Crackdown

From the creator of the GTA series comes this apology for everything Grand Theft Auto has never become. Good battling, well designed, usable levels and an upgrade system that keeps you working at all your skills. Instead of the world getting bigger making getting around more cumbersome, your ability to run, swim and drive through it increases so getting from point A to B is never much of a problem. Also love the weapon collection system.

I'm pissed the sequel never got asked for, but glad they're working on APB, which should be awesome.

The only complaints I have about this game are that the bosses don't offer much variety other than the difficulty getting to them, and once you've got your skills maxed out, the game starts to lose it's carbonation. Dicking around in the world is super fun, but once I got my skills up I played it for about two more hours and haven't played since.

3 stars.

Grand Theft Auto 4 - 1st 2 hours

While i post this, Gorgeous Hair's likely online having a blast with it. I have not been online. What I can tell you is that everything old is new again. Restarting missions is easier. So good for that. I haven't got a gun yet, so I can't comment.

What sucks so far:
- terrible frame rate. TERRIBLE
- Nico walks comedically slow. It might be realistic, but after playing Crackdown, I'm over it.
- Motion capture and animation straight out of Grand Theft Auto 3, which even back then wasn't anything special.
- While some of the humor's good, most of it's straight out of the 8th grade.

What doesn't:
- Brooklyn or wherever I am is nicely done. Feels both large enough and small enough and has a nice amount of variety.


2 stars

more later