Review by Ben on Sunday 01st of July 2007



Back in 1997 one man unleashed a new breed of gaming upon the world. This man was David Jones and the game was, Grand Theft Auto. Many years have passed since then, but Jones is back with this new action adventure 'sand box' game, Crackdown. The game sees you fighting crime in the fictional world of Pacific City. You play a genetically advanced super-cop built by scientists to fight crime and stop the gangs of the city from destroying the remaining police force. Over the past years in pacific city the different forms justice in the city have been pushed back by the three gangs, and have now formed one team, The Agency. A few years have passed now and the agency is beginning to struggle to fight off the constant gang attacks on their personnel. This is where you come in.

Graphics

A view of Pacific City rooftops.
Crackdown has its own unique style of graphics to give a beautiful comic book look. The game really takes advantage of the Xbox 360's power to give some great visual effects, such as the explosions, which while they look cartoon-ish, they still look stunning. The graphics look as though they are created with the generic method of using cell-shading, this has been used on many games in the past, but the developers chose to go a different way with Crackdown. Although it looks like a comic book, every surface actually has a high definition texture attached to it, to make it look visually amazing. To go further into the technical details, the game has an excellent draw distance that allows you to see the whole map from wherever you are. Another nice touch is the damage details, on both the floor as your agent comes crashing down upon it, and also vehicles take realistic damage.

Gameplay
Unlike many games of this genre, this game follows the sandbox rules to the letter. The basic idea of the game is to destroy all three gangs in pacific city, how you do it, is completely up to you. The controls of the game are extremely easy to pick up even though the game provides no tutorial time. Though a booming voice, known as 'The Voice of the Agency' will guide you on your adventures through pacific city. You can begin to enjoy the great experience the game offers by grabbing a car from the agency garage, and driving through tunnel in front of you. This will take you to the first island where you can begin to defeat the first gang, the Lost Muertos. Your agent starts out with basic level skills, these progress as you play through the game, but we will go into detail on that later.

The three gangs are Los Muertos, Volk and Shai-Gen. They each occupy different areas of the city. Each gang has a kingpin, but they also have several sub-bosses, to get to the king pin you should kill each of the other bosses first. Every sub-boss you kill weakens the kingpin's defences in some way, be it by killing the recruitment chief, there will be less of that gang on the streets, and less to protect the king pin.

When you're not fighting the gangs of the city, you will be training up your different skills. These skills are Agility, Strength, Firearms, Driving and Explosives. You get each of these skills up by doing a variety of different things, to get your strength up you kill gang members by punching or kicking them. This same rule applies to all other skills. This is known in game as 'Skills for Kills'. Along with this approach you can also increase your skills by collecting Agency orbs, which are basically glowing balls placed around the city and every one you find, they increase your skills. Along with these orbs there are 500 agility orbs spread out across the city's rooftops, these will increase your agility skill massively.
the suv jumping. After you have finished trying to climb buildings in Pacific City, you may want to find another form of transport, this would be by car. There are many civilian cars in the game to choose from, but if you want to travel in style, you will want to go get an agency vehicle from the Agency's head quarters. There are three of these, the sports-car, the SUV and the truck cab. Each of these vehicles will evolve as your driving skill develops. Once you reach the top driving skill, your cars will be faster, easier to drive and control in the air. They will also gain new traits, such as machine guns, the ability to jump and a Nitro boost.

Online
Once you have played the game alone, you may be tempted to go online and take advantage of the games co-op game. Well it's no hard task to get online with this game, simply go to the main menu, choose co-op and choose a friend to play with. Once you're in the game, it's basically just the same as single player, if you are the host, you can continue from where you were in your single player game, but with your friends help. You can also compete in the road and agility races, with your co-op buddy as your new opponent. If you progress through the story while playing in co-op it will be saved once you leave the game. If you are not the host, then you're in your friend's world, and any progress made will not affect your single player game.


Pros:
* Large world with progressive gangs that change as you play.
* No restrictions on how you want to play the game.
* Great Co-op play to team up with a friend.
* Great looking visual comic book style.

Cons:
* Not very much replay value.
* No split screen play, so no single console co-op gaming.
* Not enough content to keep you busy once you finish the main game.
* Driving is bad and hard until you progress your driving skills.

Conclusion
Overall this is a great game and worth a look at, the visuals looks amazing and its city has a realistic size to it. On the other hand, if you are just looking for another Grand Theft Auto game, this is not the way to go, with no story or structure; it doesn't fit the profile of the Grand Theft Auto series. However, if you're looking for a new action game to spend some hours playing, then this could be the perfect game for you. The lack of structure isn't for some people but i personally loved it, though after finishing the game, it does feel a little boring. The online play can keep the game fun for allot longer though.