I keep seeing comments like "ohhh this is just this sorta game" or "da critics are just totally out of whack with this, they just don't understand".
Critics have praised many games that do something similar to Crackdown. Many games have gotten a score when they were "just trying to achieve what Crackdown wanted to achieve". To imply that people must be looking for a deeper alternative or fundamentally don't understand the point of the game because it got a negative metacritic score is silly. You can make a game who's goal is to make things go boom boom and bang bang, and it can still be not bad. Or it can still be received positively. Shocking, I know.
Disagreeing with critics is fine, but let's not pretend like good simple fun is just too abstract a concept for them. That's disingenuous. They may be pretentious, but they aren't that pretentious. I'm willing to admit that how "worthy" a game is of a high score is a genuine problem with many game reviews, but it's not really the case with Crackdown. It's just a game which is divisive and which many people think is either really good, really bad or really mediocre. That's all there is to say about it really.
Also, it's funny to see the sentiment come out that "not every game is for everyone/needs to be tailor made for everyone" ...... until the 90+ meta game gets a "troll" review that states a different opinion 
Essay Pro