I rented Crackdown just last week and played it for 3 days, admittedly not as long as I should have.
The game starts as you choose your avatar (set appearances but a number of them) and then you jump into the game. It starts with a introduction of the gangs, the city, who you are, what you are, why you are there and what your objective is. The narrators voice, fortunately doesn't get annoying, at least for me as he often comments on things you do.
After the intro your thrown into the hideout for "The Agency". A super swat team set to tackle crime and gangs especially. You are a superhero, a under developed weak one at first, who has the ability to kick, jump, run, shoot, pickup, drive and so on. So how is that different to a normal cop? Well as you shoot bad guys, kick them into a pulp, drive over them, blow them up or gather Agility Orbs, you gain orbs and these orbs level you up. There is 4 levels for each of these attributes of Driving, Agility, Strength, Explosives and Shooting. Starting off, you're only able to just clear small gaps and aiming takes a few seconds to adjust. Later on you can jump across the widest gaps from building to building, can aim easily as if you were using a sniper when you are actually using a pistol and kick people so they fly 30 feet through the air.
Another factor is that your health grows. It acts in the same manner as the Halo health bar. You have a shield and then your health, both of which re-generate after a while (when not being hit) and eventually you have 2-3 bars of health rather then one.
Your main objective in the game is to hunt down members of the three gangs. It creates a nifty little system as you search for certain members of the gang in order to weaken certain aspects of the gang. For instance, kill the weapon supplier and they have worse weapons. Killing all the important members will then improve the chance you have to kill the main member of the gang, the boss. There's three gangs to do away with over the three islands. This is where some of the choice creeps in. You could for instance, after entering the second island, go straight after the boss of the gang, if you can find him. But they will be heavily armed, have more men and better resources and cars to stop you. Whittle them down to just the boss left and infiltration is a lot easier, although not a push over.
I never actually got to test multi-player options as I don't have live but the game is hugely enjoyable. From just wasting time trying to look cool as you jump 50 feet in the air across to the next tower or whether you attempt to beat the objectives in the game. The graphics as well in the game are nice with what seemed to be nice cell shading added to 3D effects with colourful explosions and great sound effects.
The problems with the game are simply there isn't the same depth as GTA, the soundtrack isn't as good and it can be quite hard at times. For instance, I walked into the second city after killing everyone in the first gang, only to be bombarded from every angle by the next gang's members. Rooftops, streets, cars and balcony's were littered with enemies causing me to flee every time I went near. The AI wasn't that smart either at times an example is when I faced the weapons smuggler of the first gang, he just stood there pelting me with grenades that I easily dodged, so that I simply tossed some at him making it one of the easiest kills.
After a while, you do need to take a break from the constant shooting and bashing of the stereotypical gang members but unfortunately there isn't much else to do. There is some races, on foot as well as in car, or you can have fun driving and running around and jumping but in the end your forced back into it the gang killing after a while. Although I did enjoy, once my strength was at level 3, taking a run up before flying a kick into random cars on the motorway, the result was fun.
It's an enjoyable game with choice in terms of the path you take in order to beat the gangs, but other than that there is not much to do with no side quests or other jobs of some sort. The linearity of the overall game unfortunately hurts it a lot and the soundtrack, well it interested me so less that I never really took notice of what song it was on.
Overall I give it a 8/10. It's a game I'd consider buying if it didn't seem so short, but it has excellent graphics and is a lot of fun when you are in the mood to kill the gang members or have an idea on how to make your own fun, otherwise it comes up a bit short, I killed two gangs in the short space of 3 days proving its quite short. Still a fun game non the less.
8/10
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