When it comes to sand box games I always used to swear by Grand Theft Auto. When i played GTA 3 for the first time i was hooked. It was just a shame that it happened to be on my mates PS2. I remember spending the whole night i was their just running around killing people, running from the police and squashing everyone in a vast array of cars.
For me GTA 3 was the best game ever.
Then there was GTA Vice City, GTA San andrease and GTA IV, Also not forgetting vice city stories and liberty city stories. These were all well and good, letting you kill for fun if your board of the story line, giving you that sense of freedom to do pretty much what the heck you want.
Then you started to get the GTA clones. The getaway which i never played was apparently as good as GTA 3 if not better. But after doing some research that game failed due to its lack of open world sandbox game play.
Then there was true crime streets of LA. Which i did play, it was not bad to play but lacked what GTA had, and that was the griminess, the smoother graphics and the atmosphere of being able to do what you want. I dunno if people agree with me here but GTA 3 felt inviting as an open world where as true crime had an atmosphere as such that pretty much told you to do missions.
That’s how i felt anyway
Then the next gen games kicked in bringing GTA IV which was outstanding and still is. And saints row and saints row 2. Again, not my cup of tea. The saints row games were to ‘ghetto’ and ‘in da hood ‘for me (this is why i wasn’t really a big fan of GTA san andrease) and to me the colour choice for the game was too bright for the subject matter. In some ways Saints row was trying too much to be like the original 3d sandbox that is GTA 3. With the mute for a lead character and the simple game play which lets you run a muck every now and then. But trying to improve it as well which for me at least just failed.
What am i getting at with this? Well the bottom line really is if i wanna great sandbox game to do hat i want i stay loyal to GTA and GTA only… Well until now.
Last week i picked up a copy of Crackdown for no money at all and until now i never thought a game could equal GTA as a great addictive sandbox game. But crackdown has it. Best way to describe it is it has all the charm of GTA3 but on acid!
You can level up your character in ares of skill shooting, strength, driving, agility and explosives and the greater these get the more powerful and damn right crazier your character gets, before long you can jump buildings and throw lorries at people. Its truly a different kettle of fish! even though it is a cell shaded game using bright colours. It suits that game because it is so over the top.
After plaything crackdown it got me thinking yet again about Prototype. Leon kindly gave Plus XP an up date about the game and i haven’t stopped thinking about it. The souped up powers you get with your character much like crackdown. But at the same time there is a war going on with a virus that takes over people, the army and your character. The 3 way war between these 3 elements really almost makes me salivate.
So will Prototype live up to my expectations? or will i just stick to crackdown for my over the top open world fun? We will probably find out in a month or so.
Garv!
