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Who says you have to grow up? Here at SI.com's Game Room, our staffers review the latest sports video game titles to hit the market and welcome your feedback.
  
3/09/2007 05:32:00 PM

Review: Crackdown (Xbox 360)

By Lee Clontz

Crackdown, better known as "the game that comes with the Halo 3 beta" is a sandbox-style, violent crime game that takes place in a large city where you hijack cars, battle gangs and cause mayhem. If that premise sounds novel to you, you probably stopped gaming sometime before the 2001 release of Grand Theft Auto III.

GTA has spawned countless imitators and, at first glance, Crackdown seems like little more than one of them. Sure, you're a cop instead of a criminal, but the basic mechanics look the same: hijack cars and blow up bad guys. To make matters worse, Crackdown lacks most of the factors that make the GTA series so distinctive -- top-tier voice acting, a great soundtrack and a wide variety of creative and often humorous missions and sights to see. By comparison to Liberty City, Crackdown's metropolis is downright bland and repetitive. You'll spend the first hour watching the cheesy opening cinematic, attacking repetitive criminals, driving awkward vehicles and wondering how long until the Halo 3 beta opens up so you didn't totally waste your money.

Crackdown
Crackdown :: Microsoft Game Studios
Then you'll pick up your first agility orb, and you'll be hooked.

After many hours of Crackdown, I'm convinced that the marketing for this game is completely wrong. This is not a sandbox crime game -- it's actually a 3-D platformer dressed up in Tommy Vercetti's clothing. Think GTA crossed with The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction and you're starting to get the picture.

You see, you're not just a cop; you're a super cop, able to jump from rooftop to rooftop and eventually, across large parts of entire city blocks. At the beginning of the game, you can't pick up a trash can. A few hours in, you'll be picking up cars. You build up various attributes -- strength, explosives, firearms, driving, and agility -- by doing crazy car stunts, using explosives, using guns... and picking up agility orbs from the tops of buildings.

Forget the story arc of this game. Forget the driving, forget the combat. The real fun of this game is building up your character's agility and leaping across rooftops hunting for the 500 agility orbs perched atop hard-to-reach place throughout the city.

With the possible exception of the Burnout series, I haven't found a single game mechanic this addictive in a very long time. The first time you leap across a street from the top of a building, catch yourself on a windowsill, vault yourself up the side of the building and blast a rocket into an unsuspecting enemy standing on the roof, it's almost impossible not to laugh out loud. Once you've leveled up a couple of skills, the game opens up and the addiction sets in.

Crackdown
Crackdown :: Microsoft Game Studios
The game's visuals don't impress at first, but they're more than adequate and the draw distance when you start spending time on the rooftops is impressive. Your character model in the game is nicely detailed and animated, but the other humans you run into have little personality. The villains are equally nondescript, identifiable only by the gang sign floating over their head like an "I'm Thinking Arby's" hat. If only actual law enforcement was so easy. The bosses are even less interesting and hunting them down is pretty much the entire core game.

The online mode of the game is just as disarming as the single-player campaign. At first, it doesn't seem like much, but you have to play it to truly appreciate it. You can bring a friend into your game and shoot at each other, play the campaign together, collaboratively collect orbs or roam off in different directions while you chat. There is no lag to speak of, and it's easy to while away hours showing off stunts and looking for cool stuff to do.

There are definitely some flaws that I hope are rectified before Crackdown 2 (which seems a certainty). As much fun as two player co-op is, four-player would be even better, as would some missions that actually benefit from having multiple players. It'd be great to be able to drive your co-op player in the passenger seat of a car you're in. Actually, the whole driving mechanic needs more polish, and there isn't a lot of variety in the vehicles. The soundtrack, too, is mostly forgettable and generic, especially after the hugely entertaining GTA song selections.

It's also too bad this is an M-rated game. Most of the violence is fairly cartoonish and over-the-top and there is profanity here and there, but it's largely unnecessary and forced. This is the kind of game a 12-year-old boy would go nuts for (to say nothing of a 33-year-old boy), and it's too bad that the game's designers went for a more "adult" tone than embracing the goofy fun the game actually is. There's no way this game deserves the same rating as GTA: San Andreas, and it's an unfortunate design decision that the game wasn't opened up to a huge audience that would have embraced it.

Still, the good in Crackdown far outweighs the bad. This game isn't a classic and it's shamelessly derivative of several established franchises, but don't let that scare you off. This is the summer popcorn movie of video games: you won't remember it come Oscar time, but when it's good, it's really, really satisfying.

Ratings System (1 to 10)
Game Play: 8
There are lots of imperfections here, particularly with the twitchy controls and a camera that is occasionally difficult to manage, but once you adapt to them, you'll do fine. There's not a great deal to do, and the main campaign is fairly easy, but the inspired jumping mechanic and the insanely addictive orb collection are worth the price of admission. It's not perfect, but it's crazy fun.
Graphics: 8
The characters in the game are bland and the art direction leaves something to be desired, but the overall effect of the game doesn't suffer. Most of the texture work is solid and there were no framerate dips, which is impressive in a game of this scale. Climbing to the top of the tower in the center of the game world and looking out at the draw distance of the nighttime skyline makes you appreciate the power of the game's engine. Just bring Dramamine, because the height is vertigo-inducing.
Replayability: 7
The campaign is fairly short, but if you like orb collecting, there are hundreds of them to find. The game also has a devilish mix of achievements, some of which you'll get easily and others which are nearly impossible. The cooperative online play could definitely give the game legs, as could the Halo 3 beta being released in the spring.
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