Crackdown - Only on Xbox 360
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02 March, 2007 08:00
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I like to think of myself as a hardcore gamer and I’ve managed to play hundreds if not thousands of games over the years and games either have to really involve and immerse you in another world or just be plain fun. This game just so happens to be the latter. No real amazing story to get your teeth in here. Pacific City life has taken a turn for the worse and has been overrun by crime, in particular 3 main crime lords control the 3 districts of the city with their main goons controlling certain aspects of the syndicates such as arms dealing, vehicle heists and modifications, physical training, money laundering etc. You just so happen to be a cop working for The Agency who have struggled to police the city but all is not lost as they have the technology to enhance your skills and become some kind of superhero cop. What follows is dizzying heights of enjoyment and amazement as you start playing you basically end up roaming the city doing what you like, when you like and where you like!!
If you're a lover of the Grand Theft Auto series, this seriously wont disappoint (The head developer on the old GTA games is the also the head developer on this). The controls are simple enough to pick up and within no time you will have them cracked without any training modes. Although the controls are simple its quite amazing the amount of things you can pull off within this city, you'll find yourself stringing together different moves with different aspects such as driving off a tall building, diving out of the car before blowing it up with a rocket launcher or even picking up gas canisters chucking them 100ft down from a skyscraper into a crowd of people, shoot them, watch the beautiful explosion and pure carnage as bodies and cars fly everywhere and actually lock your rocket launcher onto a person who has just been blown into the air and blow him up mid air, its so funny whats possible here. Couple that with the flowing graphics and you can have hours of fun just messing around. Unlike GTA which got a bit repetitive and boring quite quickly this is simply great fun and a joy to play, which gets more fun as you progress through the game building up your abilities which are broken down into certain categories : Agility, shooting, driving, strength and explosives. The more you beat people up in hand to hand combat and your strength will increase to the point where you can kick a villain 50ft into the air or lift a jeep up and throw it at people. If you prefer shooting then go ahead and use all the guns available and your accuracy will improve or explore the city collecting the 500 agility orbs available and in no time you'll be jumping onto buildings and up skyscrapers vaulting yourself from rooftop to rooftop.
The graphics on show here are nothing too special, it's all very nice and seems cell shaded and somewhat cartoony. The city is nicely done but it's nothing amazing and lacks a little character but nice nonetheless. The explosions are the best things about the graphics, they are really well done especially when you chain a few together and see 6 or more cars and lorrys erupt in a volcanic explosion with bodies and metal flying everywhere. The physics and animations are done well, one thing I really liked was standing in the middle busy road and as cars are coming towards you you can shoot out the tires and watch the driver madly try and keep control of the vehicle as he pulling the steering wheel from one side to the other trying not to crash and then as he passes you at speed the car flips over in all its classic movie style.
Ok, it’s very entertaining, though it’s not the most refined part of the game. That said, it’s a massive improvement from the GTA series. In GTA you could almost comically spin round with a machine gun killing almost everyone in seconds. These days are long gone in Crackdown. It’s much harder to kill the enemies. Quite often, you will gun someone down and they will fall to the floor, you’ll move up still shooting only to realise the guy rolling on the floor in pain, has gotten up, found himself a gun and is shooting at you again, to stop this happening, gun him to the floor and simply throw him and your pursuers. You can shoot enemies in different parts of the body. If someone has a powerful weapon, you can shoot the arms and they will drop it, or if someone is running away, you can shoot them in the leg to slow them down and so forth. Another important part of the shooting is that you can lock onto a vehicle and target a specific part such as the tires.
The car handling is amazing, maybe even better than any of the GTA's... when you gun your car the handling is hard and once you have a blown tyre, you have to tap the gas on and off to keep it going straight or you’ll just spin all over the place. As you progress and your driving skills become more honed, your agency cars will transform once you enter them, this just adds some satisfaction for your efforts at hitting those hidden stunts all over the game. There is one major thing that I do miss from the GTA games though and that’s when you become wanted and the more serious your crime the more police start chasing you all over at high speeds which lead to some amazing, exhilarating chase scenes. So far I have not had any bad guys or police chasing me down, only time trials and races so far which are as exciting.
