Crackdown has gone through an odd life-cycle. It didn’t get much of a promotional push, and first impressions didn’t help it, either. On the surface, it appears to be a Grand Theft Auto clone with slightly better graphics (of which there are only 46,178 titles available). What’s more, Microsoft chose to bundle the Halo 3 beta key with it. That kind of move usually smells of desperation, and it’s usually reserved for titles that just can’t hack it on their own merits.
Despite all these things, it’s turned out to be one of the most enjoyable titles on the 360 at the moment, and it’s garnered itself a certain amount of worthy dark-horse status.
At first glance, the GTA comparisons are justified, but underneath, Crackdown is quite its own game. Though it uses the same sandbox template, the environments in Crackdown are meant to be scaled vertically. You play as a genetically-engineered “super cop,” tasked with taking down the three criminal syndicates running Pacific City. You’re given a wide array of weapons and a wide latitude in how to use them, and as you progress, your character sees improvements in strength, firearms skill and of course, agility.
Agility is the important one. In GTA, you were a normal guy. Sure, you had weapons and such, but in Crackdown, you’re a superhero. Part Hulk, part Punisher, part Spider-Man. Rather than just running or driving down city streets, you’re encouraged to jump and scale buildings and terrain. The more you do, the higher you can jump and climb, and there are many things that you can only reach at the higher levels.
This sounds like something out of an RPG, but it’s much simpler. In Crackdown, you’re simply rewarded for doing the stuff you’d have done anyhow. Blow up enemies with a rocket-launcher, and you’ll see your explosives skill ramp up. Pick up a car and use it to crush mobsters, and you’ll be rewarded with the ability to pick up even heavier objects. Creativity is encouraged, and in a game where you can leap 60 feet at a stretch and juggle trucks, there are plenty of outlets for it.
In fact, the advancement scheme encourages wanton mayhem. In one instance, I found a museum in one of the remote areas that had a giant metal ball on a pedestal. I blew up the pedestal, picked up the ball, and used it to crush several villains, and was suddenly rewarded with an Achievement for it.
The Achievements are absolutely hilarious (I got rewarded for repeatedly blasting a dead body with a rocket launcher?!?), and the game keeps the campy atmosphere going with a deadpan voice announcer, who gives such sage advice as, “civilians are a nuisance, but that doesn’t mean you can go around killing them indiscriminately.”
The graphics use cel-shading, which gives things a nice comic-book feel. The problem with this approach is that the screenshots don’t do the game justice. In motion, everything looks great. Graphics are fluid and smooth, with the framerate only dropping a bit when things get really frantic onscreen, and the explosions are just gorgeous. Which is good, because there are quite alot of them.
In many respects, it’s a similar game to Mercenaries, but with a great sense of humor, and everything much louder and brighter. Ostensibly, you’re “fighting crime,” but the plain fact is, you’re just wreaking havoc on a massive scale, and the game doesn’t shirk on the opportunities to inflict it.
Real Time Worlds promised an update for the game, and it came down the pipe yesterday. You can read the details elsewhere, so suffice it to say, the extra content is certainly worth the five bucks you’ll spend. The new weaponry alone is a blast, the harpoon gun being my personal favorite. Tired of just blowing up people in co-op? Spear ’em to the side of a truck and drive around town with them hanging off as they groan in embarrassment!
You also get several new agency cars, as well as a VR suit that gives you limited invisibility. There are several new race modes, a few tweaks under the hood, and a “keys to the city” mode, which is basically a glorified IDKFA, but gives you the ability to tweak any of your skills to ridiculous levels (though saving is disabled in this mode).
Most notable is the “resurrect gangs” option, which completely resets the mission template, allowing you to go back through with whatever skills you’ve earned since the first run through. Though the game previously had an option to respawn the grunts, facing fire on every street corner could be a hassle, and the new option allows you to tailor enemy capabilities by eliminating certain characters.
It should be noted that there’s a significant bug with the content, however. If you go immediately into co-op after downloading the update, the game will reset your stats, zeroing out all your advancement. The temporary fix is to download the content, go into a single-player game, then save and quit completely. After this, you’ll be able to preserve your stats.
I was one of the folks who got bitten by this, and though it’s a pain (I had 493 of the damned agility orbs!), this is a game that’s fun to play through again from scratch. Real Time Worlds has promised that the bug will be completely fixed with next week’s update, but until then, this should work.
A couple of quick observations from co-op: The harpoon gun actually makes a good one-shot-kill sniper rifle, and its range appears to be anything line-of-sight. Given that it holds 30 rounds and is semiautomatic, it’s great for the person wielding it, but I wonder if it’s not a bit unbalanced.
Also, the MSK Lobber, though it looks impressive, isn’t really any more effective than the old Watson Firefly. Though the screenshots don’t catch it, it sends out 3-5 missles at once, which whirl around before homing in on their target. The effect is similar to the old Macross missle launchers, but with bright purple contrails. Thing is, they’re not very accurate, and as a result, they inflict alot of collateral damage.
Lastly, speaking of weird achievements, use the harpoon gun to spear five people (villain or civilian) to a vehicle, and you get the 5-point “Body Armor” achievement. Has Jack Thompson seen this game yet? I’m sure he’d file a lawsuit, which’d be great promotion.