Date Acquired: Never. My roomate bought it the same day I got Uncharted 2 when we split the Toys R Us sale on 10.13.09.
Date Completed 1.29.10
Thoughts: I tend to love Sandbox games, and I'm a comic book nerd at heart, so this game is one I've always planned to get. It came out before I had a PS3 so I had to wait a while before playing it. Mostly it was great. I loved upgrading my powers, and I liked things like hovering in the air and riding the power lines and rail cars. I played through the good missions so I didn't get to experience arc lightning which is supposed to be fun to play with. I was surprised the game wasn't a bit more polished than it was. It had a lot of issues with hit detection. Once I jumped into a fence with the intention of climbing it and jumping over it. Instead I jumped right through it. Since it's what I was ultimately trying to do, I didn't have a problem with it, but it was weird. I had some major issues when trying to climb the police tower late in the game where I'm supposed to fly to different poles and cling to them. I would again fly right through poles instead of grabbing onto them. The hit detection was very inconsistent.
Infamous vs Crackdown -
In 2007 a Grandtheft Auto-style sandbox game released featuring a superhero created for the game who would level up and become more powerful as the game progressed. Sound familiar? I thought so too. Now that both games are behind me, I thought I'd compare.Which Game is the Most GTA-like? This is a tough call. Crackdown lets you steal cars, and you carry guns the whole way through. Both games have you hunting hidden packages-like collectables throughout the game, though in both games these hidden items actually help your character level up, while they do nothing in GTA. Crackdown doesn't have missions per say. You just wander the city until you stumble across an enemy base, go in, kill everyone until you get to the main boss, kill him, repeat. Not a ton in the way of side missions, you can do races, and you can run through polls along rooftops, but not a lot else. In Infamous you go to a marker indicated on your map when you want to progress the story, and if you want to do a side mission, you can go find those elsewhere on the game, which is very GTA-like. Neither game had an irreverent sense of humor, if anything both games took themselves too seriously. So what is really the heart of GTA, guns and carjacking, or a plethora of missions and side missions with tons of variety? I lean towards the latter: Edge: Infamous
Twist Endings- Don't worry I'm not going to spoil anything. Both games have twist endings. The problem with a twist ending though, is once you know there is one, it's easy to figure it out. I figured Infamous's out very early on, but I knew there was one to look for. Crackdown I had no idea, so the twist actually surprised me. Edge: Crackdown
Super Powers- In Crackdown you are a super solider but most of your fighting is done with guns. The super powers you get here are basically limited to super strength: Being able to lift cars and throw them, and super jumps, that let you scale great heights and jump from building to building. While these are fun to play with, they just can't compete with all the different powers you get in Infamous. Powerline grinding, shock grenades, shockwaves, lightning storm, and I can only imagine, arc lightning. Edge: Infamous
Better Story- Crackdown had a story? This isn't even close. Crackdown had a bare-bones approach to story telling, just enough to make the game happen. Infamous tries to create a world. It doesn't clean up every story line, (Moya for instance) but it does a great job creating characters you care about and surprising you with what it does with them. Edge: Infamous
Fun Factor- Look at me, I'm Gamepro! In short bursts I'd have to go with Crackdown. Jumping from rooftops, and more importantly being able to jump up TOO roof tops without having to climb up (often while getting the shit shot out of you by random thugs) is a lot of fun. Being able to steal cars felt very tacked on (Why did I need to steal cars when I was so super powerful? Especially when the Agency can just give me my own special car? It's like it was included so people would think the game was just like GTA. Since the skill points in this game actually did something, I never got annoyed looking for them. Mainly I just got excited when I saw them. Plowing through a boss's hideout and killing everyone in there is also a lot of fun to do. Once. or Twice. Or even three times. But that's the whole game, and so that's why I call it more fun in short bursts. Anything more than that, and it starts getting tedious. There's a reason why I put this down when I was halfway through and didn't finish it for a year. Ok, it's because I have mild ADD, but .... where was I going with this? I'm thirsty. Edge: Pepsi
Sequal I am more likely to buy - Well it's pretty likely that eventually I'll get both sequals. But ever since I heard Crackdown 2 was coming, my reaction has been 'I'm waiting for the price drop.' I got Crackdown as a bargain title, and I felt that was the right price point for it. The original wasn't worth $60 so the sequal likely won't be either. But who knows, we could have said the same about Mass Effect or Assasin's Creed. Infamous will need to have some improvements for me to get the sequal. Sucker Punch didn't switch up the Sly games much, and if the sequal is more of the same, I'll wait for a price drop on that also. But as of now I think it's far more likely I pay full price for Infamous 2 than Crackdown 2. Edge: Infamous
Hidden packages/collectibles aren't completely useless in the GTA games. The exact details varied from game to game, but in GTA3 for instance, every 10 hidden packages gave you a weapon that would always be infinitely available near safe houses. Another example is in San Andreas, where collecting all of the horseshoes gave you increased luck at gambling. Of course, it wasn't always clear what they did for you until you actually found the right number of them (which is either part of the fun or really lame depending on your own personal taste), and finding 50 tiny horseshoes randomly placed around a huge re-approximation of Las Vegas just to give you better odds at poker hardly seems worth the trouble, but they weren't there JUST to be collected for what it's worth.
