Crackdown (Xbox 360)

In Pacific City, organized crime has all but won. The three major islands comprising the metropolis have descended into anarchy as each one is claimed by a different crime syndicate. The Mexican gang Los Muertos, the Russian mob known as The Volk, and the technologically advanced Shai-Gen Corporation have beaten back law enforcement, but a special group known as The Agency believe they have something to turn the tides. New genetically modified supersoldiers are being deployed in the field, and as one of those Agents, it’s up to you to take down every crime boss, your powers gradually adapting as you become stronger, faster, and more capable as you work your way to restoring law and order in Crackdown.

 

This third-person shooter sets up the general idea of its action, but after you know the general premise, you’re thrown into Pacific City to get to work almost as you see fit. The game does take place in an open world, the player free to head wherever they can reach, although Los Muertos are presented as the first group to topple and heading to the islands controlled by the others will see you facing foes who put up a much tougher fight. You don’t need to go alone though, online co-op allowing you and another player to explore the city at the same time and even head to different regions than each other, although spreading too far apart can start to cause some occasional freeze ups and lead to small glitches in terms of discovering the crime bosses.

Your goal as an Agent is to take down each leader in a group, the idea being to work your way up to taking down the kingpin because each person below them manages some element of the operation that complicates the big battle. Eliminating underbosses will lead to less gunmen around the kingpin, the removal of specific weapons from the fight like explosives, and other little boons, but you do need to wipe out the gang close to fully, the final encounter you have with each syndicate actually an oddly named “final crime” that serves as a last stand for the regular members. While each group is introduced by way of a short video explaining how they operate, actually finding where the underbosses and kingpin are located requires exploring the city yourself, intel videos eventually triggering that alert you to what your facing. This can be where co-op play can face a little hitch where the intel isn’t being triggered properly or the boss and their minions won’t appear on location, but it’s also not too difficult to quickly head back to the Agency and then return to town to potentially undo the issue. That does require some knowledge that an area is likely to contain one of the group’s leaders, but they are often the most interesting places in town so it’s not too hard to guess if something’s gone awry.

 

Tracking down the different gang bosses ends up making for a pretty satisfying and varied gameplay loop, especially with the way Crackdown encourages you to traverse the city. While there is driving in Crackdown, it mostly feels there if you need to cross a great distance since heading out on foot can prove to be much more rewarding and interesting, especially as you develop your superhuman character. Starting off they are a bit tougher than a regular gunman, having a shield they can recover gradually that blocks incoming damage before it starts hurting their health, but they also have quite a leap that will only grow more potent as you increase your powers. The Agents grow stronger through the way they act. Attack your foes physically and you’ll eventually be tough enough to lift cars and have multiple life bars in reserve. Take down criminals with explosives and your future rocket launcher and grenade blasts will be bigger and deadlier. Locking onto targets is encouraged and allows the game to throw huge groups at you at once without worrying if you can handle them, but as you use your firearms more, your shots become more accurate. Agility is improved in an interesting way though, added jump height and running speed coming from finding Agility Orbs out in the world that often encourage you to leap from rooftop to rooftop and climb large buildings. Starting out you can sometimes feel like you’re hopping up ledges and windowsills a bit too often, but as you grow from your efforts, you can start tackling the gang fights from more interesting angles and even pull off satisfying tricks like leaping up to a balcony to shotgun a sniper at close range.

The gang bosses tend to hole up in unique locations that produce a range of battles. Olga Romanova for example operates out of a quarry, the wide open hole in the ground giving people on different layers great vantage points but the place is so littered with explosives either you or the enemy can lead to deadly chain reactions. Shai-Gen Corporation can have you scaling skyscrapers to reach a boss while over with Los Muertos you might have a wide open area like Rafael Diaz’s stadium where enemies will try to run you over in their vehicles. Boss characters themselves aren’t often a big jump in power compared to their goons, most of them having some guardsmen with additional health nearby as well as multiple health bars themselves, but your guns can chew through them quickly if you have an angle on them. Reaching them is often the challenge as the battlefields are packed with gunmen at all sorts of elevations. The lock-on aiming becomes very important since in a place like an oil rig you can’t always be sure which floor on the mostly open platforms a foe may be lurking, and since you need a little time for your aim to tighten if you want it to be accurate, you also aren’t just instantly wiping out all opposition.

