Crackdown

aka: Riot Act
Moby ID: 26725
Xbox 360 Specs
Buy on Xbox 360
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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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Credits (Xbox 360 version)

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

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Reviews

Critics

Average score: 83% (based on 62 ratings)

Players

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

Crackdown, Smackdown, Beatdown......

The Good
Pretty much everything! graphics were pretty cool, gameplay was awesome, I played this game for three weeks straight before I started gettin bored, then.....they added more to it from XBOX Live. running around rooftops with a sniper rifle was my personal favorite.

The Bad
one thing that got old fast was the green orbs, there are way too many to find to gettem all, it was sorta annoying like the pokemon saying, "gotta catchem all" cause the a lotta of them and the mystery orbs too!

The Bottom Line
Crackdown, Smackdown, Beatdown, any of these names would have worked for this game. You get to show lil thug wanna-bes what happens when they cross the line, then when you get bored of that, do the same to civilians, then (lol) when you get bored of that show the cops whos boss.

Xbox 360 · by Lucky 13 (39) · 2007

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.