Three Reasons I Hate Crackdown: My Crackdown Review

• I got a hernia trying to move a car that was blocking my driveway
• I got fired for putting a hole my office roof while checking for agility orbs
• According to my lawyer “Skills for Kills” does not have any legal precedence

Who am I kidding, none of those are real and I love Crackdown. Not a lot of games properly pull off the feeling of being free to do whatever I want. A lot of games tell you that you can do whatever you want, but then the map only gives you a couple places you can go. In Crackdown you can literally run/drive wherever you want as soon as the game starts. You may not live very long because you’re abilities have not been leveled up, but you can still go anywhere you want.

The size of the city is pretty big when you’re driving around, but it gets even bigger once you realize you can climb any building. The vertical size of this city makes it huge. According to LiveEye I’ve played Crackdown for over 7 hours, and I’ve only scratched the surface of one little corner of the city.

I know some people are not fond of the graphical and musical style of the game, but I really enjoy them both. The game is set in the near future so the soundtrack is not the normal Top 100 sample pack. It is all fresh stuff. The graphics are an arcadey cartoon style which I think works well.

The gameplay is simple but addictive. There is always one more enemy, one more agility orb, or one more race to do. It is nice to be able to run around the city and do whatever I want. It makes it easy to sit down and play for 30 minutes on my lunch break or for hours on end late into the night. I don’t need to make it to the end of a level to save. I can play as much or as little as I want, save my progress, and then pick up where I left off next tine. Another addicting aspect is the balance between the weapons and hand-to-hand attacks. It is fun to walk up and kick a guy half way down the block and then pick up his car and throw it at him. But, it is just as much fun the stand 10 stories above him on the top of a building and shoot at him. There is no limit to the number of ways you can take out the enemy gang members so each one is a chance to try something new.

Even though I really enjoy this game there are a couple things that are annoying from time to time. First is the targeting system. When you pull the left trigger it locks on to an enemy. Instead of locking on to the closest enemy that is in the general area I’m aiming it instead locks on to whatever enemy is in the center of of the targeting reticle no matter how far away they are. You get use it it after a while, but it can be frustrating when you’re surrounded by enemies and it locks on to someone a couple blocks away.

The other annoyance I have is that it is hard to tell what weapons are lying on the ground to be picked up. All of the weapons have a blue circle around them indicating you can pick them up, which is nice, but unless you know the name of the weapon it is really difficult to tell what you’re getting until after you pick it up.

Even with these annoyances the game is great. I’m not sure how much lasting appear it will have a few months from now once I’ve beat the game and found all the orbs, but right now it is a lot of fun. I’m giving it a definite 2 thumbs up.