Its a great game and I’m sure anybody can use their imagination to their hearts content while playing this but it only gets better when teaming up online with a mate, this is when the real possibilities open up and the world truly becomes yours to exploit, wreaking havoc all over the place. You'll be grinning like a devious child again but be warned if this is for your child it does contain harsh language.
All in all, Crack-on-down (pun intended!) to your local game supplier and buy it, you will be laughing all the way home and laughing even more once you start the superhero cop action.
RRRR
If you're a lover of the Grand Theft Auto series, this seriously wont disappoint (The head developer on the old GTA games is the also the head developer on this). The controls are simple enough to pick up and within no time you will have them cracked without any training modes. Although the controls are simple its quite amazing the amount of things you can pull off within this city, you'll find yourself stringing together different moves with different aspects such as driving off a tall building, diving out of the car before blowing it up with a rocket launcher or even picking up gas canisters chucking them 100ft down from a skyscraper into a crowd of people, shoot them, watch the beautiful explosion and pure carnage as bodies and cars fly everywhere and actually lock your rocket launcher onto a person who has just been blown into the air and blow him up mid air, its so funny whats possible here. Couple that with the flowing graphics and you can have hours of fun just messing around. Unlike GTA which got a bit repetitive and boring quite quickly this is simply great fun and a joy to play, which gets more fun as you progress through the game building up your abilities which are broken down into certain categories : Agility, shooting, driving, strength and explosives. The more you beat people up in hand to hand combat and your strength will increase to the point where you can kick a villain 50ft into the air or lift a jeep up and throw it at people. If you prefer shooting then go ahead and use all the guns available and your accuracy will improve or explore the city collecting the 500 agility orbs available and in no time you'll be jumping onto buildings and up skyscrapers vaulting yourself from rooftop to rooftop.
The graphics on show here are nothing too special, it's all very nice and seems cell shaded and somewhat cartoony. The city is nicely done but it's nothing amazing and lacks a little character but nice nonetheless. The explosions are the best things about the graphics, they are really well done especially when you chain a few together and see 6 or more cars and lorrys erupt in a volcanic explosion with bodies and metal flying everywhere. The physics and animations are done well, one thing I really liked was standing in the middle busy road and as cars are coming towards you you can shoot out the tires and watch the driver madly try and keep control of the vehicle as he pulling the steering wheel from one side to the other trying not to crash and then as he passes you at speed the car flips over in all its classic movie style.
Ok, it’s very entertaining, though it’s not the most refined part of the game. That said, it’s a massive improvement from the GTA series. In GTA you could almost comically spin round with a machine gun killing almost everyone in seconds. These days are long gone in Crackdown. It’s much harder to kill the enemies. Quite often, you will gun someone down and they will fall to the floor, you’ll move up still shooting only to realise the guy rolling on the floor in pain, has gotten up, found himself a gun and is shooting at you again, to stop this happening, gun him to the floor and simply throw him and your pursuers. You can shoot enemies in different parts of the body. If someone has a powerful weapon, you can shoot the arms and they will drop it, or if someone is running away, you can shoot them in the leg to slow them down and so forth. Another important part of the shooting is that you can lock onto a vehicle and target a specific part such as the tires.
The car handling is amazing, maybe even better than any of the GTA's... when you gun your car the handling is hard and once you have a blown tyre, you have to tap the gas on and off to keep it going straight or you’ll just spin all over the place. As you progress and your driving skills become more honed, your agency cars will transform once you enter them, this just adds some satisfaction for your efforts at hitting those hidden stunts all over the game. There is one major thing that I do miss from the GTA games though and that’s when you become wanted and the more serious your crime the more police start chasing you all over at high speeds which lead to some amazing, exhilarating chase scenes. So far I have not had any bad guys or police chasing me down, only time trials and races so far which are as exciting.
Its a great game and I’m sure anybody can use their imagination to their hearts content while playing this but it only gets better when teaming up online with a mate, this is when the real possibilities open up and the world truly becomes yours to exploit, wreaking havoc all over the place. You'll be grinning like a devious child again but be warned if this is for your child it does contain harsh language.
All in all, Crack-on-down (pun intended!) to your local game supplier and buy it, you will be laughing all the way home and laughing even more once you start the superhero cop action.
RRRR
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