My Rating: 8.0 / 10

I first heard about this game in GameInformer Magazine.  It was on the cover, and it was supposed to be a 360 launch title.  Well, it got pushed back, which kinda stunk, but that didn't do much to deter me.  I was really excited to see this game.

Well, I didn't actually get a chance to play it until Summer 2007, almost around the time Halo 3 was set to launch, simply because I've never been rich enough to afford a 360, but I gotta say, it was worth the wait (for me at least).

The game starts off with a comic book-style introduction outlining the plot, and then starts you right in.  The game is in 3rd-person, with a free-moving camera, so it gets bonus points from me there.  Its comic-book, cel-shaded style is appealing, and simplifies a lot of the textures, but leaves enough detail to keep things from looking bland.  And boy is everything nice and colorful.  Cars are shiny, to varying degrees depending on how nice they are (hatchbacks aren't all that shiny, but your agency cars are), there's plenty of lights around the city... oh yeah, and it's all open world, right from the beginning.  You can go anywhere on the series of islands that make up the city, but don't expect to be able to survive long in a few areas.

Character progression is handled by awarding "agency supplement orbs" for activities you perform.  If you kill an enemy with a gun, your gun skill progresses.  If you kneecap them with a grenade and they blow up, your explosives skill progresses.  Run them over, driving progresses, etc, etc.  The only thing that isn't controlled by that is agility, which is progressed by actually climbing the buildings and and collecting the orbs manually.  But once you get that up, man oh man, it is so much fun jumping from rooftop to rooftop, Hulk-style.

Obviously, there are downsides to the game, because otherwise this would've been a perfect score.  There is co-op available, but it's only over system-link, not available on split-screen.  Yeah, it gives more freedom to each player to go different directions, but if someone didn't have a 360, they can't play with their friend who does.  Also, the story, while told in an interesting way (and definitely left open for a sequel, which I would gladly play), just doesn't feel as fleshed out as it could've been.  You know next to nothing about your character, so you don't really identify with him.  Here's hoping the sequel will have you exploring where you came from while fighting the man, or something.

Also, melee attacks are unvaried, and get a tad boring to look at.  There's a roundhouse kick (Chuck Norris taught this agent everything he knows), and if the enemy is on the ground, and close enough, you can stomp them.  That's it.  Oh wait, if you're running and hit B, you'll do a flying kick.  On the flipside, you can also pick up stuff and throw it at them, which also advances your strength, and once you start getting stronger, they go flying, which kinda makes up for the limited attack.

When firing a weapon, you can use the left trigger to aim, and it'll auto-target something or someone, but it's sometimes finnicky.  Like if you kill someone, release, aim at a new guy, and hold it again in quick succession, it'll target the body you just dropped.  You just need to make sure your target isn't too close, and usually it works, and your targeting gets more accurate the higher your firearms progression is.

Weapon selection is kinda varied, but not enough in my opinion.  You can pick up any weapon an enemy drops, but honestly, once you get the M60 (equivalent), all you need is that and a sniper rifle (or rocket launcher) and you're set for the rest of the game.  There's not much reason to go with different guns, although the M16 is pretty accurate for a good distance, so you can pull of headshots.

So the gameplay is a tad repetitive, but there's always enough baddies and bonus objectives to keep you occupied, and finding all the agility orbs and getting the achievements is extremely fun (like Body Juggler: keep a body in the air for 10 seconds using explosives).  Honestly, it's not any more repetitive than Halo or CoD4, because there's just enough variation between missions to keep things fresh.

And when it comes down to it, having the power in this game to leap up tall buildings and kick cars 60+ feet is just a complete blast.  The downsides just aren't enough to take the immense fun out of this one.

My Rating: 4 / 10

Initial Summary:

    Crackdown was a sort of... ripoff of GTA. Except for the fact that you play the cop instead of the homicidal maniac. The game was fun for a while, until you’ve done everything and used the ‘keys to the city’ (Cheat Mode) feature to have your fill of mindless violence. 


Gameplay: 3/10

    Gameplay was fun, but got boring fast. You play a cybernetic supercop in a crime infested city (very original... /sarcasm) and have to kill several crime bosses in an open world environment. You have to level up your skills (to a maximum of level 4) to make yourself stronger, faster, more accurate and have better driving skills and maximum grenade throw distance. Its not great and mot much else to say. The gameplay was fun, but it ended quickly, resulting in a very low score.



Graphics: 7/10

    The graphics were pretty good at times, but sometimes it looked like XIII, a graphics style I didn’t like. The fact that an Xbox could handle looking out from the highest point in the game without excessive fog or any visible graphics compensation without lag was amazing. Though, the game did get jumpy at random times, when nothing was even slightly processor intensive.


    
Replayablility: 2/10

    the replayability wasn’t great, once you’ve played it enough, you dont have any desire to play it again. If I get bored one day, I might crack open its case and play a few hours, but then I’ll put it back in its case and forget about it for a few more weeks.


Summary: 4/10

Not recommended

fun, but gets boring quickly, the graphics were good, but was occasionally laggy. Not much else to say, except the only thing this was good for was the Halo 3 demo. And that wasnt even good.