Crackdown: Initial Impressions

Crackdown is good fun. I have been playing the demo on and off for the last month and have enjoyed the hour or so that you got with the game. I had been looking forward to the game's official release today as most of my other Xbox 360 games I had pretty much finished. Open world or sandbox games just offer something in their freedom which I find compelling.

The world of Crackdown is not as big as I initially thought it would be. I don't believe the map is as large as Saints Row and is definitely not as large as GTA: San Andreas, but the game is silky smooth with a phenomenal draw distance. After reading a couple of previews for the game I decided to crank the difficulty up to the highest and see how the game panned out. After you get in to the game you will find that it doesn't take long to finish the first gang off. Not only does this mean that you are a third of the way through the game, but it also means there is nothing for you to do in that part of the city besides collecting orbs and racing. There are no baddies left there for you to kill. This is a bit frustrating as all of a sudden a large part of the map is rendered relatively useless. However, jumping from rooftop to rooftop is excellent. The concept of Crackdown is well conceived even if the actual gameplay is a little short.

You will find that the skill progression or development actually does require a fair bit of gameplay. The demo didn't really do this part of the game justice with its accelerated levelling. The driving skill is the area which I have developed the least and don't really have much of an interest in pushing my character. It is not as much fun to run someone over as it is to pick up a car and squash them with it. Or, jump high in to the air and target an enemy with your grenade launcher and destroy them before you land on the ground.

At this point in time though the game seems a little shallow. Surely, that can't be all there is to the game. 100 bucks for six or seven hours of entertainment seems a little bit stiff to me. Why couldn't they have made the mission structure a bit better. A bit deeper. A little bit more involved than what it is. At the moment I have this awesome environment with a character who is like a superhero with absolutely nothing to do besides destroy three gangs. The funny thing is that if I am skillfull enough I can just go to the kingpin of each gang and kill them first up without doing any of the "sub" missions. How can the developers have thought for an instant that the short gameplay of the main missions would satisfy anyone. Especially when you consider how involved the story line is in GTA San Andreas. Crackdown is nothing more than a pimple on the face of GTA San Andreas when comparing the story of the two games.

The easiest way to give you an idea of what the game is like would be to compare Crackdown (which I have probably played for a good four hours or so) with Saint's Row. Saint's Row has a whole lot more to do in the game. With it's three main gangs to overcome in the story part of the game as well as all of the activities as well and a larger area to explore. Crackdown has the three gangs to take down plus some driving and agility activities as well as orbs to collect. The graphics in Crackdown are excellent, but they are also very good with Saint's Row. They are almost comparable. There have been times that I have been playing Crackdown and been locked on to a target gang member. I'll move in to melee their arse and they just disappear. As though they were never there in the first place. If you are a power gamer you are going to get through Crackdown a whole lot quicker than Saints Row (which I have played for more than 20 hours and still haven't finished all of the main missions). Also, I bought Saint's Row second hand from EB (still a rip off) but a lot more entertainment for my buck when comparing it to Crackdown.

Having said all of this the game is still great fun. Hopefully they will utilize Xbox Live and provide some more content for the game otherwise it won't have much of a life beyond its opening weekend.