

Just take a look at some gameplay:Ĭan you not see how this was a precursor to what we have now in the cover based third person shooter?


To this day it was one of the most rewarding game experiences I've played. Then there was the hacking and actually making it through the game. Learning to roll, crouch, aim and switch weapons and items on the fly was quite a bit for my young brain to take in. Diving into the game itself was a pretty complicated and rewarding process. Still, if the suits at EA (which currently holds the Crusader license) are looking for a franchise to reboot, they could certainly do worse than dig the Silencer up for one last mission.But once I dove into the game I was greeted with some of the most cheesy and enjoyable FMV sequences this side of Command and Conquer. It's impossible to play without wishing it could have had the flexibility of 3D, even knowing that the technology of the day would never have been up to the challenge. You get plenty of gadgets, but it's hardly Deus Ex. There's a bit of stealth, but you're not going to play it as a stealth game. It's not fast paced and fluid enough to be a great action game, but nor do the extra bits it bolts on add enough to make it a hybrid. Like health packs fixing up rockets to the face, these days we're just inured to the silly.Ĭrusader's primary weakness is that it falls between two different genres. Oddly, it's less noticeable now than it was at the time. It still feels right to try, though, if only to set a good example.īesides, if not for the civilians, who'd leave all those convenient passwords and keycards lying around? Crusader wasn't the first game to use the “everyone is a forgetful cretin who should be fired immediately for leaving vital codes less than two steps from the bloody locked door” school of security, but it remains one of the worst offenders. In fact, if you kill everyone, the game doesn't care. It even adds something to the missions themselves, where guards will inevitably be blown up, burned alive, or melted into goo for your entertainment, but there's a personal reason to keep the engineers and other civilians alive. While all played out using the hammy acting and blue-screen effects that absolutely scream “'90s PC game,” it adds a surprisingly strong emotional core to the game that was sadly missing in the standalone expansion-pack-style sequel, No Regret.
