GAMINGtruth

Gameplay

This is where Crackdown shines. Anyone that has ran through a city in a GTA game causing destruction and carnage knows how awesome it is to do - and Realtime Worlds has based the game on that simple premise of blowing up as much as possible.

You have five basic skills in Crackdown: Agility, Driving, Explosives, Strength, and Firearms. Each skill directly relates to your actions in the game world, and to get better at something, you simply use that skill. Each time you use Strength in the game world, you get Strength points. For instance, at the first level of Strength you can pick up a dispatched criminal and take out a group of other criminals, but after a couple stars, you’ll be able to chuck dumpsters and small cars to dispatch your foes. Get all the stars in Agility, and you’ll be leaping across rooftops effortlessly. Take care not to attack civilians, though. You’re an agent of the law, therefore attacking civilians will not only cause you a loss of points for each innocent that you dispatch, the police force will start turning their guns on you. That approach didn’t work well for regular humans versus the Hulk, so it doesn’t do much good here either - but being on the wrong side of the law isn’t the coolest approach.

Crackdown’s story isn’t as detailed as some gamers would’ve liked, but for the type of game this is, it works fine. Your job as an agent is to take out crime bosses, and each boss you take out affects the overall gameplay. By taking out an explosives expert and a firearms expert, your enemies will have no access to the best grenades and weapons, resulting in a slightly easier experience when it comes to taking out other bosses.

Where Crackdown shines, though, is it’s implementation of co-op gameplay. The entire campaign can be played with a friend over Xbox Live or System Link, and after having done so, I’m hoping other developers can implement a similar feature into their games. If you’re playing a single player game, you have the option of inviting a friend and they’ll be a part of your city, helping you police the streets. The same goes for joining a friend’s game - once you get in, you’re a part of their city. Taking out bosses in their game gets them the credit, but you still get the points for your kills. Once you’ve finished the campaign, you have the option of playing through the city without crime - making street and rooftop races a lot easier to deal with.

In other words, Crackdown’s gameplay is highly addicting. If you haven’t already done so, I highly suggest downloading the demo from the Xbox Live Marketplace.

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