Crackdown

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.

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.

The Good
I'm surprised to say I'm quite taken with Crackdown, a game which sounded in premise like a lot of other games I dislike. After talking with a friend of mine who, like me never saw what the fascination was with Grand Theft Auto III, I downloaded the demo and was nearly instantly hooked. I will do my best to put my finger on precisely what it is that wins me over in Crackdown that GTA never managed.

Firstly, the obvious one - the graphics are really stellar. Use of color is varied and vibrant (especially for a game of this type), animations are excellent, textures are possibly over-slick and slightly unrealistic, but it's still a great looking game. Secondly, the powering up of your character really helps to keep the game interesting to me. Acquiring orbs and the ability to run faster, jump to insane heights and the like sort of includes a super-hero element that GTA never had. Thirdly, while both games are "open" and allow you to do whatever you want whenever you want, Crackdown just feels more purpose-driven and less pointlessly exploratory somehow. Admittedly, all of the missions that are piped in really boil down to "Now kill this guy" or "Now kill this gal", and they're not very interesting in and of themselves, but it does keep the game moving at a good pace somehow.

And one final thing that's hard to truly pin down - I really liked how believable the world is in Crackdown in little ways, and how dynamic the events are. As a car of gangsters pulls up, I start shooting at it. The car stops, and two or three baddies get out and we have at it with some gunplay. Possibly, a car or two of police officers shows up to help out. Possibly, a car or two of gangsters arrive to heighten the battle. Often, it becomes a scene of real carnage and destruction, all at random. You often come across scenes of battle between gang members and police, and can pass it by or stop and join in. Throw a grenade into the fray for fun, or run right in and start using some melee attacks, or drive on by if you choose. It's all very intriguing, very free and yet not aimless or pointless.

The Bad
I did think that nearly all of the music in Crackdown stunk. I realize that the music may possibly be appropriate for the area you're in, but I just personally can't stand 99% of the tracks they've selected. They're all in the metal / rap fusion category which I often like, but just not in these cases. I wish the game gave you more choices for music style, but it's easy to get over as I spent a lot of the game on foot when there's not much music anyways.

The Bottom Line
In all, I'm surprised by how much I like Crackdown. It doesn't seem on any level to be my kind of game, and yet I find myself playing it a lot. It's easy and fun to hop into, shoot some baddies for a while, climb some buildings and leap from rooftop to rooftop, clear out an area of town from crime, get in a fancy car and smash it up, level up the character and take out more baddies.