Crackdown

"Skills for kills, Agent. Skills for kills."

Source // MobyGames

If Gran Theft Auto Online has taught us anything, it's that sandboxes full of criminals and vigilantes don't need stories to be successful. In fact, all those cutscenes and running to mission start icons and endless conversations with every character under the sun just get in the way.

So Crackdown drops you into a sandbox full of criminals as a super-cop on a mission, but dispenses with basically all the explanation and all of the cutscenes and just tells you "these bad guys need to go, and we don't care how."

And there are a lot of bad guys in town...

Source // MobyGames

Fun Times

Now it's not entirely fair to compare Crackdown with GTA, but it is a game designed by GTA co-creator David Jones that is set in an open world full of challenges and violence, complete with carjackings. The main difference is that you are the good guy, believe it or not.

Source // MobyGames

The plot is simple. Three rival crime syndicates are terrorizing Pacific City, at the heart of which is the Agency, the last hope to restore order. The situation is so dire that the Agency has resorted to controversial scientists and bio-engineering to create super-soldier cops with the ability to leap up to the rooftops and laugh in the face of fall damage.

You're such a super-cop that you'll see yourself evolving throughout the game, and so much trust is placed in you that you're given two guns, a car, and kicked out of the door in the vague direction of bad guys.

But they're everywhere, and easy to find, and a short video is all you get explaining how they and in turn the game works. One big bad guy at the head of the organization, four underlings beneath him, two more beneath them. Knock out a target to reduce the presence of gang members in the area, or put a dent into their criminal holdings... generally thin the herd out so that you can eliminate the head with ease.

Source // MobyGames

Source // MobyGames

You don't start out with these stats, though. I've got the original Xbox 360 release of Crackdown, and you've got to work for these stats. They can be improved by doing things, and improved quicker by collecting things. Glowing agility orbs, for example, are dotted on rooftops that, at first, look impossible to reach, but once you start collecting them, your Agent leaps higher and higher, further and further, each orb getting easier to reach, collect, and improve your already ridiculously over-powered abilities.

Source // MobyGames

While there is a mini-map with icons for races and rooftop navigation challenges, most of the time you'll be looking at it wonder where all these dots actually are - and there is often an alarming number of dots, all of which represent some gang member who doesn't like you being here.

To discover the whereabouts of these enemies, you often have to look up, and find a way to bounce across the rooftops, where you'll see just how big a sprawling the city is.

Source // MobyGames

Source // MobyGames

It doesn't look like much, perhaps lacking the character than a city in GTA would have, but it runs rather well. The controls are great, though a little unintuitive. I've still not found a reload button, but a lock on, precision targetting on the right stick, and a satisfying full auto bullet spray will see enemies fall to the floor in no time at all, releasing what I guess are experience orbs that fly towards you from any distance.

I really don't know what they are. Crackdown gives you a sentence explanation of anything at most and just lets you play in its sandbox. It'll prompt you to go and activate a weapon cache where you can restock your ammo and respawn when you die, but you can switch weapons will fallen enemies too, so you're not chained to these safer spaces of the city.

If anything, you're outright told to explore. While I haven't found much of interest to find - the odd hidden experience orb is about the highlight - I have found a fair bit of fun. The freedom you get from not being tied to a story means you go and do what you want, how you want to do it, until either the Agency gets bored and gives you a hint about where the next important target may be, or you stumble into them on your travels.

I read that it only takes half an hour to dispatch the first big bad guy if the circumstances are in your favour. That's how open Crackdown can be.

Source // MobyGames

Source // MobyGames

While it may not be full of content, the streets are full of people, and firefights happen around every corner, with utter chaos appearing at the drop of a hat. Explosions aren't far behind the lead whizzing past your ears, and when you're able to lift and throw objects - including cars - Crackdown turns into a sort of Just Cause romp through the environment.

Did you not like the island? Overthrowing dictators not your thing? How about criminal gangs in the city? We don't have a grappling hook, but we do have stable framerates...

Source // MobyGames

Frustrations

I lost track of how long I was playing Crackdown for, but I dipped into whatever challenges popped into the mini-map to see what was what. The two main challenges outside of 'wipe out the leaders' are road races and rooftop races.

Steal a car, start a race by waiting under the start line for a few seconds, and proceed to attempt to drive around the city quickly. The car handling isn't the most comfortable aspect of Crackdown, for sure, though I wasn't using a top of the range sports car, I must admit. There was almost no chance of me being able to drive without crashing, even at slower speeds, to the point where I prefered to run around on foot instead.

You can race on foot, of course, in the rooftop races, which will have you leap across the rooftops to increase your agility instead of your driving skill (oh, maybe that's why the car handling was poor), and serve as a good way to gather agility orbs to make leaping easier and therefore completing rooftop races quicker.

Even with ledge grabbing, though, the leaping was often a little frustrating. You can leap mighty far distances, but I was never quite sure whether anything I was looking at was a jump I could actually make, and mistaking the distance meant falling off a building and having to find another route back up.

Once you have more agility, jumping around becomes less and less of an issue, but in the early days, I was getting a little irked at how useless my super soldier was.

Source // MobyGames

Further Fun Times

But he wasn't so useless an hour in, and he wouldn't be as useless if I were playing Crackdown as a co-op, tearing through the streets with an equally over-powered buddy. Having had problems even signing into the game in the first place, I think I'll keep my Crackdown as a strictly solo experience, though.

The only reason my run game to an end was because I was making less and less progress to a leader hanging out in a lighthouse. Each death leads to a respawn, sure, but all the enemies respawn too and assaulting a lighthouse defended by seemingly fifty gang members before you even reach the boss does get a little old when you keep jumping into grenades or falling down cliffs.

But then again, you're free to assault that lighthouse through whatever method you can find or else make happen. Crackdown will try its best to accommodate your efforts, but, like the Agency, it doesn't really care how you do something, so long as you do it.

Final Word

That's a true sandbox. It's hard to say how it's adapting to whatever you do - strongholds just seem to be full of enemies and enemies will shoot who they don't like - but it is providing you with the means to approach the game on your terms.

Want to run around and level up first? By all means, go explore. Tackle some side-challenges. Unlock some respawn points. Learn the map some more. There will always be someone to shoot or run away from, and with no clear moments to stop and call it a day, you'll be having a blast until external forces remind you that your eyeballs will fall out if you don't stop playing already.

To look at it, Crackdown looks a little barebones, perhaps, a little cheap. I had no idea it was this kind of game at all, and now rumours and hype for sequels make a bit more sense. A game like this is just plain old fun. No story to follow or get bogged down in, no handholding or structure imposed upon your play. Just a big sandbox, some rules, and the rest is up to you.

For someone who likes story in their gaming, you'd think I'd come down a little harder on Crackdown, but if Crackdown itself doesn't care too much about its story, then I don't need to either. Give it a go.

Fun Facts

The developers have admitted that Crackdown wasn't capable of selling itself to players with its own screenshots, and had to work to remind players that 'No, give it some time and you'll be a ridiculous super-soldier'. Or they could bundle the game with a Halo 3 multiplayer trial. Whatever works, eh?

Crackdown, developed by Realtime Worlds, first released in 2007.

Version played: Xbox 360, 2007.