Crackdown
336 wordsCrackdown is one of the games that made me want a 360 — because someone I trust described it as Grand Theft Auto with the boring bits taken out.
It’s an awful lot of fun. Many games have followed the GTA formula — free roaming city, gangster agenda, cause havoc, proceed through a series of missions.
Crackdown is different. You can still roam the city as much as you like, but you’re the law, not a criminal. Not only that; you’re a superhuman clone policeman, and you’re authorised to cause as much chaos as you like if it helps clean up the streets.
Killing civilians or “peacekeepers” has penalties, but a little collateral damage doesn’t hurt too much.
At first, your superpowers are mild. This is clever - because if you started the game fully powered up, you wouldn’t know what to do with your powers. The more you use your powers, though, the better you get. The more you leap around, the higher your agility gets, and soon your leaping four storeys at a time, from rooftop to rooftop. The more baddies you shoot, the better you get at it, and the more baddies you blow up, the bigger the explosions you can create.
There is some structure: you have three gang kingpins to find and kill. But the way you go about it is up to you. You can just find them and kill them — but it will be all but impossible with their strong defences and your weak powers. You can chip away at your powers until you’re strong enough to get through their defences. You can take a strategic approach and try to bypass much of the defence. You can weaken their defences by first defeating bosses lower in the gang’s hierarchy.
I have spent hour upon hour in this game, and never got bored. There’s always something to do, even if it’s just blowing things up for fun.
Everything you can do in the single player game, you can also do online in a co-op game.
Thoroughly recommended.
August 15th, 2007 at 20:17
Sounds fun, I might make that my next purchase. Still looking around for a game without too much wanton destruction Ruth might enjoy.
August 16th, 2007 at 11:05
I would have said it’s the wrong platform for games without wanton destruction… but XBLA comes to the rescue. Ruth never really took to computer games; at least most of the XBLA gamer are bite-size.
Alternatively, Viva Pinata might appeal to the OCD in her. Kameo perhaps?
September 28th, 2007 at 12:44
I absolutley rock at this. John knows this and is too scared to play online with me.
To sound like a lame magazine article, this was one of the surprise hits on the Xbox360. I played it when it first came out and managed to get it for a billy bargain £15 from Games Exchange, a couple of weeks ago.
September 28th, 2007 at 14:59
Let’s do it.
Co-op run through all the bosses. Shouldn’t take long. Gets us both an achievement.