Crackdown Impressions

As reported earlier, Crackdown is going to be coming with a free Halo 3 beta invite, I predicted that this game would now sell over 1 million copies. Tuesday, a robust demo was made available free via Xbox live and I dove into it for a couple of hours tonight.

This game redefines "freedom" in a sandbox game. Sure GTA gives you freedom, but it ultimately steers you in the direction of the story. Crackdown, on the other hand lets you do whatever the hell you want right from the get go. You start out at the agency headquarters where you can get a car and get used to the controls. After the boring stuff you are off in your police cruiser. You drive down a long tunnel Batman style and jump out at the end. You are now in the city [honestly, I don't even know what the city is called]. Immediately you are being shot at from all directions. Cops have a certain icon over their heads and gang members have a different icon. The object is to basically kill all of the gang members [it gets interesting with compounds and bosses]. Your character can take a LOT of damage, and you get a regenerating health/shield system, the exact system Halo created. This city in real life would not be livable because there are shootouts on literally every corner of the streets. There are even shootouts on a majority of the rooftops and alleys as well.


You will see a lot of Agency Police working next to you and to my surprise they actually do something. Unlike games like Resistance: Fall of Man where the AI doesn't do a damn thing but get you killed, these police take down quite a few gang members. But if you accidentally kill a pedestrian or cop, they will come after you, which can get annoying very quickly.

The best part of this game is the leveling system. Depending on how you kill gang members [beat downs, shooting, grenades, etc] effects how you level up. I went around kicking the crap out of everyone in melee hand to hand combat and my strength leveled up quickly. With increased strength you can pick up cars and other objects as well as send foes flying with a single kick. If you use explosives, your grenades and explosive devices create a larger and more spectacular explosion. If you run everyone over, your driving skill increases and agency cars morph into badass supercars depending on your level [car gets lower, tires get larger and you can also get machine guns added to the car]. Shooting everyone increases your accuracy and allows you to target victims a lot quicker and easier. [while locked on to a target you can pick if you want to shoot them in the head, chest, arms or legs]. The last attribute which you can level up is agility, this effects your speed and jumping height. To me this is the most fun. There are agility orbs located on most of the rooftops and hard to get to places. After collecting a few you will level up and by the time you reach full capacity you can jump 35+ feet in a single bound. It is very satisfying jumping from building to building and treating the city like a gigantic obstacle course.

The story is weak and the way they tell it makes me skip all of the short cutscenes but I still love the fact that you can level up and you really do feel like the ultimate badass playing this game. Look for a full review when the game drops February 9th.