Crackdown Review
Score: 4/5
At first blush, Crackdown is yet another open-ended sandbox style game in the vein of GTA. But Crackdown is an action adventure game first and foremost, complemented by an open-ended cityscape. By focusing and embellishing upon the greatest strengths of a classic adventure, Crackdown is an original standout amongst a glut of me-too games. Crackdown does phenomenally well in driving the player to, well, just keep playing, and treats them with a real sense of accomplishment and wonder just about every step of the way. While Crackdown is grounded with clunky action mechanics, it is otherwise a worthy, entertaining, and utterly unique addition to Xbox 360’s library of games.
Pacific City is in a state of total chaos: Three ruthless gangs preside over its three separate districts. The Agency, a worldwide conglomeration of police forces, employs a new weapon in the fight against crime: You. You play as a nameless genetically enhanced cop, one with superhuman abilities that improve with experience. You’re let loose on Pacific City to take out the gang bosses and their generals one by one, thus bringing order and peace to its citizens. That’s the basic premise, and that’s about as deep as it gets. The story is an unobtrusive ploy to provide a slightly futuristic sci-fi setting in which you and your abilities fit.
The sandbox style elements are typical: A city fully open for exploration right from the start, the ability to jack and drive any vehicle, and, of course, a rather large complement of weapons at your disposal. But these similarities are where comparisons to other like games end. Unlike GTA, Crackdown isn’t attempting to make gameplay out of the most mundane of tasks. Instead, Crackdown develops the core abilities of your character to superhuman levels. It’s not so much what is out there to do, but what you can do.
Your character has five core abilities, each subject to levelling-up in power. With each stage comes new and/or better abilities and performance consistent with the core ability. Explosives, for instance, will increase in blast radius with each level-up. With only few exceptions, levelling-up is a simple task: killed gang members emit tiny orbs that increase the skill used to off them.
It’s this levelling up system that offers a great deal of reward and thusly a very compelling aspect of the game. The rewards? Superhuman abilities. Your character is already quite strong to begin with, but once you’ve levelled up the strength ability you’ll be throwing around absolutely huge objects. By the fourth level of strength you’re able to lift whole 18 wheeler truck cabs and larger. Furthermore, you can run around with these objects hoisted above your head, jump, and throw them great distances. Picking up a missile transport carrier, turning to face a gaggle of gang members, and chucking the 10 ton vehicle at them is a tad overzealous, but great fun. For the sadistic bunch, there’s even more fun to be had by picking up dispatched gang members and throwing their bodies every which way, including off the top of skyscrapers - shame on you. Strength alone offers up a real sense of omnipotence.
Since Crackdown is heavy on the action, it’s not surprising that three of the abilities have to do with the combat: Strength, explosives, and shooting. Strength, as mentioned, is great for throwing huge objects, but hand to hand combat is limited to one hefty kick. Mind you, it is a very satisfying kick: booting a gang member will send him flying 20 feet or more. Explosives are big and brash and viscerally appealing. Shooting, on the other hand, is decidedly awkward and unsatisfying. Coupled with a lack of decent enemy AI and very repetitive boss fights, this is where Crackdown falls down.
There are a ton of enemies at any given time which lends naturally to exciting and tense situations. But there are moments when it feels like there is just way too much going on without respite. Until you’ve cleared a district completely of its gang bosses, gang members will almost always be on the offensive, even as you leap across rooftops, and they happen to be very good shots. Speaking of which, while gang members lack any sort of intelligent behaviour, they have deadly accuracy, even as you’re running and leaping at full tilt. Unfortunately, what results is part two of your two part strategy: running and leaping the heck out of hairy situations.
Boss encounters are equally as shallow. Bosses all hang out at their respective HQs, and are ridiculously well guarded. Shooting them down is rarely the route to take given its unreliability. Instead, for each and every boss, you will likely repeat the same strategy every time: Run balls-out up to the boss and start kicking like crazy. If your strength ability is even moderately levelled up, this is by far the most effective way of offing your high ranking adversaries. Depth this is not.
While the combat is weak, the exploration is not. Crackdown is saved, by and large, by its remarkable adventurous spirit and design, and the agility ability that makes it all happen. Agility, when levelled up, increases your character’s jumping distance and running speed. Running is fun, but the jumping opens up a whole other world. There really isn’t much to Pacific City, to be honest, in terms of square mileage. But the area covered pales in comparison to the remarkable amount of height and complexity crammed into the smallish space. Every piece of architecture in the game is scalable, and this offers a tremendous amount of satisfying gameplay.
Starting in the lesser of the three districts, you’re introduced to smaller buildings, the ones more easily conquered. Perched about precipices of buildings are agility orbs. By gathering the orbs, you increase your agility points and thus level up. The challenge is enticing and everywhere; there are a total of 500 agility orbs overall. These orbs beckon to be gathered, and you’ll be drawn to acquire them. Of course, the more you acquire the better you get, which makes getting the harder to reach orbs more attainable. Structures are built to be climbed, and finding the route to best reach the top is a task in and of itself. Ledges of all sorts, including windowsills, can be hung from, shimmied across, and used to vault you even higher. You may have to vault from windowsill to windowsill, then jump to a ledge to the right or left, leap to another building to continue the ascent, and then leap from its roof back to the roof of the first building to reach your goal.