ReplyDeleteHuh. Didn't know that. GTA4 is the only one I ever finished and I'm pretty sure they do nothing except give you achievement points. But only if you get them all. Eff that noise.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny to me that you said you "tend to love sandbox games" when you are a bit lukewarm toward the GTA series as a whole.
ReplyDeleteI'm not lukewarm to GTA. I've bought every one of them except for Chinatown Wars and Ballad of Gay Tony, and I'll probably get both of those at some point. For some reason I've never finished a GTA game before. GTA3 is because it came out when I was in college and i just didn't have time. Vice City I got stuck at a difficult part and gave up. San Andreas I just didn't find the time for whatever reason, even though I bought it the day it came out. The PSP games I didn't play all the way through, but I don't know that I've ever finished any PSP games (other than Megaman Legends). There's no Dragon Quest game on PSP. I've always enjoyed the sandbox style and had tons of fun playing around with GTA just driving around stealing cars and capping fools. Part of it's addictive nature, how much fun it is just to tool around in the game, is part of the reason I never finished it. It was fun just to play that game without advancing the plot.
ReplyDeleteUmm... if you could please clarify... just who exactly is it that could have said Mass Effect or Assassin's Creed weren't worth $60.00? Both were highly anticipated, triple-A titles, by developers of particularly high repute. They then went on to be critically and publicly acclaimed, along with being big commercial successes. Additionally, both were/are still considered 'must play' games of this generation -- and were arguably advancements of the very medium of interactive art. Isn't that pretty much a checklist of every single criterion of a game's pre-purchase worth or value (barring complete revulsion or indifference to the core concept/gameplay)? Sure, the sequels for both have been received and rated even more highly, but that is more of a testament to just how truly extraordinary those two titles are, not a reflection of any shortcomings of the originals.
ReplyDeleteOn top of all of that, I expounded on their virtues to you ad nauseum -- which I would've hoped might also have had some sort of influence on you. Then again, it may have been the very factor which, in fact, negated all the considerations above.
;)
I could say that. I bought Mass Effect 1 for $20 8 months or so after release, and Assasin's Creed for $13 (the Collector's edition, 1 year after it came out). Ass Creed 2 is already $30 all over the place. Ubisoft is aggressive with their pricing, which helps generate sales, but hard to argue it was really worth $60 for Assasin's Creed 2 when you could literally have waited 4 months and saved $30. I know YOU love those games, but critical reaction wasn't as enthusiastic, moreso in the case of Assassin's creed.
ReplyDelete"Ass Creed"...? Really, now -- is that necessary? You have to mock it?
ReplyDeleteIt's a weak effort to try to pretend like those two games weren't as heralded and well-received as I described. You and I both know, because we've discussed this many times, that both games suffered from that common syndrome which afflicts a lot of great games -- the whole, "love it or hate it" phenomenon. Even great games upon which we could both agree -- with what I believe to be our good taste and pretty clear mind on these matters -- to be great, worthy games, will often get their meta-scores dragged down either by those reviewers for whom either the entire concept was a pre-disposed snooze, or by those who were stubbornly committed to negative comments they'd prematurely made prior to the games' releases. EGM and Assassin's Creed were a prime example of the latter, as you know.
