Crackdown

aka: Riot Act
Moby ID: 26725
Xbox 360 Specs
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It's time to take back the streets! With Pacific City under the iron grip of three ruthless gangs: Los Muertos, the Volk, and the Shai-Gen Corporation; the last hope rests on The Agency, a highly skilled group of law enforcers. But the situation is dire, and desperate times call for desperate measures. Using technology from one of Shai-Gen's scientists, The Agency is creating superhuman Agents to combat the crime and take back the city. With constantly evolving skills which increase as you use them, you've certainly got the upper hand... but these gangs won't give back Pacific City without a fight!

Crackdown is an action game from the creator of Grand Theft Auto; and presents the player with the fully explorable world of Pacific City. Your main goal is to defeat the gangs that have taken over various parts of the city. You're quite welcome to tackle each gang's head honcho straight off; however, it's to your advantage to take down the lower rungs in the gang ladder before you head for the top. Doing so will cripple various parts of the gang, such as vehicles, cash flow, and new recruits.

Your Agent can upgrade particular types of skills: Agility - your running speed and jump height; Driving - your control of different types of vehicles; Explosives - your skill and damage radius of explosives; Strength - your physical strength, which allows you to punch, as well as lift and throw heavier objects; and Weapons - your skill and accuracy with assorted types of weaponry. Each type of skill is increased by performing the associated action. Drive around and your Driving skill will increase, punch people in the face or throw garbage skips at them to increase your strength, and keep up the shooting to improve your weapon skills. Agility is measured differently - scattered throughout Pacific City are green Agility Orbs. Nab these, and your Agility will increase. The higher up the orb is, the more it's worth. You can also increase your Driving and Agility skills even further via special races which can be found around the city.

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176 People (153 developers, 23 thanks) · View all

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Critics

Average score: 83% (based on 62 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 44 ratings with 6 reviews)

Parkour the Safe Way

The Good
In Crackdown you are a genetically engineered cop with the task of breaking down three criminal gangs controlling Pacific City. Genetic engineering has given you superhuman abilities: the ability to jump incredible lengths and land safely, inhuman running speed, incredible strength that allows you to pick up cars and throw them at your enemies and so on. You will also improve your five core skills (agility, driving, shooting, strength, explosives) by using these skills or by other means, such as collecting orbs. There are 500 agility orbs (which, as the name implies, increase your agility) and 300 hidden orbs which give a small boost to each skill. But there are many other ways of improving these skills, as well, most important being killing gang members and by finishing certain tasks and achievements. These skills have a profound effect on game play. Agility, for instance, increases your jump height which allows you to reach even higher locations.

The logical way of getting rid of these gangs is to start by killing the lower level bosses first because this weakens the bigger bosses. By killing the guy responsible for the gang's weapons, for instance, means that their bodyguards are less heavily armed. Killing the guy doing the recruiting decreases the numbers and so on. But there's nothing stopping you from starting from the top if you want, it's just a lot harder. Once all the bosses are dead you still need to destroy a stronghold and after that the gang is no more and the streets of that part of the city are safe again. Repeat this three times and you have finished the game!

You can also pretty much choose your preferred method of entry: you can crash through the front, sneak in from the back or maybe jump across rooftops. In any case you will meet quite a few enemies, this guy is no 47 (from the Hitman series). Machine guns, rocket launchers and grenades along with fists and feet are the chosen tools of his profession. Most guns have to be confiscated from the gangs first and brought to a supply point before they are available. And these supply points also have to be freed first before they can be used. Or you can also do hand-to-hand combat either with your hands and feet or with items found lying around. After a while these can, as previously stated, include even cars and other heavy stuff.

In between razing the gangs the player can also collect those orbs, do rooftop or car races, try car acrobatics or stunt jumps, hijack gang vehicles and so on. Most orbs are in pretty easy places, but some of the races can be quite tricky to finish in time to get the achievement.

