Punning Linguist

Crackdown 2 is on my mind, and because I crave orbs, I've been playing a lot of the mighty progenitor, Crackdown. Going through it with a more critical eye, I've realized that the combat is merely an accessory to the platforming. In the body of Crackdown's gameplay, it is the appendix. There's no end to the appeal of jumping forty feet, landing on a skyscraper, shimmying along a drainpipe, and then falling ten stories into a river. In a way, Crackdown's jumping and scaling  resembles parkour. While your avatar's movements lack grace or fluidity, there a shared idea of reducing each obstacle down to its component parts.

See, I'm never going to own a jetpack, hoverboard, or flight ring. It sounds defeatist and anti-futurist, I suppose, but this is the harsh lesson life has taught me. There is a level of human mobility that can only really be expressed through video games. Fuck, even in Ninja Gaiden, Ryu Hayabusa can make an off-the-cuff 15ft jump and, at its apogee, change his momentum 180º. As a player, I take it for granted, but it's amazing. Crackdown lets you climb a building's exterior barehanded. Samus Aran has super speed. Mario can straight up fly. I love platformers above all other genres because they encourage new methods of breaking the rules of physics.