. I maybe spent 10 minutes total driving a car in this whole game, the running/jumping ability just makes it have no purpose.
The other skills arent worth mentioning, shooting skill is self-explainatory, and you level up by killing guys, explosives is shit, driving worthless.

Another major annoying flaw is the 'checkpoints' in this game operate by safehouses you find throughout the map. Usually to access these safehouses you have to do this guessing game of how to awkwardly climb up these gigantic buildings, jumping on window ledges, climbing up poles, its just not that fun. Maybe the first few times, but time and time again having to put aside 10+ minutes just trying to climb up a stupid building to unlock a safe house just becomes tedious more than enjoyable.

And finally the worst flaw of all: The only way to figure out how to progress is by just roaming around the map mindlessly until you come across a boss. This means a significant amount of time is spent as 'downtime' where you're not even doing anything just wondering "Where the fuck is the next boss" and walking / jumping around the map like an idiot trying to find them. All they had to do was show you all the boss locations by default on the map and the game would have been atleast significantly better. But no, the pacing sucks and you kill one boss, then you spent 20-30 minutes walking around doing NOTHING looking for the next one. Theres just no direction, it feels half assed. Its also extremely glitchy in co-op and sometimes boss events/enemies wont even spawn in until you restart the game.

Theres not much to speak of a story, theres barely any cutscenes and they only happen in the form of short radio intermissions, which is kind of a positive actually, but theres just not much to the game. As a premise it could be really fun, but its got way too many flaws and bad design choices.
Some of the shooting can be pretty fun when you get into the groove, its got this lockon system where you can aim at individual body parts and then wait for the crosshair to become small to consistently hit them, but thats about all there is to the shooting mechanics. Just lock on and wait for the crosshair to become small then hold down the trigger. And theres basically only one viable weapon in the whole game, the LMG, its just so overpowered i dont know why any other gun sucks so much compared to it but they do.

The graphics can be impressive at times, its got a lot of color and character sort of cell shaded around the edges , its got some impressive draw distance, but its rough around the edges. The HUD looks like it was made in MS paint, and the AI is pretty dumb.
 
-Bad clunky controls, aiming system is janky accidentally targeting bodies on ground, wrong targets, you punch walls by holding the shoot button all the time, bad controls

-General game deisgn promising but ruined execution by hiding bosses behind randomly roaming around

-Only one gun is actually good, LMG, rest feel like crap.

- Shooting can be fun , seeing orbs pop out of enemies can be rewarding, but the lack of depth or viable weapons makes it too repetitive

- Glitchy in co op, when both partners die the bosses glitch out and just dont spawn anymore until you restart the console

- Annoying climbing buildings with awkward platforming floaty controls every 'checkpoint' spawn point is by climbing buildings high up awkwardly trying to figure out the route to get up its just not that fun and tedious

- Level design is arbitrary and just random BS that doesnt make sense, stuff slapped together with abrupt dead ends, large open spaces, nonsense archetecture, most of the bosses you have to climb super high skyscrapers with no clear pathway up


5/10

Battlefield V

 

 I played this right after I finished BF1
And BF5 is very much the same game.
Like BF1, you have these "war stories" for the campaign. These are individual little detached segments about a few select soldiers and their squads.

This time its set in WW2, and the battlefield naming schemes are pretty stupid and awkward. Like BF1 is set in WW2, but BF5 is set in WW2. Dunno.
To be honest between Bf1 (ww1) and Bf5(ww2) theres not much difference in the actual setting! its a lot of the same bolt actions/sub machine guns. I thought the jump would be more drastic between times.

There are four difficulties, Easy,normal,hard,and hardcore. I played on Hard

There are 5 individual 'war stories' .
The first one is just a very short 5 minute intro, so really only 4.
Each of these are about 1 hour long, so its a really short game.

First of all its very much worth noting that the major problem I had with BF1 campaign is fixed here. In bf1, atleast half, if not more of the game was spent inside vehicles or aircraft. In BF5, almost the entire game is spent doing engang on-ground combat, with only the very last mission having some tank combat. This  alone makes it the superior game for me.

Second, its also worth noting the graphical fidelity and sheer polish of the visuals. It really shows that its a multi-million dollar production and this alone is worth the price of admission almost. (I only paid $10).