What really sets Crackdown apart from other FPS's is that this game is truly 3D - you will be scaling the height of Pacific City unlike you have ever done. The height difference is dizzying and you can really feel when jumping from one building to another in your stomach. This is the best simulation of parkour I have ever seen, nothing even gets close. And it's surprisingly interesting. You find yourself jumping across rooftops just because it's fun. Imagine being at the top of a 200 feet building and jumping across the street to another, 100 feet high building, only just making the distance. And this is not just a gimmick, you can use this ability to help you defeat the gangs, too. There are lots of places which the enemy can't reach, these are perfect to heal yourself or just simply ambush the enemy. Just beware of those pesky grenades. There is just something in the fact that you are not tied to certain approaches, just come up with your own! After this game any game where you have to go from point A to point B to point C looks unimaginative. And the controls really help moving around, the agent automatically grabs ledges and the controls are responsive. It's easy to jump, turn and fire a few rockets mid air and land on small platform.

Co-op is also supposed to be great fun, although I haven't tried it yet.

The Bad
Controls are almost perfect, but only almost. Sometimes you are left wondering why you couldn't grab a ledge, and there is no simple way of looking up, which would be very useful in this game. The camera also can get funny in small spaces, sometimes the camera is behind the wall, sometimes so close to the character you can't see him, which makes aiming your jumps a bit hard. Cars are also a bit tricky to drive, at least at lower skill levels (I have only reached a one-star rating at this). Most cars seem to slide all over the place and brakes feel weak. In the end I seem to mow down half the civilian population if I try a race.

What really started bugging me in the end, however, was the ridiculous amount of enemies, especially in the last territory. There are so many of them you just get numb after a while. Dozens and dozens of them attacking you. Running through the streets you are shot all the time, no point in shooting back because you'd never get to where you were going. And trying to jump across the rooftops is even worse because you WILL get hit by rockets. By the time I had three or four bosses left, I was getting bored and had to grind the last ones. This task was not made any more interesting by the fact the last boss was at the top of a very tall skyscraper and the entire way up was defended by gunmen who re-spawned if you died or left the building. I made it to the very top three times just to die and then on the fourth time I killed the last kingpin almost by mistake. This was the time I was happy the game isn't as long as the GTA series, as finishing Crackdown took maybe 20 hours in total, although I hadn't maxed out all my skills.

I also have a small gripe about the music track. You can only listen to it when driving but that's just as well because frankly it's quite bad, at least to my taste.

The Bottom Line
Crackdown is close to being a classic. Little more game play (interesting side quests, rather than just races), slightly better controls and this would be a truly great game. Now it's only a very good one. If you have a friend, then this game will give plenty to play - you can first finish this solo and then co-op and even compete the races and time trials. Even collecting the agility orbs is great fun, even though I usually don't like to do stuff like that (collecting stars in GTA:Vice City was a total bore).

Think GTA with an added dimension but with less side quests and being on the right side of law. There is a sequel coming and even though I got bored at the end I'm going to buy it.

Xbox 360 · by Marko Poutiainen (1151) · 2008

1/4 Spider-man, 1/4 GTA, 1/4 Mercenaries, and 1/4 True Crime = Crackdown. Crackdown = Awesome.

The Good
The free form game, or "sandbox" game, is an interesting idea for a game, the ability to explore an open area and experiment with your surroundings but is not always implemented as well as a gamer such as myself would like such is the case with the GTA franchise, which I never understood the mass appeal for I played it and even though there was some fun to be had I felt that something was missing some sense of what I was doing, more room to experiment with the game’s “civilization”. Having the ability to do things inside the world to make it feel more real like climb the tallest building and jump off and land in the water, or do what I call “pulling a Navy Seals” in which you ride the back of a truck, or hide the hood of a car and jump off and land in a nearby water mass all these things can be accomplished in Crackdown!

Crackdown, is a free form action adventure title made by Real Worlds, a new development company with Dave Jones. The creator of GTA and Lemmings. Has branched out and made a game like GTA but, much better the game's plot is very loose and simple. You play as a modified agent with superhuman powers for an organization simply called The Agency. And you are tasked with stopping 3 massive criminal organizations who are running amok in Pacific City. Los Muertos, The Volk, and Shei-Gen each gang has low ranking Generals that answer to the kingpin which sort of reminds me of 2005's "Mercenaries", you can try to take down the kingpin right away or get the underlings, crippling the gang and making the final confrontation much easier. And that you can take down the gangs in any order, but you will find it simpler to go in order. Furthermore, you can upgrade your characters abilities which consist of agility, explosive skill, driving, strength, and shooting you can collect agility orbs scattered throughout the city. And you can do checkpoint races, race in your car, run criminals over make sure they are criminals because you lose points for hitting civilians. Shooting bad guys, or melee hitting them you can get so strong you can lift 2 tons!

