by Jeff Woleslagle on Sep 02, 2009
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CrimeCraft has been out a week now, and after playing for a
while, Ethec offers his opinion on the game. CrimeCraft might be the
first genuine persistent world shooter that the gaming community has
ever seen. In a market that tends to punish innovators, how does
CrimeCraft stack up? We'll review the game on its own terms in today's
Loading... CrimeCraft Review.
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We all have our guilty pleasures. For the past week or so, mine's been
CrimeCraft. Last night I finished up the requisite 20 hours we try and
play before giving you our first impressions of a game, and despite the
poor reviews the game has been getting (both outside and inside the
game - the chat channel gets pretty rowdy), I found a surprising amount
to like about the game. I know many of you have already made your mind
up about the game, which is fine. We aren't running any CrimeCraft
advertising, my impressions haven't been bought and paid for (none of
our opinions ever are, it's just rare to have an opportunity to prove
it). I couldn't even get a review copy of the game. So here it is, my
totally and certifiably unbiased look at CrimeCraft.
First, some disclaimers. Other "persistent world shooters" straddle the
fence between multiplayer shooter and MMO. CrimeCraft has some MMO
attributes - crafting, an auctionhouse, customizable weapons and
clothes (and styles that range from cowboy to ninja to rainbow pride
hoodlum, no joke). But the core gameplay of CrimeCraft is 100% PvP
shooter, with two PvE-only formats (Stockpile, a race to gather
supplies from enemy bots, and Safeguard, defending a weapons cache from
waves of NPC attackers) and a mission arc designed as a concession to
co-op only gamers.
While you can stick to co-op for the bulk of the game, the real fun is
in PvP. But make no mistake: if you go PvP, you will die often
at the
hands of other, better players. If your ego can't handle it; if you're
prone to justify your lack of skill with long general chat tirades
about the injustices of lag, hacks, cheats, and griefs (I haven't
really encountered any evidence of these personally), you'll
find an audience but probably not a lot of fun
in CrimeCraft. Like any shooter, you have to do your time to develop
your character and your playing skills to get better.
The good: This is a lobby-and-instance shooter, but
the lobby is a fairly fleshed-out and interactive city environment
where combat is prohibited. The pace for the first 15 levels is just
about perfect - you breeze through your first seven levels with
tutorial missions (heavy on the fed-ex tasks) that are a nice break
from the craziness of your first few instances. Assuming you've saved
up your money and skill points, you can then select a specialized
weapon (light machine gun (lots of magazine capacity), sniper rifle,
rocket launcher, and grenade launcher), which takes your game to a
whole other level. The "jobs" system, which allows you to select 25
achievements from hundreds and customize your rewards to the kind of
game you want to play, is fairly brilliant. My only quarrel with it is
that too many of the newbish jobs and one of the missions are
team-dependent (e.g. winning Safeguard three times in a row while
ungrouped requires the kind of teamwork you typically don't find in a
pickup group). The skill system is pretty cheap to roll back too,
should you find you made some bad choices.
Customizing weapons, specialized ammo (you don't have to buy regular
ammo, but the specialized ammo / magazine size that you purchase makes
a significant difference in combat), and crafting is easy to get into
and offers the same tweak-happy experience of the skill system and jobs
system. Do you toss a new scope and stock onto your sniper rifle to
improve accuracy and reduce recoil (making the second shot more
accurate), or attach a new module and trigger to improve damage and
reload time? It depends on how trial and error. Unfortunately you can't
remove a modification you out-level or dislike once it's been attached;
you'll have to buy a new weapon (we've got to keep the crafters
employed, I suppose).
The relative lack of matchmaking was another pleasant surprise. Even
though a
level 40 is more likely to take out your level 20 than the other way
around (while you both have the same number of ability slots to take
into the instance, he or she's got more abilities to choose from and
can select slightly better weapons and armor), I've facerolled my share
of much higher level characters in the short time I've been playing.
Of the various game modes / formats, I'd have to say I enjoy Turf War
(where two teams sequentially capture one to five points on soem very
well-balanced maps) and Robbery (each team has a safe - you have to
fight your way to the other team's safe, steal their money, and return
it to your safe) the most. Shootout (team deathmatch) maps have a lot
of wide-open spaces and seem to inordinately favor snipers and rocket /
grenade launchers. That's not a problem if you're a high level player
and can easily switch out weapon types to suit the match format, but at
the lower levels you're probably stuck with one specialized weapon
type. That can put you at a disadvantage on some maps, but you can
carry three weapons into every match (specialized weapon, a shotgun /
assault rifle, and a pistol / submachine gun).
