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| | Title:
Crackdown
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System:
Xbox 360
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Genre:
Action
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Publisher:
Microsoft
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Developer:
Real Time Worlds
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Release:
Fall 2006
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Online:
No
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ESRB:
Rating Pending (RP)
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Freedom. It is something a lot of games strive for, the ability to create the illusion of total freedom of having no restraints on the play style, objectives, or approach to finishing the experience. In some circles it is called the sandbox effect. Titles like The Sims, Garry’s Mod, Saints Row, and the upcoming Spore are all poster children for this style of game design. Well now there is another game to add to this very short roster and its name is Crackdown. Crackdown may not be perfect but man is it a blast to play.
Crackdown is a third-person-action-free-roaming-superhero-shooter-driving game. It’s a mouth full, but it is the best way to describe the experience Crackdown pulls off. Gamers fall into the role of the lone super cop in a law enforcement organization known as the Agency. The task? To clean up the city comprised of three very large and very well designed islands, each connected by highways and featuring their own style (the slums, industrial zone, and a pseudo downtown New York City). While impressive and different, these islands are anything but safe.
Each island is run by a certain gang, each with their own unique set of underlying gang leaders as well as a final head-honcho of the entire outfit. The job of the gamer is to remove all the leaders from the island to officially clean up the city. Beyond this, there are no restraints on the gamer or path he must take. Heck, if they never want to kill a single street thug and just jump around on top of buildings, the game lets them do that. There are absolutely no caveats on how to go about cleaning the city. Those who want a challenge could attempt to take out the gang leader without dealing with his underlings, but be ready for a very tough fight.
The only incentive for removing the underlings is the more that are taken out, the weaker the gang presence becomes on their specific island. Remove the weapons specialist and the thugs have weaker weapons. Take out the car supplier and fewer gang-controlled vehicles will come barreling towards you. Kill the personnel specialist and you'll have less thugs to blast through. This is essentially all the game turns out to be. Run around, take out the gangs, and win. For some this may not be enough, and it is a fair argument to fault the game for this. Some more variety in how to take out the gang leaders, or different styles of missions besides running around and shooting people would have been nice. On the flip side, that would dig into the total freedom that makes Crackdown what it is: different. The question is what is ultimately more fun, total freedom or structured missions? With a game like Crackdown the latter is better than the former.
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