Hatch Day

Ah, my first post.

My first baby-steps into the vastness of internet blogging.  Not only internet blogging, but on a topic that is beaten to death by anyone with a console and half eaten pencil.  That's right, I'm going to be blogging VIDEO GAME REVIEWS! *strategically pauses for the gasping of the shocked fair grounds crowed*  Yes, yes, how droll, how contrived, but it is something that I have thought about doing for some time, and decided to get the big spatula, scrape myself off the pavement where I had become a grease spot of existence, and slop my gelatinous form in front of a computer screen and bash my head against the keyboard until my displacement of teeth made some form of a complete sentence.

So a little about your average N00basurus.  First things first, everyone's favorite subject, TERMINOLOGY!  A N00b.  A N00b has a long history of meanings but the one I like to use is the simplest and basic and it's first meaning.  A N00b (that's capital N with two zeros and a lowercase b, for those who don't know leet speech yet) is a person trying to do complex tasks before having the proper training or experience required to perform them with any accuracy.  A.K.A. someone who doesn't know what the hell they are doing, and usually brings down everyone around them, including themselves in a big flaming ball of fail and death.  N00b, as any World of Warcraft nerd can tell you, can be used as an insult to imply an air of stupidity about any one person, but I find it to have a lack of imagination when used in that context.

The term saurus is simple.  It is an old Greek word for lizard (since the ancient Greeks were one of the first paleontologists).  Yup, that's it, lizard.  Learn something new everyday.

Now some personal stuff.  I may not be that great of speller, mainly cause I have a "form of autism" for a learning disorder, but I am crazy high functioning.  You wouldn't know it by just well, hanging out, so it's not that big of a deal.  Just forgive spelling and grammar.  As Frankenstein Captain America would tell you: "NAZI'S BAAAAAD!".   I live in a college town in Lawrence Kansas and I'm a student that has been in college for WAY too long.  I hold jobs when I can, though those come and go over the years, and in my spare time, when I'm not hanging with people, doing other things, I play video games.  A couple hours at a time, or longer depending on what's going on...a lot of times....absolutely nothing is going on.

Ok so an explanation of further indepthness is required like President Obama needs additional pylons.

I'm going to rate on a 10 point scale.  I looked at shorter scales and found that a yay or nay isn't detailed enough.  5 star is a little.....I don't know, I never liked it ever since I tried that expensive 5 star restaurant when I was a kid and got food poisoning from some shrimp.  I looked at a huge scale, 100 points...that seemed...too...nit picky, even for me, if you cold believe it!  So 10 points seems just long enough to get my point across.  I will do decimals, but only in .5's  Cause some things can fall in between, but not much, I promise to floss. 

So I will christen my first posting with a short game review.  It's short because the game itself was unfortunately short.  To let you know my reviews are in 2 parts.  The overall review, and the the reasons why.  In the reasons why parts there will be SPOILERS.  I will try to make sure to label those parts as such, don't hold me to that, but I will try.

Crackdown 2.

This is a game that flew right under everybody's radar.  It almost did on the previous title as well, however, because they added a beta for ODST from the Bungie crew, it got a bit more enthusiasm.  The basis of both Crackdown games is simple.  You are the future of the future policeman.  Some supernatural sci-fi enhanced super dude busting some skulls on your usual police beat.  There's violence in the streets in a GTA'ish environment and they need you to help out.  You level some skills, you jump around, shoot guns, blow stuff up, drive cars, and beat down criminals with the bodies of other dead criminals.

I give the game about a: 5

Yarg!  This game is a few Pegs short of a pirate!

It's a game that I'm not sure buying it fresh would be the best investment.  It definitely has some fun moments.  Leveling your skills to jump higher, run faster, blow things up with more blowy upness, and the like is some what fun.  The environment is expansive and if you played the first game, it's interesting to see how the island has changed.  It's got a little bit of exploring to it as well and the announcer is as funny as ever.  Sadly this is where the game stops being fun.  Spoilers from here on-->  Not saying that the game becomes un-fun, it just sorta peters out prematurely (like a few people i know...lol).  The skills need some where to "go".  when you first start you get 6 dots of skill leveling.  The first dot is free.  Then you build up 4 dots, and Just like the last game, there is no "5th" dot.  It is really anti climactic.  This is one of those games where your character feels like it should have more and more and more levels of, well, EVERYTHING!  It should continue up to level 10 or maybe even 20, I don't know, just more!

