Crackdown
For Xbox 360.
Verdict: Throws sand in face of other boxes.
Rating: 4/5
Like the bold black outlines of its comic book aesthetics, Crackdown is a confident title with scant regard for plot or character development. Ditching gaming’s b-movie level of narratives, Crackdown simply offers you the premise of blowing stuff up, a lot.
As a genetically enhanced super cop you’re asked to rid a vast city of its organised crime by what ever means necessary. Using your super powered strength and agility you can leap great heights, clime vast skyscrapers, throw cars around like they’re toys and raise a middle finger to the laws of gravity and gang culture.
Beyond obliterating gangs and such distractions as car and roof top races, Crackdown uses achievements to milk it’s explosive play set. Encouraging playful experimentation and exploration it invites the careful orchestration of chained explosions, improbable vehicle stunts and parquor style street running.
Like Will o’ the wisps, agility orbs are enticingly scattered across the city’s roof tops and encourage obsessive/compulsive exploration of its vast skyline in return for the immediately satisfying increase in jumping prowess.
Introducing this unexpected platforming element and offering the kind of action that gaming has promised for years, Crackdown is free from the binds of gravity and real world physics and successfully entices you to vault around its massive comic book city with great abandon and a voracious ability for destruction like no other medium can offer.
Controls are a thankful move forward for the sandbox genre but Crackdown is mired by its ridiculous AI and the missed opportunities its sequel will undoubtedly deliver. Online co-op play redeems any issues though because having a super friend in the city can only mean twice as much fun.
With video games taking baby steps in striving to deliver emotive and artistically relevant work it’s refreshing to play a game that doesn’t think it’s bigger than its boots. Crackdown is a playground that relies on the imaginative use of explosives and the sheer pleasure of defying reality - sometimes you just need escape from the real world, not a deeper understanding of it.