You sprint down the corridor, the alarm blaring, knowing that the four Storm Troopers you just saw won't be far behind. Laser fire behind you confirms your thinking, and you dive into a forward roll as the energy blasts flash overhead. Rolling behind a corner, you ready your grenade launcher and roll back out from cover. Your blast splatters one Trooper all over the floor and ignites another one into a living torch. Diving back around the corner, you glimpse another soldier teleporting in beside the remaining two, and you know that this is a fight you cannot win, as two Mechs are approaching just behind the soldiers. Laser fire sizzles into the spot you were a moment ago. You turn and dash down the narrow hallway, praying that more troops are not waiting for you this way. You stop short as you see two Storm Troopers waiting for you with weapons readied. Rolling behind a stack of boxes, you get ready to sell your life dearly when you see a vent shaft in the wall beside you. With troops approaching from both directions, you don't waste a moment. Pulling out your grenade launcher, you roll away from the wall, target the grate, and fire. The spectacular blast tears apart the grate covering the ventilation shaft, and you dive through the opening, just as the Storm Troopers converge on the spot you were just moments ago. You tear down the vent shaft, leaving the WEC security forces behind. You are alive. For now.
You are playing Crusader.
Crusader is a totally intense, third person action game made by Origin. The game incorporates fighting with problem solving. Problems can range from finding the right keycard to figuring out what combination of switches to use in order to get to an energy station. The problem-solving part of this game pales in comparison with the fighting part, however.
Crusader has a plot similar to that of "Star Wars", actually. The first game (Crusader: No Remorse) starts out with a movie of three Silencers (the deadliest soldiers on the globe) patrolling the sewers in search of people that the World Economic Consortium (WEC) believe to be rebels. You are one of those three Silencers, and your group is in trouble for letting the rebels go. You believed them to be civilians. Because your group failed to follow your orders in letting them go, however, the WEC has set up an ambush for your group, and intends to kill you. The ambush claims the lives of your two comrades, but you alone survive. Having finally seen what kind of system you serve, you defect from the Consortium to serve the Resistance, the rebels you used to hunt down.
And so the game begins. The game boasts a wide variety of maneuvers that the Silencer (that's you) can perform. Rolls, sidesteps, and running are only a few. There is also a wide variety of equipment to choose from. The second Crusader game (Crusader: No Regret) has an even wider variety of moves, equipment, and weapons than the first.
Although the fighting makes up the vast majority of the game, there are many video clips incorporated into Crusader. This keeps the game from getting to feel like a pure shoot-em-up game. During missions, you will frequently get messages on your communicator. In between missions, you will be in the rebel base, and can talk to Resistance fighters there. You can also watch the WEC news on TV in the rebel base. This gives you a deeper understanding of how corrupt the WEC really is. After one mission in which you killed a WEC scientist conducting horrible human experiments, you will see on the news that the scientist was mercilessly gunned down by Resistance fanatics while working on medical research that would save countless lives. At the rebel base, you can also purchase weapons and equipment from "Weasel", the weapons dealer who serves your Resistance base.
What you will notice about this game is that there are usually multiple solutions around a problem. There is often a "right" way and a "wrong" way. For example, you've run into a locked door, but you don't have the right keycard. You can look around for the keycard, or you can simply blast your way through the door. Using a keycard holds no consequences, while blowing open the door sets off the alarm, which will attract soldiers and mechs to your location. As another example, you can plow through those dozen guards, or you can blow open a vent shaft, and cut around them.
This game can be played and enjoyed by anyone. There are four difficulty levels, ranging from "Mama's Boy" to "No Remorse/No Regret". On "Mama's Boy", difficulty, you are made more powerful and your opponents are weakened. On the "No Remorse/No Regret" level......well, you'll just have to try it to find out. I play on No Remorse/No Regret defficulty levels, simply because the other difficulty levels have gotten too easy for me.
"Crusader: No Remorse" and "Crusader: No Regret" are single-player games. There is supposed to be a third "Crusader" game coming out, and it is rumored to be multiplayer.
Death isn't just a necessity in this game, it's an art form. You can pump shotgun shells into an enemy, vaporize him, liquify him, set him on fire, etc. One weapon burns all the flesh off your enemy right down to the skeleton. You can also crystallize him, freezing him into a human statue, then shatter him into a thousand pieces with another shot. The weapons differ slightly from the first game to the second, but basically remain the same.
Overall, both Crusader games are GREAT, providing a welcome relief from the first-person DOOM-type perspective games that just keep coming and coming. The music is great, and appropriate, going with the "one man against the world" type plot. The graphics are amazing, and the animation is smooth and life-like. The sound effects are perfected, and the realism is great. Objects around you take damage and explode realistically, and you see damage from every round fired. If you love action games, these games are MUST-HAVES.