 

Crackdown ends up slipping into a pretty consistent rhythm of play. You head to a new place, often find the Agency Supply Point that serves as a respawn point and place to stash new weapons you find, and then likely trigger some nearby intel to face off with a foe in a new and unique location. Once that’s done, hop around the city gathering more orbs to improve your agility and look for the next gang boss. The range of weapons does feel a little limited, variants on pistols, assault rifles, submachine guns, and shotguns most of what you find with grenade launchers and rocket launchers for a little spice, something that free DLC seemingly tried to address by giving you new tools like a minigun and harpoon launcher. However, while you might end up using a machine gun for much of the fighting, the area design ensures firefights still pack a lot of enjoyment and surprises. Some places like a dockyard battle to get aboard a ship feel like proper sieges, but other areas have multiple entry routes so you can sometimes slip in and take out the boss with less of a fight. There are points where the world can feel a bit resistant to navigation, one reason cars are mostly only good for optional race missions is because the game doesn’t give them too much room for shortcuts and off-roading, but at others a fight can change quite a bit based on vantage points you uncover through some crafty climbing. The freedom to reach most any place you can see opens up a great range of opportunities even if sometimes the climbing can be finicky when you’re leaping between handholds, and trying to build yourself up to battle in the ways you prefer even encourages more unique approaches to battle like getting in close to increase that strength skill. A lot of the fighting is about the sheer numbers of the group you’re up against than any one foe putting up an interesting fight, even the mutated freaks of Shai-Gen folding just as easily to sustained machine gun fire as the first criminal you fired at, but a lot of Crackdown’s quality comes from how it all adds together rather than an element standing as something special on its own.

THE VERDICT: Crackdown barely has a story and most of its enemies are just gunmen, but the design of Pacific City and your superhuman abilities still allow for some enjoyable and satisfying skirmishes. Traversing town on foot is surprisingly accommodating and rewarding, but in a confrontation with a crime boss you have spaces that encourage you to explore your movement options and develop your attack abilities through how you use them. The area layouts fit the game’s focus on freedom and let you face the criminals of the three gangs in a variety of ways even during the same fight, Crackdown’s overall goals straightforward but how you tackle them is where you find this third-person shooter’s shining moments.

 

And so, I give Crackdown for Xbox 360…

A GOOD rating. It can be a touch underwhelming when an underboss folds to simple gunfire and it could have been more interesting if they packed more tricks up their sleeves, but the emphasis on area design definitely benefits Crackdown as few battles truly feel similar. One might be a gradual infiltration, another an all out firefight with gunmen shooting at you from more angles than you can count. You might find a nice climbing route to get around some of the grunts in one fight where another they can be the oppressive force that holds you at bay thanks to their vantage points or choice of weapons. The Agency Supply Points not being too close to any single fight is a good choice for encouraging some caution, those respawn points giving enemy forces time to rebuild and thus a penalty for trying to go in guns blazing, and while it would be nicer to have some more unique guns, the emphasis on positioning and crowd management means even locking on with the same gun across multiple fights won’t be too repetitive. There is definitely room in Pacific City for more compelling additional challenges, most optional content beyond collecting ability orbs just being races, and the driving already feels like an afterthought due to the road layouts and how well enemies seem to dodge being run over. Crackdown is an excellent co-op experience despite its occasional glitches at least, hunting down where the gang bosses are hiding and then fighting your way in together often leading to different but complementary approaches that show off the game’s flexibility even more.

 

While the story’s ending does include an interesting turn, Crackdown probably does benefit from being focused most of all on just setting up enormous and impressive firefights that allow you to tackle them with a great degree of freedom. It’s an almost addictive loop, learning the next criminal leader to take down and trying to figure out the best way to reach them. Building up your Agent into someone who suits your style and even having Agility Orbs to scoop up in the downtime keeps you occupied well between those bombastic battles, Crackdown adding just enough depth to the systems to make them varied while keeping the process of freeing Pacific City pretty clean and straightforward to jump back into again and again.