For years the love that gamers have for Rocket Launchers has rested uneasily with the love that I have for being the good guy. For some reason, whatever it is, the good guys never have the really cool guns. It's always the terrorists with the RPGs and really big machine guns, never the police.
Fortunately Crackdown sees things differently. You play a genetically enhanced super cop wearing something very much like a Nanosuit tasked with cleaning up the streets. The key feature of the game is that you are essentially a superhero, by the end of the game capable of causing biblical amounts of damage.
This certainly seems like a fun premise for a game, and usually in a review I would now go on to say how this links in with the story. The main problem with crackdown is there isn't one. You're simply chucked out into the city with 10 gang bosses per area to take down and once you've done that the game is pretty much over. The city has no crime, your skills will all be full and you will quickly become very, very bored. It's a pity that the game is so insubstantial in this way but it is, in part, offset by the skill advancement mechanics, which replace the story as the main hook of the game.
You start the game with your core abilities (strength, agility, explosives, firearms and driving) at 0. This means that your lock on aim is slow, your explosives do little damage, your jumping is unimpressive and cars handle quite badly. To improve each of your skills (apart from agility which I'll get to later) you kill gang members using the skill, for example running gang members over increases driving, shooting gang members increases firearms etc. As your skills increase you become more powerful, able to lock on faster, drive better and cause more damage with explosives. It's surprisingly compelling and I've wasted many a happy hour grinding to improve my skills. Well, I say grinding; it's a lot more amusing than killing endless goblins on WoW due to the alarming speed with which fights build up, especially in the later stages of the game. You'll soon find yourself surrounded by armies of hit squads trying to take you down and the thrill of seeing 20 of them flying up into the air thanks to a well placed grenade is amazing.
As I mentioned before the exception to the skill mechanic is agility. Rather than increasing that through combat you pick up agility orbs scattered in hard to reach places around the city. They're graded according to difficulty and, as with the rest of the skill system, very fun to try and seek out/get to. There are also hidden orbs which increase all of your skills around the city and finding them takes some doing. If all of this "finding things" in tedious then fear not, as the city is so chock full of pickups it's impossible not to find them, at least at first.
Ah, that city. Crackdown is set in Pacific City, the usual anonymous American fare we're used to seeing in games such as GTA except for one key difference: it's vertical. Most buildings can be scaled even at a low agility level and the rooftops of all the buildings are very intricately put together. You'll spend quite a lot of time at roof level and it really does feel like a whole different game once you're up there, watching the traffic snaking by below. The attention to detail throughout the city is just amazing and gets better with every new district you go to. Apparently the city is divided into individually modeled "blocks" and it shows. I've yet to find a building that isn't interesting in some way, be it the rubber duck hidden on the rooftop or the challenging climb to an agility orb.
For all the fun it is, there are a fair few problems that do spoil Crackdown slightly, aside from the lack of a story. For a start you get punished for killing civilians by losing skill points. I don't mind this system particularly but later in the game when your grenades have a hit radius akin to a nuke it's impossible not to end up killing innocents along with gang members and being punished for this can sometimes be very irritating. If they'd altered the system so it ignored the death of innocents when gang members were also killed it would be much better, as constantly losing skill points makes upgrading that extra bit harder. Another minor irritation is the commentator for the game, a disembodied voice who gives you guidance as you go along. At first he seems awesome, giving you tips as you progress like a tutorial. After a while, however, you realise that he goes on giving you the same tips constantly thoughout the game, whether you're a raw recruit or a seasoned player. It's quite annoying being told in the middle of a firefight that the bar in the top left shows your health, when you've known that for the past 5 hours. He's also quite often wrong, telling me I'm about to die when I've actually got full health.
Still, these few problems are nothing more than minor irritations which you soon forget as you 'splode gang members with grenades, kick them far into the air with super strength and then leap away over a tall building, cackling with glee. It's also of note that the game features online co-op, allowing it to be played all the way through with a friend- a nice side effect of having no story. In conclusion then this is simply one of the most joyous experiences on the X360 right now and it's great whether you want a casual 10 minute laugh or a proper 2 hour playing session.
I give the game 83%
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