[Steam] CrimeCraft: Bleedout (FTP)

[Judge_Kiwi]

CrimeCraft: Bleedout

Free to play

Well, I fired this up and installed the client. Here are my thoughts thus far;

Crimecraft is not a new game, it was developed by Vogster Entertainment and released by THQ in August, 2009 to a rather cool and over-critical acclaim about it's rather ... 'dodgy' business model. Since then, they have changed it considerably to a micropayment type where you can purchase items/skills/gold and other such electronic goods from their in-game store "The Black Market". To be clear, you don't need to make any purchases to play this game and I have quite happily trundled around the noob areas without suffering from a sudden urge to retail-therapy. It also uses the tried-and-true “Unreal 3” Engine to run its many graphics needs. It still looks good but is starting to show its age a little, as with all Unreal games. Let’s also be really, REALLY clear here … Political Correctness does not live here … anywhere! The girls all look like (and dance like) $2 crack-whores. The guys are all like sk8trs that have been canning too long. This is a bad place but it fits into the post-oil World that may come to pass and doesn’t feel too ‘weird’ although, if you think that running around in high-heels and a mini skirt gibbing noobs with a shotty isn’t too weird then perhaps you should revisit your concept of “weird”. Enough of the History lesson, old man. Get to the meat and potatoes.

This is a 3rd Person Massive Multiplayer Online Shooter (3rdPMMORPG). This game is fun. It takes a little to get used to considering I’m more of a 1st person shooter but the orientation quests are clear, easy to follow and explain much of the inner mechanics of this game including crafting, weapon modding, talents and the difference between PVE and PVP experiences. Much of the other stuff like the Metro, Gangs, Municipality, Auction Houses and Arenas is essentially left up to the player to try and work out. This is not a bad thing as it sets you up to have to be a little self-reliant.

Getting into a PvE or PvP match is easy and most times they are set to your overall rating so that you won’t get too badly PWND. This largely works well and I found that even tho was I noob-meat a lot I stilled managed to wax some of the more ‘skilled’ players and still walk out holding my head high. There are many types of game-play available and this is both its blessing and it curse. Of the many types of games you can play there are a finite number of people queuing. This is not as bad on many of the PvE matches as many of those you can play solo but the PvP suffers the most as the server struggles to find the required 12 people to start a game. This frustration can be alleviated by joining a gang and/or the LFG channel.

Crafting is the standard fare of “find component A … add to component B … create product X”. There is Gun smithing (obviously, create guns and weapons), Engineer (creates mods for weapons and stuff), Chemist (drugs, man) and Tailoring (essentially an armour smith). The stuff crafted is always superior to the stuff you get off drops but you can only choose one crafting ability (a micro-payment will see you learning 2 ).

Now the ugly side. Aside from the constant swearing and profanity that comes with the on-line experience the game suffers from constant Server crashes and shutdowns. Add that to the fact they only have two live servers which are rarely on at the same time and often have queues to get on then you have a source of frustration. It takes me back to the old Blackrock days (some WOW players will know what I’m talking about). Matches can end prematurely … or, as was the case last night, “not at all” requiring me to force the game to shut down.

Of equal disappointment is the fact that SLS is not supported so, anyone with Eyefinity or Nvidias equivalent, will be disappointed.

All up tho, the game is a great distraction and I enjoy the time that I have when I’m on and I actually look forward to logging on to it again. For the price (free) I think this is a diamond in the rough. This is a back-handed compliment as, after 2 years, it shouldn’t be rough at all … but it’s still a diamond … an oversized artificial, industrial diamond covered in blood and drug-dust.

[Chief]

There's a good reason they stopped charging money for it.

[dday_0612]

I am trying it out and it is fun so far. Good write up here. I agree with the negatives, but I am enjoying myself a bit. I doubt it would be a game I would play for a long time, but it is quite enjoyable so far.

[Imfir]

I'm down loading it now, but may have to pause the down load, I'm limited to the amount of bandwidth I can download, this may take me a month because of the size of the download (or longer).
Sounds interesting, and thought I'd give a shot, tho with a satellite connection I'll probably be nothing but an easy target

[dday_0612]

So played up to level 16 already. Having a great time so far! I can see that the missions may become very repetitive, but the bleedout missions have been very fun and wide ranging so far.

FYI, premium members don't have to wait in the server queue... I went ahead and got a one month premium membership ($9.99). Seems well worth the 10 chapters of bleedout as well as the line cut at log in.

I will report back after a few days, but so far I am having fun.