More Articles on Crackdown
Crackdown 2 Still An OptionMicrosoft Confirms Crackdown ContentCrackdown - Hands OnCrackdown To Feature Halo 3 Beta KeyCrackdown Demo Coming Mid-JanuaryLatest Previews
Street Fighter IV - Hands OnSpider-Man: Web of Shadows - Hands OnFamily Trainer - First Lookde Blob - Hands OnGC08 - Resident Evil 5 Hands OnUser Reviews
There are currently 2 User Reviews for CrackdownWrite your own review for this game today and you will receive 100 Gamer Points.
Click here to register
Crackdown - Hands On Preview
Chris Leyton
09/01/2007
The man behind GTA takes on the genre with genetically enhanced agents and super abilities...
Eclipsing Rockstar's seminal San Andreas in the GTA genre seems to have become the Holy Grail for videogame developers eager to share the unparalleled commercial success that the series has enjoyed. Despite the release of last year's well-received Saint's Row from THQ, the search for the "next-gen GTA" remains; can a game surpass the scale, match the wit and deliver a truly defining leap to match expectations? It's a dilemma Rockstar North themselves face as they attempt to exceed their own achievements with the forthcoming release of GTA4, but it's also one that Microsoft hopes to achieve beforehand with the impending release of Crackdown.
In an attempt to overcome the first hurdle of being labelled as little more than a "GTA wannabe", Microsoft have teamed up with David Jones' Real Time Worlds to deliver Crackdown. Jones should need little introduction amongst GTA fans, there wouldn't be the likes of Vice City and San Andreas without the man who's widely considered as putting the original GTA on the gaming map.
Set in the dystopian Pacific City, Crackdown portrays a heavily satirical take on what life is like in the future. Drawing heavy inspiration from the likes of Paul Verhoeven's Robocop and Starship Troopers along with 2000AD' Judge Dredd, Crackdown finds the world teetering on the verge of anarchy, where law enforcement recruitment is at an all-time low and rival factions rule the streets. In an attempt to bring peace back to globe, all forms of policing have been unified to form The Agency; however, more desperate measures are called for if The Agency hopes to wrestle control back from the feuding factions. Enlisting the work of the disgraced scientist Doctor Baltazar Czernenko, The Agency is taking advantage of his discredited eugenics programme to advance the human race into new genetic dimensions. The result is Agents of Justice, superior to ordinary law enforcement agents in every way; their sole task, to eradicate crime and clean up the streets of Pacific City from the Los Meurtos, the Volk and the Shai-Gen Corporation. Working for a right-wing law enforcement agency where the end is always enough to justify the means, satire is applied thickly and effectively throughout the game and is hammered even further thanks to the hammy tones of the narrator who continuously keeps abreast of the player's action - one of the game's most immediately enjoyable aspects.
Essentially GTA with super-powers, Crackdown is shaping up to be an amalgamation of various ideas, though whether this gels into a cohesive package remains questionable at this late stage in development. Beyond the obvious GTA similarities (described by Microsoft as an "action-driving hybrid..." set in a "3D persistent playground"), Crackdown also borrows elements of Pandemic's Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction. Instead of a choice of missions and a cohesive storyline, Crackdown throws narrative out of the window, focussing solely on tracking down the seven members that form each of the three gangs and taking them out with whatever means necessary. There's an element of choosing the right infiltration option to improve your chances of success when disposing of these members, but this feels like a largely superficial aspect of the game at this stage. It's disappointing that you have very little influence over tasks such as discovering the intel, more often then not it's purely a case of driving around town until stumbling upon the position of the next target.
Starting out as a rookie Agent, your character slowly evolves and develops across six different attributes during the course of the game. Grouped into 'Speed', 'Agility', 'Driving', 'Explosions', 'Strength' and 'Fire Arms', disposing of an opponent with different means provides respective rewards; mowing somebody down in a vehicle will grant a 'Driving' bonus; equally using a gun will boost the 'Fire Arms' skill, whilst a combination of techniques will grant bonuses to all of the skills employed during the kill. Over time these attributes level up, granting the character with increasing powers that eventually border on those of a super-hero - death-defying leaps along the skyline, using cars as makeshift projectiles and shooting with the precision of
Developing speed and agility are crucial to an Agent's success in the game; instead of attempting to match the sheer scale of Rockstar's gargantuan San Andreas, Pacific City is made up of three relatively small islands with the emphasis on the environment's vertical dimensions. Skyscrapers, statues, bridges and cliff-faces pose no problem for an Agent with sufficient Agility attributes; as a result, Crackdown feels significantly more "crammed" and detailed in its environment then anything that has come before it. Real Time Worlds have ensured that there are plenty of environmental objects to get your hands upon and use as weapons based upon the character's 'Strength' level, initially hurling barrels and signs before moving onto heavier and significantly more deadly objects. Unfortunately, for all of the attention squeezed into the environment's design, it seems as though the city isn't exactly alive or dynamic enough for what a GTA game should be like on the next-generation.
One of the smartest touches evident in the game so far revolves around the auto-targeting system, which presents a Robocop level of precision as you target an opponent behind cover, peaking out to deliver the fatal shot without flinching. For further accuracy the system allows you to easily target different areas of the gang-member's body, whether that's shooting the gun from their hand or honing in on an instant-kill headshot. Although it's probably too late in the day for any monumental changes, we're hoping that the targeting is tightened up a little before release and Real Time Worlds manage to remove the frustrations caused by the system insisting on targeting pointless objects like dead bodies without being able to easily change targets!
With the emphasis squarely on highly intensive combat, one potential stumbling block is the lack of variety shown so far in the game's objectives. Whereas missions in GTA continuously changed around and revolved around varying objectives, the sole criteria behind Crackdown involves tracking down a target and defeating them through a combination of brute force, skill with a gun and a smidgeon of gaining the tactical advantage by using the depth of the environment. Disparate races involving vehicles or merely leaping across the skyline are present throughout the game, however, at this stage these are so distinctly separated from the flow of the main game that they provide very little impetus to even bother beyond trying out the first few.
Unfortunately, one of the game's most appealing features is in a largely unfinished state within the preview build. Following the success of Epic's Gears of War, Crackdown allows two players to play through the game entirely on Co-Op via Xbox Live or System Link - though we'll have to wait for an updated build before deciding whether this is a defining feature of the game, or a desperate attempt to add something original to the mix.
gfh-77
Date Added:Sat 16th Feb 2008 08:21
Anonymous
Date Added:Sat 14th Jul 2007 22:02
aar
Date Added:Wed 7th Mar 2007 09:25
Anonymous
Date Added:Sat 3rd Feb 2007 23:12
if your board of saints row and cant wait for gta 4 this is by no meens a bridge gap game.
oh for an earlier comment no it doesnt slow down at all it jus... [ Read full comment... ]
Anonymous
Date Added:Thu 11th Jan 2007 23:46
Anonymous
Date Added:Sun 7th Jan 2007 22:57
Anonymous
Date Added:Tue 26th Dec 2006 09:49
bigsal82
Date Added:Fri 22nd Dec 2006 16:44
Anonymous
Date Added:Fri 22nd Dec 2006 15:34