Every point I made up above stands. Just because you are... let's say, frugal... when it comes to your spending habits and bargain shopping, that doesn't validate a sweeping, generalized statement about something's worth. You are a person for whom it doesn't matter what hype, lack of hype, name-value, or even review score does for a game if you aren't initially 'hooked' on the basic premise. Which is fine -- we all do that to some extent. However, unless a game is a 'must buy on day one ' -game to you from almost the outset, you can very easily put anything -- even games whose eventual scores or hype may have actually piqued your interest enough to want to buy it -- on the 'wait until it's discounted' list. It doesn't take much, Steve... and you know I'm right! But that isn't a reason enough to say the game isn't worth $60.00 -- even just to yourself. You could play a game you bought in a bargain-bin, and discover you love it so much that you would gladly have paid the full-price when it was initially released had you known how good it was. Even if you're just saying it wasn't worth it to you to WANT to pay full price for the game when it was brand new, because it didn't draw you in enough, so you were willing to wait until a price drop... then that isn't what you said. You asserted that it simply wasn't worth it, in some final, decided sense. If it's what you MEANT, just as it relates to you, and just because the proof was the fact that that's what you actually DID... well, then okay, I'll give that to you, I suppose -- of course still noting your... *ahem*... atypical... shopping habits. ;) However, it certainly wouldn't be enough to merit a blanket statement as it relates to anyone else's perception of the games (or not most people, at least)... which is how you made it sound. Frankly, I worry you still don't realize just how amazing those two games are, having never finished -- or even played beyond the introductions of -- either game. You really should do that. Or at least go back and read what people said about those games before assuming they were all *yawn* to everyone else simply because they were to you. The general consensus is that they were pretty major contributions to this generation... and many, like myself, consider them advancements in the actual medium of the interactive arts. Of course, that's if you wanted to consider anything 'I' said about a video game as something to perhaps influence your opinion, as if I had the good taste and/or judgement enough to hold that kind of weight with you. Even if not, I think you'd be hard pressed to find many people who played either game all the way through who would say they weren't worth their $60.00 cost... and certainly not enough to present it as a near-empirical fact.
I used Ass Creed to shorten it, not to insult it. And you asked 'who could argue they weren't worth $60' to which I answered you. I could argue that because I didn't spend $60 on them when I had the chance. Assassins (happy?) Creed has a gamerankings score of 85. That's good, but hardly generation-defining. Sandbox games are largely new to you, but not to the rest of us. And I don't mean that in an offensive way, I just know you haven't played a lot of them before that. A couple minutes with GTA was about it if I recall correctly. So it's possible you got more out of it than most due to the newness of that element to you.
ReplyDeleteThose last comments only further expose your ignorance of that game and detract from your point, not reinforce it. The 'sandbox' element of the game really didn't have much to do with my appreciation of it, nor with my current opinion of its greatness. The other favorable reviews, likewise, are also not based upon that. If you just see Assassin's Creed as basically a sandbox game, then you truly don't have an accurate perception of the game. It's more about the action, the platforming, the historical setting, the different gameplay elements, and the ambitious, time-spanning plot. It's a truly original title unlike anything before or sense. Please don't condescend me and my gaming experience. The irony is that you're trying to pull the 'experience' card on me to win an argument when in fact, this is all stemming from your ignorance of the true nature and reality of those two games, having never played them through in any fair sense.
ReplyDeleteIf you check again, the reason I asked, "who could argue...", it was because you initially posited that it a was a given that 'we' (the editorial 'we') could have said those things about those two games -- something with which I vehemently disagree. And don't point out the meta-score (which I knew you'd do... oh so predictable), as I addressed that in my last post, which you conveniently ignored (along with all my other well thought out points). Now, go back and read my initial post and my laundry list of those two titles' qualities. Now, given all that, if those two titles don't qualify for their $60 worth, what title on earth COULD be considered 'worth' their $60?? Are you truly saying that despite all those qualities, simply because YOU didn't HAPPEN to be interested enough to pick them up for full-price initially, that is the proof positive of your blanket assertion? You may pay full price for some random Dragon Quest game, too, but does that make it 'worth' it, in some universal, or widespread sense? 'Cause I sure as Hell wouldn't buy that unless it was $10.00, and maybe not even then! Now, is that just my lack of gaming experience compared to... !!! Yoooou !!! ... or perhaps a subjective thing related to my tastes and/or my ignorance of the game, and not an indicator of some ultimate truth?
I would be willing to bet any amount of money that in 10 to 15 years, those two games will be on any short list -- by any reputable compiler of such things -- of the absolute greatest games of this generation. I'll stand by that. If that doesn't make them 'worth' their full price, then we might as well stop using the word, because no game ever will be.