You all have been asking me for it and now the day has come! As you may remember, I was invited to the Crackdown Community Event a couple of Fridays ago. It was all about Crackdown and I was sworn to not tell a soul about what I saw. Well, Microsoft’s media embargo is officially over, so lets get right into it!
In Crackdown you’re some sort of super hero, genetically modified, police officer. Your mission is pretty simple: Eliminate all the bad guys in the city.  Three gangs ferociously run thrughout the enormous free roaming city: Los Muertos, the Volks and the Shai-Gen.  It is suppose to be a sandbox type of game that is best completed “in order”; however, the cool thing about Crackdown is that it breaks away from the typical liniar story line and you can take on the gangs of the city in any manner you see fit. With that said, I’ll suggest going in order due to the level of difficulty as you progress through the game. Los Muertos is by far the easiest to wipe out and Shai-Gen eaisly the hardest. Ironically, the gangs must follow some kind of “Gang Manual” because each gang consists of six generals and one kingpin. So, if you’re bold, you can go right after the king pins, but that is not the smart thing to do and I don’t recommend it.
Each general has a unique role in the gang, offering vital elements for the gangs prosper. For instance, one of the generals supplies better weapons for the gangs, another helps with recruitment. So, for example if you took out the recruitment general their numbers will suffer or if you take out the weapons general the weapons that they pose won’t be as good. So its a good idea to take care of the generals before you go after the kingpin. And thats it! That is the whole story to Crackdown: You kill gang members, you kill gang generals, you kill gang kingpins, you move on to the next gang.
There is some other fun stuff to add replay, like collecting agility orbs (500 total in the game) or mystery orbs (300 total) Good luck getting all of them. If you try, you will spend more time getting orbs then what it would take to beat the game. And that is not necesairilly a bad thing, because of how fun it is jumping around and moving throughout the city. Crackdown also has stunt jumps for driving, car races and agility races which all are kind of fun but the races are a little on the long side.
Leveling up, I have had a lot of people ask me about this and now I can tell you all about it. If you played the demo, its just like that but not as fast. Crackdown has seemed to find the perfect combo of not to fast and not to slow when it comes to leveling. There are really six levels in character progression in the game, you have no stars, 1-4 stars and then a “=” sign with your maxed out. With each level your powers increase, for example, for every star you get in agaility is that much higher you can jump, or for every star you get in explosives is that greater of an area your explosives cause damage or the great damage that is done. This is all pretty simple and self-explanatory.
Co-op play, another big thing about Crackdown. Microsoft is touting this game as a jump-in, jump-out type of thing, but its not so much, in my opinion. Yes, you have the ability to join a friend without an invite being sent, a big plus. All you would do is select “join a match” from the gamers profile, then that gamer would get a pop-up and would simply select “allow”. But this is where it’s a pain in the ass. If your friend allows you to join, the mission in progress will stop right then and there. So instead of jumping in and helping you complete the battle, you both jump BACK to the previous checkpoint. So if you are finally at the long awaited general/kingpin battle, you may have a tough choice to make. Either you decline the co-op entrant and defeat the boss all by yourself or accept and restart at the last spawn point. I guess this game helps you decide which of your friends you like more than others. In the end, it may not be a huge thing, as all you’re doing is respawning.  But if you didn’t know, it would really suck. So heads-up on that!
Along these same lines, when your co-op buddy jumps out, guess what happens? If you guess that the game would freeze for a bit and then respawn you at the last spawn point, then you are right! So that sucks majorly, especially if you two were fighting a boss and maybe accidently lost connection. And speaking of connections, I know that you all know what’s the worst thing in mulitplayer matches: L to the A to the G, lag. And much to my dismay, lag seems to be one thing that is a sure thing, in Crackdown. At least in my experience, I do not seem to have this issue in any other games really. But in Microsoft’s defense, they are promising a day one patch to fix this along with a couple other issues. So hopefully it will be more fun to play with your friends then.
And as far as progressing goes in mulitplayer, it’s pretty simple. If you’re the host, your story will progress even if you have a buddy playing with you or not. So if you and a friend take down a general, the kill will count only on the hosts game BUT not your buddies game. So the poor co-op player will have to beat that general at a later date. That part sucks because even if you kill the guy, you don’t get the credit unless you are the host.
Character progression is different in multiplayer though, different in a good way. You take all your abilities that you have earned with you all the time. And whatever you earn in a multiplayer game, you keep with you all the time as it adds to your overall character progression. So if you have 4 stars in driving in single player, you have all 4 stars in mulitplayer OR if you earn a star in multiplayer it goes with your single player character. So as far as character progression goes, you are not having to do everything twice, unlike defeating bosses.
Let me get into scores now.
Gameplay: 8 - tons of cool weapons, tons of cool things you can do with your powers, controls are simple and easy to learn as well
Graphics: 7 - cell shadings is cool and it can look awesome but its not the complete case here, nothing really make me say “wow, look that that!” but you do have to remember that Crackdown is rendering the whole city at the same time which is pretty friggin awesome, and it does show the power that the 360 does have.
Sound: 7 - Again, nothing really special, rockets go Boom, bad guys go Ahh! when you kill them, nothing special. There is a crap load of different music when your driving though, but none of it was really my type.
Value: 7 - Orb hunting is a lot of fun, co-op is fun, and this game provides a lot of things to do and play around with.
Replay: 8 - The ability with playing with friends will keep you coming back, especially when your just screwing around and working on creating huge explosions or just trying ot screw around. Another cool thing is that when you do beat the game you go back into with the option of crimes on and now there are so many bad guys everywhere its just fun its just fun to take them all out.
Overall: 7.5 - The game is fun but there is only so much killing bad guys you can do before you just wanna move on to the next game. This game really would have been worth $50 if that was its price but its not, its a $60 dollar game so that kind of hurt it to me.
Now let me say something about the elephant in the room, the Halo 3 Beta. This game could have and will sale without that paired with it. Crackdown does bring a lot to the table and it is a lot of fun so instead of thinking that your buying the Halo 3 beta and getting Crackdown for free, you need to change it to something like your paying $50 for Crackdown and getting a Halo 3 beta invite for $10, because that is really how it feels to me now that I got my hands on it. Crackdown was a big surprise for me, I was actually expecting a letdown and was shown a pleasant surprise.
Alright thats my review, I probably forgot a thing or two so if you have any questions feel free to ask them in the comment section and I will answer them for ya.
 
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 A Haster Chief Helmet
This Quote Via Joystiq.com Via Xbox 360 fanboy.com 