The individual war stories do have decently memorable characters and settings, in one of them you play as a failed bank robber which has been recruited instead to fight in the army and the two of you have some humorous moments like singing songs while mowing down waves of enemies.
The gameplay feels open world at times where you never really are being handheld and forced to follow a npc down a strict path, but it gives this big world and usually gives you multiple objectives to deal with as you please. Usually trivial things like "Go to one of these places and blow up/destroy this"  There are cars you can get and drive in between these places and it does feel like a big sandbox at times.

Most outposts in the game have alarms which quickly becomes the #1 priority (and starts to feel like a modern Ubisoft far cry game or something)  as theres basically no point to bother trying to shoot enemies until you take out the alarm cause they'll just keep coming. So it becomes this mad sprint to try to disable the alarm as fast as possible.

On the 2nd hardest difficulty, the game is quite hard and challenging, but not really stupidly frustrating or awful. The health regen is very slow and I spent a lot of time just faceplanted on the ground desperately waiting for my health to regen. The guns also have a fair amount of recoil and challenge to accurately hitting shots too, but they all look and feel incredible with a lot of details and great animations. Though I dont like that a lot of the guns have these weird psuedo-modern sights and scopes on them, seems a bit out of place.

Theres a couple of these segments where you have to do dashes back and forth between turrets/anti air missile launchers as youre getting bombarded with enemy missiles that can be pretty awkward and frustrating but other than that the challenge was just right.

PRobably the highlight of these 4 war stories is the Norwegian one where you play as a female scout in the winter forests going around with bolt action rifles /silenced pistols taking out german outposts and the atmosphere is just great. The bolt action guns are real fun to use in this game. Its more of the same gameplay, psuedo-free roam world, find an outpost, Disable the alarm, go to objective destroy/press interact button, Repeat. its a decent loop cause the gunplay is so good and the graphics are awesome.
The norway chapter progresses from night time to day time, where you can even use a mechanic to pull out your skis and traverse through the winter landscape and ice, the graphics are very impressive on these parts and  great atmosphere/sounds. The story of the mother/daughter team is interesting enough the whole time.

The stories are engaging enough and memorable (albeit flawed characters suffering from obvious 'woke' agenda)  like the norwegian segment you're playing as a mother/daughter team which singlehandedly destroys the entire german army and is solely responsible for saving the world basically, its a bit emphasizing the role of women and minorities , not that its good or bad really, its just obvious to tell the agenda/'woke politics' happening in the story. Like the other campaign where you play as african americans doing all these incredible achievements, and at the end you take a photograph with the commander, and then it plays a cutscene of the black people being 'erased' from the photograph to rewrite history. These bits of the story do feel heavily political agenda . Its entertaining nonetheless.

 Then you have another chapter where you play as french african americans in the french countryside hillside taking out bunkers and repelling forces in waves, this chapter is decent and memorable too. Lots of different weapons to try. This one is a bit more linear and has you fighting along side many AI partners doing standard objectives like blow up AA equipment / take over bunkers / Defend yourself and position from waves. fighting through autumn forest with sub machine guns and stuff its decent.

And then right at the end of the game the last chapter you play as the Germans surprisingly enough,  this chapter is mostly spent inside a tank which makes it the only required vehicle segment in the game. Its a typical city streets tank segment where you just fight your way through streets blowing up enemy tanks, the controls are decent and like BF1 it has a button to repair your tank although you cant get out anymore. The tank mechanics are more fleshed out in this though theres a lot of swaying and reticle movement where you aim you tank feels more polished.

So for most of this chapter you just go around blowing stuff up, playing as a German tank commander, teaching young naive recruits the ways of war, but then some points you get outside of your tank and fight Americans on foot. they're pretty tough , hardest enemies in the game which I found interesting. then you spend a bit singlehandedly killing dozens of americans as a german officier, blow up another AA gun, get back in the tank for a final massive standoff against dozens of enemy tanks, then the game ends with a cutscene of you (the germans) surrendering and the young naive kid killing you and your friend because you once told him that "germans dont surrender and kill all traitors/deserters"

So the campaign is decent, its better than BF1 just because most of the time is spent on foot rather than inside vehicles. Graphics are great and highly polished multi million dollar AAA game. Story is memorable enough albeit flawed with an obvious bias/agenda at times.

7/10