Agents of Mayhem 2
How Much to Beat?
Howlongtobeat.com (This is the modern, ‘The Dictionary Defines’) says Crackdown 3 takes 6.5 hours to beat. It’s hard for me to want to replay a game. A Lot of times games gatekeep all of their skills and the coolest aspects until the last quarter of a game. New game plus should give me powers from the get go. Crackdown 3 hampers you so early in the beginning it is no surprise that an achievement I unlocked (Call in the Cavalry) had 5.09% as percentage done by the community. Let me be clear, this achievement is for throwing a beacon to call in your support militia and is only 1 of many types of grenades unlocked. (At the time of writing that I had only unlocked 3 at that point, of the 16 available.)
Ender's Game
It seems like Microsoft’s strategy game is to give you a Microsoft games to play whenever you might feel compelled to boot up a competitor. Want Mario? Try Lucky’s Tale. In my case want Miles Morales? Try Crackdown 3. It works for me and gives me all the necessary feels.
Players may be playing GamePass games but they sure aren’t going very deep. As an achievement hunter for the challenge and recognition from developers that they know how/why we play games makes Gamepass a real treat. Nintendo has missed the point since forever with achievements and Sony has finally gotten on board, but you can trust them with their backwards compatibility model that their trophy system isn’t bugged out. Will Sony or Nintendo answer the Gamepass? It's strange to say this but Nintendo and Sony is all nostalgia. Just look at Astro's playroom. People are so hungry for nostalgia if Sony or Nintendo were to put their gams on their own gampass they run the risk of people not playing through their games. They would suffer the same engagement that Crackdown 3 suffers from. With so much nostalgia people will see whatever's next through to the end. When there's so much or too much you waterdown your offerings.
What Dreams May Come
I finally finished the Judge Dredd movie and I ended up on Crackdown 3. I’m watching Despicable Me director’s commentary and I wonder where this is going to lead me. Maybe something a little more comical and a little less self serious. Red Heat is up next. What is a good Russian themed game? I'm reading a book about Sputnik so maybe that's how I ended up on Red Heat. All non-sequiturs follow something.
I can’t remember when I heard the first curse word in this game. The first was probably not the first because i seldom focus on games when i play them. Especially when I'm just plowing through them to get to a review. So then i heard it. It feels unnecessary and out of place in what could serve as baby’s first open world game if you know better than to give them GTA or Watchdogs. This is probably an M-rated game. It does not need to be M-rated. At first I thought that by cursing you have now entered into the realm of saying adult things so maybe have adult themes. The game kind of had complex morality in its themes. So good on them for going full adult with a little complexity. It was just jarring
T.R.A.I.P.S.E. (Traverse, repeat, air assault, investigate, punish, search, and exploit)
If you were a child when i was a child we had to deal with a lot of acronyms for our tv watching. We had E.R., N.C.I.S, M.A.S.H., and COPS (central organization of police specialist) cartoon and the other COPS. Well my understanding of the word ‘traipse,’ missed out on a key element of the meaning of the word. Traipse has everything to do with traveling with a sense of reluctance. Playing Crackdown 3 and navigating the world was anything but reluctant. I loved chasing the orbs down and it was great leveling up. I would deviate from destination oftentimes to head for agility orbs. It was pretty fun and this is my first completed crackdown. I think i played the original (note to readers i think the 1st and 2nd game are free forever on xbox.com for when, you know, you get tired of subscribing to the umpteenth subscription service and move on with life). I would have really liked some sort of route illumination to highlight (much in the way yellow is used in tomb raider) to tell me how to get to my waypoint. That would probably take away from the spontaneity of chasing down orbs, but I know what I want and I will eventually see it. I didn't know I loved climbing towers in games until Mad Max. Arkham Knight, Far Cry 4, and all of the Assassins Creeds games. This has a cool way of climbing and you can use shadows that buildings cast to light the way.
Bye Abby
There are probably 1000 people in Rhode Island with a Rachet and Clank tattoo and only 2 people with a not ironic Recore tattoo on the entire eastern seaboard. Why is that? Does Microsoft not know how to build characters or brands. Why do i have infinitely more fondness for Gran Turismo, Resistance, and Ratchet than anything in Xbox’s stable. Crackdown 3 is fine but it is not Spiderman: Miles Morales. There are so many things that I don’t like about Sony’s policies that I am okay with the same socioeconomic man’s version in Xbox. Everything Sony has Microsoft has an answer for. In this case I like everything but the driving and I hated the webslinging in the original Spiderman enough not to care about Miles Morales so they are on par with each other. Maybe it’s Microsoft's boasting that kills the attachment. Since day-zero November 25, 2001 (anniversary today) it's been all about the specs. Crackdown 3 has nary a single destructible environment in their campaign. Modern gaming (Xbox in particular) is too much about the social feed and the boasting of engineering feats that 100% of your audience doesn't understand (see RTX in Pacman) yet they know how to compare two numbers’ sizes and they run with. If anything could erode the love for community for Abby it sure is too much of us and too much of this. Abby's Wii streams in 2020 is absolutely what it's all about not PS5 or Series-X and Microsoft will never figure that out.
Why Do Elevators Go Down Before They Go Up?
4 out of 5 Stars. 8.1 out of 10. Dialogue is definitely rated R and that is unfortunate for parents that wouldn’t know that. Terry Crews isn’t used as a persistent character in cutscenes or even with voice acting which is disappointing because i love my cameos from celebrities in my videogames. I wanted my cloud based destruction (I’m on a One-X) and not a single building was imploded by me in the campaign. I know that was a multiplayer feature but deliver in single player and maybe all might be forgiven. All that talk all that bluster and they can’t just acknowledge it, gaffe or not. It’s like not acknowledging the pandemic in your game, or review. Don’t ever consider yourself or your work timeless.
Hitman 1 or AC: Valhalla Next or FF7 (xbox one) next
