Microsoft have a knack of getting it right when it comes to gaming recently, you just need to look at the excellent Gears of War and the hype surrounding Halo 3 to realise this, however despite this it seems that they were still not satisfied and have therefore decided to make their new game, Crackdown benefit from this recent run of form by including a beta invitation to Halo 3 in special packs, however what people may not realise is that Microsoft are being very kind to us by including the beta with this game because Crackdown on it’s own is pretty fantastic and we are going to tell you why.
In the game you play the part of a recruit agent, who’s job it is to clear up Pacific City, the nations capital, which is being controlled by three violent gangs, to do this you have to eliminated the leaders of each, however as well as the three main leaders there are also another seven leaders for each gang who are responsible for various things like importing military equipment and training new recruits, all of these people are very heavily armed and guarded so as to put you off running straight in there and killing them when you have no experience.
Once you start the game your main objective is to find each gang leader so that you can start to think about eliminating them, when you get near to their location a dossier will come up on the screen informing you all about them and this also permanently adds them to your map meaning that if you get distracted you will be able to find them again. One of your other missions is to find the agency supply points, these are where you can load up on ammo and store new weapons that you find, once you have found more than one you are also able to move between them.
At first you may think to yourself that this game is another Grand Theft Auto clone, as it is quite similar when you are running though the streets shooting people or stealing their cars, however there are a lot of differences which at first you may not spot, for example when just walking the streets in GTA between missions, it isn’t very often that you are shot to the floor for no reason, but as previously advised, in Crackdown the gangs own the street and you are the Good Guy, so you will need to be careful because otherwise you may find that you have grenades coming at you from all directions.
The main difference I haven’t mentioned yet is the jumping, you see once you work your way up to the rooftops you will notice green orbs in various locations, most of these are on top of buildings and by collecting them you will increase your agility (usually the higher orbs offer greater reward), what this means is that you can jump, boy can you jump, by taking a run from one end of the building to the other and then pressing the correct button you will find yourself leaping from one rooftop to the other and the more orbs you get the further you will go, meaning that you wont find yourself flat on the street like you no doubt did on your first attempt.
The more you use a particular skill, the better your character’s ability at this will become and there are also hidden blue orbs darted about the city which help you improve your skills also, meaning you will run faster, become an explosives expert and in general kill more enemies and the more enemies you kills the more chance there will be of finding even better weapons such as my favourite, the rocket launcher.
During the game you will also notice purple and green markers, if you go through a purple one in a car this will begin a race, this will help you improve your driving skills as well as gaining various achievements, the green marker is similar except you do this one on foot to help improve your agility, these offer a welcome distraction from the main game.
One of the great features of this game has got to be the online co-op mode, what this means is that another person who has the game can join in with you or visa versa, this is a highly enjoyable experience and means that the enemies have two of you to contend with, you can even complete the game together which will earn you a special achievement and of course if desired you can even fight each other or race through the streets in your car jacked vehicles.
Unfortunately the developers have not included a two player split screen option, I personally feel that this would have been a great addition to the game, there are some other flaws also such as the camera which seems to have a habit of being a bit erratic and at one point my character got stuck in the scenery while swimming which lead to his demise.
Apart from the flaws, the graphics and sound fit in well, while they are by no means spectacular they do the job that is required of them and there are some nice effects such as all the gang members throwing abuse at you in a foreign language, it is also good to see that when a gang member fires at a police car they will immediately respond by putting on their sirens and taking evasive action.
There is no doubt that Crackdown is an excellent game on it’s own merit, including the Halo 3 beta is a nice way for Microsoft to sell a few extra copies but once people play this game they wont but it down, the Xbox Live Co-op mode is an excellent idea while jumping from rooftop to rooftop is a joy, TJ Hooker eat your heart out Crackdown’s here to stay.
