Crackdown

What It's All About

Crackdown is extremely well known all over the xbox community for a number of reasons. The first perhaps being that they are giving out access to the Halo 3 beta with a copy of the game. Many (including myself) came to the conclusion that if they were giving away a feature like this in this specific game it was to ty and raise the sales of a mediocre (or worse) game. Even though I am sure this raised the sales of the game, and a wise marketing direction on their parts - I have to admit I believe the game could definately survive without this little bonus.Its a “sandbox” game, and fits somewhat well with the GTA and Saints Row theme, but with a twist. You are a special agent that must eliminate various crime lords from your fair city, as you do so you gain experience in various different areas making your skills in that area increase.

Single Player

There are 3 gangs that you must remove from your fine city, which entails taking out various lower level generals of the gang as well as the kingpin of that gang. I am currently playing the game on the medium difficulty level and I have to say that during single player play this can prove to be difficult often. You must pace yourself and think of the best strategy for the attack, but also build up your characters stats making you more powerful, which gives the 1 player mode a bit more to it.

Multiplayer

This is actually the same as the 1 player story mode, you even use the same save file. The only reason the rating for this mode is lower then the single player campaign is a few things that I just dont think work well. For example, you can invite a friend to your game at any point, going from single player to co-op mode (similar to gears of war for example), but in order to invite your friend to “your current session”, it actually logs you out of your current session and restarts you - so any progress you might have made during that game (such as clearing a king pins hideout) would be lost. Additionally, the co-op player gets credit for and retains ALMOST everything you do together, the only thing thats not stored is the bosses that you take out - so that player will have to redo them all as a 1 player mode, or host a co-op session themselves, most everything else seems to be stored for the 2nd player. Finally it would be nice to have a local co-op mode as well as the xbox live version.

Graphics and Gameplay

The graphics are top notch, just take 20 cars and hit them with a rocket and be amazed at the explosion, the car parts flying everywhere, and finally the destruction after it is over. You have a variety of skills/ weapons at your disposal, and the controls filt well with the game.

Achievements

Another great aspect of this game. I love the way the achievements are built, some of which are based on character development and some are based on simply messing around in the game, isn’t that what a sandbox is all about? For example you obtain achievements for removing the gang from the city, and you get achievements for getting 4 stars in a character developement area, but you can also get an achievement for climbing to the top of the highest building in the game (as well as one for jumping off of it into the little area of water below). The achievements are interesting and challenging at the same time, and they arent as simple as “beat the game on easy, medium and hard”.

Value

In short...

I have to be honest when I first heard that this game came with a Halo 3 invitation the first thing I said was “This game has to be rubbish”. In fact if you read my previous posts you will even find me bashing it at least once, perhaps more. I caved in though and gave it a try because it seemed like all my friends were getting it (and I do love a good co-op game), and the game store gave me a free pre-order (so $5 off), I figured I would give it a chance. It is one of the most recent games I have purchased and is slowly raising my Live Eye Profile as the most played game.

Review by Dave [Squidpunch] Larrabee