It’s going to take skill to get to the top, especially when the top is the roof of a skyscraper. So when you finally stand atop your perch and peer down from whence you came, there is a palpable sense of reward. Furthermore, you’ll likely have an orb or two waiting for collection. From that point, it is your natural inclination to scout out nearby rooftops for more orbs by bounding from one to another. It’s in this instance that the game displays the best of platforming technique and fun. As you bound from rooftop to rooftop, nice little touches such as your characters’ swinging arms and cracking pavement beneath him when he lands lends to a real sense of both power and grace. It is simply joyful scaling great heights and then making them your playground.
Regardless of where you traverse, there is always something by the way of reward. There are, for instance, “hidden orbs” of which there are 300 in total. The hidden orbs are, not surprisingly, placed in hard to find areas, typically obscured from view. So even when you misjudge a jump and fall somewhere unintended, or get lost in the city, you’re bound to find one of these orbs sitting in a spot you wouldn’t have previously considering trekking. These orbs in particular draw your attention to the complexity of Pacific City’s design, leading you to underground caverns, catwalks under bridges, and the like. There is a top-notch sense of discovery in league with classics like Mario and Zelda. Even goofing around will lead to unlocking achievements you weren’t aware of or consciously trying to earn, like jumping off the highest point in the game into the water below. There is a lot to be said then about Crackdown’s reward structure; collecting orbs, discovering new areas, and experimentation are all very addictive, giving an entirely new meaning to the games’ title.
As if all of this reward with exploration and experimentation weren’t enough, the game also treats with some spectacular views. Crackdown is equally unique graphically, employing a technique that most would consider cell-shaded. It is a very pretty game within the artistic parameters it sets for itself. Crackdown employs a day and night cycle, with other related and nice effects such as the hue of the sky reflecting off of the real-time clouds. Pacific City happens to be an island in what is presumably the Pacific Ocean, and the water surrounding you will glisten with reflected sunlight depending on the time of day. All of this is to say that climbing great heights with your character is even more rewarding with the views you’re treated to. There are many gorgeous vistas to take in, and you’ll climb to the top of just about every building to do so. The city, too, is very good looking, ranging in architecture from mundane to futuristic.
Presentation in the game is another standout feature. You’ll rarely ever be at a loss as to where to go, what to do, or how to do it, as accompanying you every step of the way is a voice-over guide. The voice actor provides a phenomenal over-the-top movie trailer quality, giving the game another level of unique bravado throughout. With each level up in any ability, he’ll pipe in to tell you exactly what you’ve gained. When you come across a boss stronghold, your guide provides you with a video briefing detailing that particular gang member’s role in the organization; it’s nothing by the way of story development, but adds considerably to the setting and tone. He’ll also pipe in periodically with quips and useful hints, keeping things from stagnating and feeling barren. The guide alone lends a great deal of personality to the game.
There are a few other very subtle but nice audio touches that deserve mention. The agility and hidden orbs emit a quiet pulsing ring that is audible only when relatively close. Even if you can’t see them, the sound indicates orbs are close by, and the sound for each is distinct enough that you will know whether you should be looking for a hidden orb placed behind something or an agility orb placed atop of something. Lastly, the further you climb upwards, the fainter the sound of the busy city below becomes. In place of the general noise are the sounds of blowing wind and an ever-so-subtle ambient keyboard synthesizer-like humming. This subtle shift in sound reinforces just how far you’ve come, and provides an almost transcendentally pleasing ambiance to go along with the fantastic views.
The online component to Crackdown consists of two player co-op. Co-op gameplay is reminiscent of a MMORPG, minus, of course, the huge amount of players. The other player, through Live, can join up and either help you along, beat you down, or simply do their own thing altogether. Presumably the entire point of co-op is to play together, but there is something mildly fascinating about simply inhabiting the city knowing there is another player going about their business somewhere else entirely, even on the other side of the map. There isn’t really anything specific to do with your friend that can’t be done in single-player - no specific tasks or buddy-up only abilities - but it is a welcome addition nonetheless.
With some more work in the obvious areas, Crackdown could have been a phenomenal game. Crackdown does such a fantastic job in adventure and exploration that it’s a shame the action sticks out like a sore thumb. The awfully stupid and repetitive enemy encounters, coupled with the clunky shooting, stand in stark contrast to all the other pleasing aspects. It’s a rare thing that a game as unique as Crackdown is, with its mish-mash of disparate styles and genres, manages to create a fun, fresh, and coherent whole. Here’s hoping that Real Time Worlds doesn’t abandon this fresh and winning formula and pursues it further in a bigger, better sequel. In the present, Crackdown is a game no 360 gamer should miss.
peachey @ February 20, 2007