Crackdown for the Xbox 360 - An Early Review

Yesterday there was a new Xbox 360 game released called Crackdown that got a lot of press basically because every copy of the game sold right now comes with an invite to the Halo 3 beta. While that is a great marketing ploy by Microsoft, it was not the reason that I bought the game as I already have a pass to the Halo 3 beta (another story for another time). I bought Crackdown for two reasons: it’s fun as hell (I found this out by playing the demo on Xbox Live) and it allows for online co-op play over Xbox Live (just like Gears of War does). That said, let’s get into the review of the game from what I’ve played thus far shall we…

Crackdown is a GTA (Grand Theft Auto) type of game where you’re basically thrown into an “open world” environment and left to your own devices to find things to do. Unlike GTA though, in Crackdown it is a little more guided due to “The Chief” telling you about missions every now and then. Granted you don’t have to take on the missions but they do tend to lead you further down the in-game story path so I’d recommend you do them at some point. If you don’t take them on right away, you can do tons of other activities such as help the police clean up small gang skirmishes here and there (you’ll get notified that the cops could use your help, don’t worry), finding “orbs” hidden throughout the game that help build your agility skill (more on this later), car races, rooftop races (your character in the game can jump from rooftop to rooftop), and much more. For instance, last night my buddy and I played co-op for about four hours and managed to find 60+ agility orbs hidden on rooftops throughout the city, killed three of the twenty one mob bosses, did some stunt racing, helped the police stop gang violence on multiple occasions, and just generally learned how to play the game/control our characters. Yep, all that in four hours and we’ve only scratched the surface of the first difficulty level of the game!

While the game play is fun and engaging, the graphics and draw distance on this game are really what stun you at first. The look of the game is somewhat “cartoony” per se but that only adds to the overall feeling that the game is supposed to give you: you’re a comic book type hero. And when you get on top of a huge building and look around you’ll really be amazed at not only how far you can see but how much detail you can see. The city is HUGE and you really only realize this once you’ve looked at it from on-high. I’m not sure how the guys who did this game got that to work so well (this has always been a problem in games in my opinion… the distance always had a certain amount of “clipping” to it) but I’m VERY impressed! And don’t let the cartoony graphics think that the game doesn’t deliver realism… it does. Every building, every car, every person is detailed beyond anything ever done in GTA or it’s ilk. And the graphics were good enough to give me vertigo a couple times when standing atop a building and looking down. Now THAT’S what I call good graphics!

Another thing I like about the game is that your character “grows” as the gets more experienced. They do this in two ways: skills and physical appearance. Skills are things like agility, firearms, driving, etc. Unlike other games where you have to constantly tweak these skills manually and allot points to keep them growing, in Crackdown this is done for you automatically based on what you do. If you drive alot, your driving skills go up. If you shoot a lot, your firearms skill goes up, etc. I like this because I don’t want to have to think in this type of game… I just want to play. Leave the stats to the guys playing World of Warcraft… this is an action game so let’s keep up the action! Also, every time you “level up” a skill you get a cool little animation and your guy suddenly starts to change in appearance, i.e. bigger body, better armor, tattoos, etc. I love this fact since some of the guys can end up looking pretty bad ass when they’re maxed out (you can see a glimpse of what you character looks like maxed out when you choose him at the beginning)!

I do have one complaint about the game already though and that’s how often it seems to loose connection to the other player in co-op over Xbox Live. My buddy and I got disconnected at least 3-4 times last night during game play and, in this game, that’s really shitty. Unlike other games where you’d jump back in the co-op match right where you left off, when you get disco’d in this game it takes you back to the last “checkpoint” you hit… so if your last checkpoint was on the opposite end of town you’re going to have a long run/drive back to where you were when the game dropped. Not fun! Granted this is something not everyone may be experiencing and maybe it was just due to the large number of people playing last night since it just came out, but hopefully this is something they’ll be able to remedy with an update via the 360 dashboard.

In closing, let me restate that I’ve only played a very small portion of the game so far but what I have played has been fun as hell. Will my opinion of the game change as I get further along? Maybe… but if it does I’ll be sure to let you know here in a updated review. That said, anyone else out there have any thoughts on the game? I’d love to hear some comments from others on what they think… good or bad. Oh yeah… if you want to play Crackdown with me online then feel free to hit me up on Xbox Live sometime. My Gamer Tag is “Ugly Jake Busey”.