Crackdown Review

Friends

Crackdown is a game in same vein as Grand Theft Auto, except instead of being a gangster, you are a genetically enhanced agent working for The Agency, formed by taking all law enforcement agencies in the world and merging them into one select unit. Your job as the agencies first prototype of the enhanced agent program is to rid Pacific City of the three gangs that currently have control over the citys three main districts. These three gangs are Los Muertos, The Volk, and the Shai-Gen Corporation.

Onto the gameplay, like GTA you can’t progress to the other islands until you have reached a certain point in the “story”, if you can call it that. As is usual in these games you have a small minimap showing you where to go as well as a larger on of the district you are in that you can call in at anytime. The main gameplay is down to killing all the gang bosses and ridding pacific city of the three gangs, however because you are genetically enhanced, you can enhance several skills. You have a total of five skills to enhance in the game, Agility, Driving, Firearms, Strength, and Explosives. Agility is by far one of the more useful skills you will need to train, as it enables you to jump higher and run faster. This becomes useful when travelling around the city because some of the buildings are just incredibly tall and completely unscaleable at the lower agility levels. Agility can be enhanced by participating and completing rooftop races and by collecting agility orbs. Strength, Firearms and Explosive skills are all enhanced by killing gang members using methods relating to those skills. Killing an enemy with a grenade yields experience for explosives, shooting someone or shooting something explosive gives you firearms exp, and throwing objects or just blatantly kicking enemies to death rewards you with strength exp. When fully enhanced these skills are incredible, for instance, obtaining full strength will allow you to lift practically any vehicle in the game and throw it at someone you don’t like. Its just immensely satisfying to have such an enhanced skill and be given the option to use it in order to suppress the gang you’re currently hunting. The skill system is great, unfortunately, because of the way that the skill system is done, some skills are much easier to level than the others. Firearms and strength are much easier to level because you will find yourself dispatching more enemies with these methods rather than running them down in a car.

The health meter in the game is the same system that is used in Halo, which quite frankly, has been long overdue for a game like this. You also have an Armour meter that recharges itself when not taking hits. No matter what type of damage you take, your armour will always take the damage first, and then your health will suffer, even when you fall too far. Don’t think you can just sit back and recharge though, your enemies are fiendish, and will hunt you down. There are some great times when you’re recharging and an enemy comes round the corner to find you there. You find yourself frantically shooting at anything that comes within 3 miles of you in the hopes that you kill them before they do the same to you. The weapons in the game all have their own unique handling and accuracy. A pistol will hardly harm an enemy at range where as a sniper rifle will drop an enemy in one or two hits. Although you can keep any weapon you encounter once taken to a save point (known as Supply points that not only replenish your ammunition and health instantly, but also can warp you to other supply points, providing a shortcut around the city) there aren’t that many in the game. In fact you acquire almost all but 3 or 4 before you come away from the first of the three islands.

The difficulty of the game is generally quite easy at the start, which makes a sudden leap once you hit the third island. The first two gangs have good weaponry and are very tenacious enemies but the last gang takes it to an all new level.

The graphics of the game are superb, there is a couple of problems with the camera but other than that the city looks magnificent, especially from a height during nighttime and each gang have very distinctive looks about them. The sound is also exceptional, the guns all sounds as you expect, the handguns sounding a bit like popguns because they hardly do damage and the machine guns have some quite meaty sound effects. The voice work that there is also good, but the most superb sound effect is that of the Agency supercar, which is a growling screaming monster when you accelerate madly.

On to lifespan, and unfortunately, this is where it takes a bit of a knock. Unlike GTA, there’s not really many optional activities. There’s no random crimes that need to be foiled and there’s certainly nothing that detracts from the main route the game wants you to take. The main game will take you around 10 or so hours to complete, if you choose to enhance the majority of your skills and kill every leader. Although there is a co-op, there’s no New Game+ option so that you can take your levelled agent, with his new weapons and see how quickly you can dispatch all the bosses in the game. Sure there’s a time trial mode but really, there’s not much to do there except kill the boss as quickly as possible.

In conclusion, Crackdown is an excellent game in terms of fun, and after I played the demo a few months before its release, I told a friend that it was “The Next GTA”. I wanted so much for that to be true but the fact is, it isn’t. It is incredible fun, and is definitely a game to enjoy. However, unlike GTA where there is a lot to do on the side with a load of weapons, Crackdown has a fair amount of weapons, although there should be more, but hardly anything else to do afterwards. A new game + option or random crimes that needed to be foiled would have been a great addition, but unfortunately it didn’t happen. Crackdown is a GTA spin-off that swaps sides and shows a lot of promise. If they make a Crackdown 2, with the same type of gameplay, but with more things to do and more replay value, it will be a truly fantastic game, but this one is only good.

Lots of shooting, lots of jumping and lots of driving. The amount of ways you can take out a lot of the bosses are great but sometimes it would have been nice to do something else. Also wish that there was more of a story to the game.

Incredible, especially the explosions, a few problems with the camera but that’s all.

Great sound effects and voice work where it appears. Especially the Agency Supercar.

Co-op and time trials prolong the game play but unfortunately there’s nothing much more to do. A new game+ option and random crimes would have been superb additions.

A game with so much promise, and so much to give shot down by its lack of replay value. If they make Crackdown 2 and address the replay value, it will be an incredible game.