One thing I mentioned earlier was the tutorial. CrimeCraft has a long, very long, tutorial. To it’s credit the tutorial covers just about every aspect you’ll
need to be a successful criminal/refugee in CrimeCraft. The only problem is that, at times, the tutorial can become so boring and repetitive that it makes you want to quit playing. Couple that with the fact that some missions are so challenging that soloing them is a near impossibility.
The missions themselves aren’t extremely diverse either. They range from recovering/destroying boxes, which you do simply by standing near them and not dying, which is harder than it sounds; killing a certain number of people; or, killing a boss. All this might sound like a turn off, but CrimeCraft has a certain charm to it. For example, when you join/create an instance, you aren’t in an instanced mission, you’re in an instanced map, so anyone can join that map, even people who aren’t in the same mission as you. This gives CrimeCraft a certain feel not found in other shooting games simply because you know that not e veryone is out to complete the same objective as you. You may be assigned to recover some packages, another person may be assigned to kill a boss,
another person may be assigned a certain number of NPCs to kill, and the fourth person may be doing the same as you. Of course, four people is obviously not the limit for most instances.
Before I end this I have to point out one thing about CrimeCraft that I just absolutely loved, something that might make CrimeCraft one of the select few titles I continue playing even after I’ve finished reviewing it. It has some of the most well done cut-scenes in any game I’ve played, including console RPGs. Couple this with the game’s interesting story and CrimeCraft’s lore alone sucked me in. It’s cut-scenes, at first, seem like motion-comics, but after a while I realized these were full blown animated sequences. The amount of detailed payed towards the backgrounds makes the animated world look so wonderful that one might even be tempted to keep playing just to see more of these
cut-scenes, or just invade your installation folder.
In the end, CrimeCraft is a good game. A very good game. It’s not great, but it feels like a breath of fresh air. It has it’s flaws, mainly it’s repetitiveness, and it also has a character creator that lacks depth, but it also has it’s charms. It’s one of the only games out there that allows you to be a gangster in an MMO setting, and, unlike the upcoming All Points Bulletin, it isn’t extremely PvP-centric, it actually has you in a PvE environment, which is rare for online shooters.