The bad: Right off the bat you'll find that the
process of joining a match is extremely unintuitive. You talk to a
match NPC or pull up the screen on your UI (granted, CC does get you
into the action quickly) and join the match, then have to hit tab to
close the screen and "u" to join the match when it goes active. That's
two too many steps. Sometimes it does take a moment for the instance to
spin up, but it would be nice to be able to use that time on
a "gear
up" screen. Too often I find myself with the wrong weapons, gear, and
abilities for the instance, and a quick loadout screen in place of the
"Preparing..." message at the top of the screen would be helpful.
Common loot drops seem frighteningly out of balance. I've looted scores
of "ruined attachments" (you get random loot at the end of every
mission, substantially more if you've picked up the "Looter" skill),
but as an engineer, the core component of my newb recipes is "junk
scraps," of which I've hardly found any. The trade channel is
constantly scrolling with "WTB [component that sounds ridiculously
common]" messages. On the bright side, you can sell just about any
non-gray loot at the auctionhouse for highly inflated prices at the
moment, meaning that as a new player you probably won't be broke if you
can stay away from the NPC vendor except for grays and clothing
components.
If you picked up the game at Best Buy, as I did, you got a $5 card in
the box and maybe saw some cards in larger denomenations on the rack.
This money buys gold bars or game time ($5 = 100 gold bars = 1/2 month
of game time? I'm still confused on this one), but gold bars only buy
you cosmetic upgrades (clothing and paint schemes for weapons). The
clothing doesn't have stats, and even though you can "buy" the stats
from a piece of clothing you don't like, it's expensive, and you're
probably better off just buying something that looks decent and has the
stats you want while you're leveling up. Being a cheapskate, I'm
currently stuck with a teal, tight-fitting T-shirt, cargo capris, and
hi-tops, complete with a forest green do-rag. Needless to say, even at
level 17 I'm not wild about my look, but it gives me the best stats for
what I can afford.
The ugly: The population indicator on the login screen has
got to go. With one realm active and between 250 and 500 players active
every time I've logged in, you might get the sense that CrimeCraft is
an empty world. In truth, I've never not been able to get into a format
that I've wanted to get into, and the world doesn't feel empty at all,
especially if you stick around Oceanside (one of the three city / hub
zones).
A lot of players openly question the monthly subscription model, and
with the rampant advertising, I'm inclined to agree with them. I don't
mind ads, but we've always been believers in the either / or approach -
either you charge a monthly subscription or you show ads. That's the
case with our network and we're sticking to it. If Vogster makes good
on their promise to add ridiculous amounts of new content to the game
on a monthly basis, maybe that's another story. Otherwise it might have
been best for this style of game to go with the Guild Wars model on
this one - just make your money on word of mouth and slow growth into
the millions.
Many complained about the graphics during open beta. CC uses
Unreal Engine 3, not the cheapest solution by any means, and it looks
fine (to me) if not staggeringly next-gen stunning at the highest
resolution.
Just remember 1) that this is an online shooter and graphics should
naturally come second to performance, and 2) to boost your resolution
from the default 1024x768.
All in all, if the price point had been $39.99 (instead of $49.99) with
more of a Guild Wars style or micro-transaction driven model rather
than a confusing monthly subscription scheme, I'd say this is one you
have to pick up if you have any interest in persistent world shooters.
Even so, the jobs, skills, weapons, and levels / character development
aspects of CrimeCraft are potently addictive. Personally, despite the
low population numbers, I feel that the game has a lot of potential,
particularly as a fun, distracting "game between games," and hope this
one sticks. I liked Fury, though, and we all know what happened to that
one.
Played it? Any interest? Any questions I might be able to answer?
Should Ten Ton Hammer form a gang? Take your thoughts and quesitons
to our
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From our
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News and Events Discussion forum
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=45935">Wedding
Package Images from the Station Marketplace
With
Champions Online fresh out of the gate and Aion heading into the home
stretch another epic thread related to either of those two games would
seem apropos today. But I couldn't resist going off the beaten path
when I saw our news post about EverQuest's new Station
Marketplace Wedding Package. Now, when your avatars want to
get
married in EQ, you can share your special day, complete with a pair of
wedding rings and a cake, with all your friends in your own
"personal wedding zone." You can choose a light or dark
theme...and even select which flowers appear in vases around
the
zone. Don't believe me? We've got
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/73699">screenshots.
Is
this a little over the top? Personally, I'd say it is. And yet,
EverQuest is what it is primarily because it engendered an atmosphere
of community. In fact, a couple of my guildmates met in
EQ, married in the real world, and proceeded to spawn
children.
And it seems many of us know similar stories.
Is SOE's wedding package too much? Is it not what MMO gaming is about,
or is it exactly
what MMO gaming is about?
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=45935">Have
your say!
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