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)

For the few of us who didn't like GTA III, possibly

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.

Xbox 360 · by Greg Mitchell (37) · 2007

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

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

[ 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.