Crackdown

Leap over small obstacles with several planned jumps.

Superhumans. They’re everywhere. You can’t walk down the street without someone throwing a car to take out a fleeing foe, or leaping a tall building in a single bound. Why? Because they’re cool!

A weapon that can blow up the world, while making an excellent plot line, isn’t entertaining. The entertainment comes from the dude with super-fast regenerative abilities, adamantium claws and bad-arse attitude who has to stop it in time. In Crackdown, you get to play the role of superhuman.

The plot is fairly simple. You’re an agent in ‘The Agency’, an organisation put together to stem the ever increasing flow of crime. Your objective is to find and eliminate key individuals in the city’s three major crime syndicates. The ultimate objective is to kill the head of each organisation and while you can go straight for them, you’ll be going up against near impossible odds in the form of extra powerful guards and defences. By taking out individuals lower down in the organisation first, it will soften up the defences around each crime lord in the form of fewer and weaker guards.

The player has five core skills: Athletics, Strength, Marksmanship, Explosives and Driving. These skills increase as you dispatch your foes, allowing you to perform even more amazing feats. For example, with Strength, at its base level you can beat up an enemy in two or three punches or pick up a barrel and toss it a few metres. At its highest level, a single punch will send opponents flying and you can easily hoist a truck above your head and throw it at an enemy three stories up. With Athletics, you go from jumping over cars to leaping from building to building Spider-Man style. Marksmanship improves your aim with weapons, Explosives makes your explosions bigger and finally Driving makes the vehicles you commandeer move and turn faster, and upgrades your default automobile.

Gameplay is set out GTA-style, albeit with more freedom and interactivity. You have free rein in a big city, where you can travel over rooftops, grab a car or simply hoof it to wherever you need to be. In between you’ll engage gang members and participate in rooftop or road races to increase your Athletics and Driving skills.

The graphics are pretty-looking, but don’t really make the most of the Xbox 360’s capabilities. The environments aren’t too shabby, and the characters have a kind of cel-shaded look to them, giving the game a slight comic-book feel. Essentially you won’t associate Crackdown with the words ‘Best Graphics 2007’. At least picking out your foes isn’t hard, as each gang member has a coloured icon above them, so they are easy to distinguish.

The real strength of Crackdown is simply playing what’s in effect a futurised superhero, and the skill development. It’s good fun throwing a truck at a group of people and watching them go flying or leaping off a building into the middle of a group of thugs, cracking the pavement Matrix style, and then booting them over the street. Not terribly complex admittedly, but we enjoyed it.

It doesn’t have a lot of depth and the fights aren’t very challenging due to you being so damn tough, but if you like playing a one-man army with super strength, incredible reflexes and like cinematic fight scenes, then you will enjoy Crackdown a hell of a lot.

For: Superhuman feats; free roaming environment; great action scenes.

Against: Not very challenging; finished in an afternoon; not particularly innovative.