The missions are very loose all you do is find the crime boss, and go though the area and kill him. Then move on to the next one and unlike in a game like, "Mercenaries" in which there is very little to do aside from missions. In this game playing with the environment can be more fun than the missions sometimes!

I enjoyed the music of this game although it is very little the only music is when you drive around in your car the music is mostly electronica, dance, and hip hop some of the music is international like Hispanic rap.

The graphic style is interesting the character models look like something out of a comic book and the backgrounds like the buildings are traditional polygon graphics and it makes the game look interesting.

The controls and the superpowers are implemented well.

There are also nice additions such as, when driving in your car you switch to the next and previous song, turn the music volume up which is something I wish they had implemented into "True Crime: New York City", which suffered from low song volume.

And there are special cars in the agency garage that can transform as your car skills improve one of the changes looks like the Bat mobile!

The Bad
The problems with this game are basically the fact that certain missions are way harder than other ones. Like how the final kingpin is easier than the earlier gang leaders.

And also the ending has a very ridiculous plot twist which I will admit was not what I was expecting, but still not good.

The A.I. is horrible, the inhabitants never act realistically. It can often even be funny watching how dumb they are.

The Bottom Line
Overall this game is a very rewarding and fun experience that, any Xbox 360 owner should at least take a look at specially if they like the free form game genre.

Xbox 360 · by Classic Nigel (108) · 2008

Even a Halo3 beta invite can't raise this game out of mediocrity

The Good
Initially, it looks like there's a lot to like about Crackdown: the impressive graphics with no loading times or glitches, the sheer size of the environment which can be enjoyed even from far above the streets, the joy of being able to jump on rooftops to collect stuff that makes you jump even higher or throw cars around... could be a lot of fun, and it is fun in the beginning. The premise that you can play along a friend in the same city, but not necessarily together, sounds even more exciting.

The game's sound (not music, that's a different story) is nice and crisp with a very charismatic sounding announcer. Loud explosions as well, which are always a plus.

Oh, and there's an invitation to the Halo3 beta in the box. Wait, I don't care for Halo3. Scratch that.

The Bad
From a game by a legend like Dave Jones, one would expect a bit more than Crackdown delivers. Yes, the visuals are pretty, but the basic premise falls flat quickly after novelty wears off. Agreed, it's fun to jump around in a huge city, upgrading your character to jump even higher, but that's about it already. The rest of the action consists of rather unimaginative shooting action without much of a goal. Side missions like you'd expect in a game like this are rare and don't feel rewarding at all.

While the city is huge, it's also devoid of much interactivity. A lot of people and cars move around, but that's it. No shops, next to no missions, no dialogues, nothing.

The game's music is rarely heard anyway, so why bother with licensing it? And even with the licensed music, it fails to impress, since the music's style is very diverse and often doesn't fit the game at all. The announcer also repeats himself a lot and doesn't always talk about stuff you'd expect from the given situation.

The game feels like they developed a "jump-around-a-city- simulator" first and then decided to add some "content" since there wasn't much else to do. Sadly, there isn't much else to do now either. It's a tech demo, nothing more.

The Bottom Line
There are three options:

a) if you are a Halo fan, you'll want Crackdown for the beta invitation
b) in case you like fancy graphics and rather shallow gameplay, you'll want Crackdown for it's fancy graphics and rather shallow gameplay
c) in any other case, Crackdown will likely collect dust on the shelf

In my case, c) was the letter of choice and now Crackdown collects dust on a shelf, which is too bad considering I dislike Halo3 as well.

Xbox 360 · by phlux (4295) · 2007

[ View all 6 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Crackdown appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Extras

The game comes with an invitation for the multiplayer beta of Halo 3.

Awards

  • GameSpy
    • 2007 – #10 Xbox 360 Game of the Year
    • 2007 – Robocop of the Year

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Ben K.

Xbox One added by Eufemiano Bullanga.

Additional contributors: Sciere, Patrick Bregger, Starbuck the Third, FatherJack, Kennyannydenny.

Game added February 22, 2007. Last modified January 20, 2024.