Another major problem I had with the game was the enemies.  There are two factions.  One faction has 2 enemy types (regular guy and slightly more health guy with metal for a face) and the other faction has about 5 (dudes,fat dudes, fast dudes, big dudes, bigger dude)  But neither of the factions really has any "bosses" or important people, just tons and tons and tons of minions and then nothing else.  It's like a Mario game without the satisfying hard as hell impossible to dodge browser fights.  There's nothing to hold onto.  It kind of is the theme of the whole game.  "Some what fun to play, but nothing to really get excited about."

It feels rushed.  As if they made 1 level, and that as really all they had time for.  You have 1 objective with about 4 sub parts and 2 different kinds of side quests, and that's it.  Nothing after that.  Not even a boss fight to cap it all off.  Much like the first game, it cut short.  But the first game actually had more content..you just shredded through that content like nobody's business.

The character.  This made me the saddest of all the things.  Something that made Crackdown pretty cool was the fact that you could choose one of about 8-12 characters.  As your skills, as limited as they were, leveled your dude would change in interesting and awesome ways.  (Like the open faced helmet guy got night vision goggles, some dude got an eye patch and a huge scar, and all sorts of wacky stuff.  One guy with crazy hair got even crazier hair.) But this game... Crackdown 2 gives you 4 characters to choose from.  After level 2 in any skill it doesn't matter any more.  Their face, the only skin visible, gets covered with a fully enclosed helmet.  It's the same costume for all 4 characters which makes me wonder "Why even choose one to begin with?".  There is no differentiation or personalization or even point to character selection.  Just wasted space on the disk.

Finally:  Don't get me started on NPC's and A.I.  If you thought Louis from Left 4 Dead was bad, this an entire populated island with them!  You can't drive a car without mowing down the 60 civilians that feel like they need to end it right then and their and jump INTO your car's windshield.  You can't fire a rocket or RPG without civilians diving out to get the rocket as if it were a high velocity bag of delicious M&M's.  There was literately a spot in the game, no joke, where I was taking a stronghold (one of the 2 side quest types) and a car, same damn car, would SPAWN, drop a couple feet from thin air 2 feet in front of me, EVERY DAMN TIME I PULLED THE ROCKET LAUNCHER TRIGGER!  Seriously!  I would even re-spawn and wait a few seconds, then *click* BOOM! I killed myself cause the blue sedan spawned on top of me right when the rocket left the rocket tube.  I had to find a different weapon, one that didn't explode, to go into combat with.  I don't think there should be a game designed that gives you a good thing to use, and then puts you in constant situations where you absolutely can not use it.  "Here you go player, here is a wrench for you to carry around!  Sorry, there are no bolts or nuts in the entire game, Good luck!"  Needless to say, my friend, who was watching me play, was on the floor dying from laughter from my unfortunate turn of repeating events.

On a bright note:  It was challenging.  "Protect this sandwich" is always my Achilles' heel in games, since I'd rather eat the sandwich myself, but even still, there were some places where I just had to flail around uselessly until I found just the right weapon combo to get the job done...stupid big bigger dude with teeth for a face :/  (I was sad that you just can't go "find" these enemy's with face teeth walking around the streets bashing down buildings...that would have been awesome!)

The ending was confusing, disappointing, yet funny all at the same time.  I'm not sure if that was what they wanted you to feel, but I was entertained by the strangeness of the sensation.  (as a side note, way to make a DR. Who reference without meaning to do so...)

So yeah, recap:
Crackdown 2 gets a whopping 5, You should play it at some point for the experience, but rent or wait till it becomes discounted and marked down.
Has some great moments, especially with the narrative (seriously, the way the integrated his voice and your xbox 360 functions you take for granted had me laughing so hard I teared up, and is one of the few reasons this game wasn't scored lower...)
It is very short.  about 6-8 hours of game play.  I didn't even bother with online play.
More character customization needed and BADLY.
Online...was awkward, Tried one game, and then didn't pick it up, so can't really give a full review on that bit.
Needs more different factions and types of enemy's.
Needs satisfying boss fights.
Needs boss fights.
Needs a way to shut off the narrative after tutorial is over, and only have the naritive say funny things but also meaning ful things.  (only once did I need to know what orbs did...but he sure had to make a point to let me know that they upgrade skill points EVERY DAMN TIME over the 200 some I collected!)
It is fun to bust GTA criminals
A.I. for NPC's needs a huge upgrade or patch.

And that's about it for Crackdown 2 and my first post!  Hope you like.