Crackdown (video game)

Crackdown
Developer(s)	Realtime Worlds
Publisher(s)	Microsoft Game Studios
Designer(s)	David Jones
Engine	RenderWare Physics - Havok AI -
Platform(s)	Xbox 360
Release	February 20, 2007 February 22, 2007 February 22, 2007 February 23, 2007
Genre(s)	Action adventure/Third Person Shooter
Mode(s)	Single player, Co-op

Crackdown (titled as Riot Act in Japan) is a free-form urban action video game released on February 20, 2007 for the Xbox 360 console. Developed by Realtime Worlds, and published by Microsoft, Crackdown was created by David Jones, who also created the original Grand Theft Auto and Lemmings.

Crackdown features sandbox-style gameplay similar to that in the Grand Theft Auto series, featuring co-op play in the same open environment as in the single-player mode. For example, one can start a race across the rooftops with a friend in cooperative mode. Co-op play can be played online and allows for entrance and exits by friends or other Xbox Live members. Depending on a player's settings, one can receive join requests from only friends or from everyone online.

Crackdown was released on February 20, 2007 in North America, on February 22 2007 in Japan and Australia, and on February 23 2007 in Europe. Anyone who purchases Crackdown in any shipment made before June 10th (end of Halo 3 beta) received an automatic entry into the Halo 3 beta. However, the game will not be sold in Germany due to the USK's decision to not rate the game.

Realtime Worlds have confirmed that Crackdown was designed from the outset to be a long running series of games much like Grand Theft Auto. Sequels for the game are very likely to be produced, especially if Crackdown performs well commercially.

Premise

In Crackdown, players take the role of an Agent, a superhuman Police Officer with a range of superhuman capabilities, developed by a syndicate of law enforcement organizations known only as the Agency. The Agent's mission is to destroy the 3 organized crime syndicates that control the futuristic metropolis of Pacific City; the Central American Los Muertos, Eastern European Volk, and East Asian Shai-Gen.

Plot

The game follows the primary character (known only as "The Agent") as he systematically brings down the three organized gangs controlling Pacific City, a near-future city laid out across four islands with several districts and areas within it. The Agency, which the player works for, has taken it upon themselves to restore order in the city, assisting the overstressed Peacekeepers who act as police within the city. The Agents from the Agency are superhuman beings, capable of gaining and improving powers such as super-strength and agility, and skill with handling vehicles, weapons, and explosives. The player's Agent is informed of trouble in the city and their process in game through "The Voice of the Agency" that is able to oversee all of the Agent's actions within the game.

Pacific City has been taken over by three factions (the aforementioned Los Muertos, Volk and Shai-Gen). Each faction has a kingpin who controls it with the support of several bosses who help maintain the faction by bringing in weapons or recruiting people. At the start of the game, these factions have taken over all of the Agency's safe houses throughout the city, leaving the Agency to work from the Agency Tower, located at the center of Pacific City. Through information gained through exploration and from the Agency, the player's Agent learns of these safe houses and the locations of the factions' gangs and kingpins, and systematically reclaims the Agency's safe houses and takes down the criminal element. At the same time, the Agent must protect the general populace, and violence against either the population or the Peacekeepers is not tolerated, earning the vengeance of the Peacekeepers themselves.

Once the Agent has successfully defeated the kingpin of all three gangs, it is revealed in a cut-scene that the primary goal of The Agency was not, in fact, to restore law and order to Pacific City, but to control it themselves, as stated by the "Voice of the Agency":

"Who do you think supplied Los Muertos? Who do you think turned a blind eye to the Volk's activities? Who do you think was Shai Gen's biggest supporter? Who do you think ran organized law... And ran it into the ground? The people had to experience first hand absolute anarchy before they would accept unconditional control. You are the portent of a new world order, Agent. Pacific City was only the beginning."

While this is said, security camera footage is shown of the Agency supplying weapons to the Los Muertos, a Volk Scud launcher driving through the Keep, and aiding Shai-Gen. It was the Agency's plan all along to create utter chaos in which the Agency would be requested to help bring down the gangs and earn the silent, unrelenting obedience of the populace. The final voice over suggests that the Agency plans to replicate this same approach in other cities as well.

Gameplay

The game is set in a large sandbox environment, akin to the video game, Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction. The player must either take out the Kingpin of the dominant gang, or take out the bosses that perform specific tasks for the gang under the Kingpin to weaken the gang's production or the forces immediately protecting the Kingpin, thus making it easier to defeat the Kingpin and increasing the odds of successfully assassinating the Kingpin. It is the player's choice to kill the bosses, or skip them entirely to defeat the Kingpin. This said, the gangs cannot be entirely destroyed unless the player tracks down and kills all the Generals and the Kingpin.

The player(who is chosen at the beginning of the game.) is required to explore the city to locate the hideouts for each boss and Kingpin, which can be made easier by freeing supply points scattered around the city. Once a supply point is unlocked, the player can return there to travel to any other supply point, restock on weapons and ammo, or drop off newly acquired weapons to have them permanently added to the player's weapon selection. If the player should die, they can select any open supply point for respawning. While exploring, the player is likely to come across enemy resistance, with the aggressiveness based on how much damage the player has done to that gang recently, similar to the 6 star system for police used in Grand Theft Auto. If the player is too aggressive against the non-gang residents of Pacific City, they can also raise the alert level of the local law enforcement in the same manner.

Much like other sandbox styled games, the player mainly use guns and explosives to fight the opposing forces, as well as vehicles to get around the city's landscape. Unique to Crackdown is a series of character based skills that can be upgraded to increase specific traits that can be used in combat, driving, or on foot agility. Crackdown's skills make few concessions to realism: player abilities are similar to those of comic book superheroes or cartoon characters. This concept is further highlighted by the comic book-like technique used in the game's graphics. These skills are increased by gaining experience orbs. Experience orbs are released from defeated enemies, with the type appearing being primarily based on how the player dispatched the foe. Stronger enemies release more experience orbs. In addition, agility orbs are scattered about the rooftops of Pacific City. There are also hidden orbs that enhance all player abilities. The player can also compete in "rooftop races" or car races to gain agility and driving skill orbs, respectively. Each skill has five levels (from 0 to 4 stars), with a numeric gauge on the display to indicate how close the player is to the next level. If the player should die, or injure civilians or the local authorities, they will lose a small amount of their experience in the progression to the next level.

Crackdown features an on-line two-player cooperative play mode only, that allows drop-in play. Both players may explore the city freely, with the other player's position noted in the HUD map. Players can fight along side each other, and also inflict friendly-fire damage. The state of the city is determined by the host player's progress (including which bosses and kingpins remain). Both players are credited with the defeat of a boss or kingpin in the game (which will affect the state of the guest's progress), but are required to obtain supply points and gain experience of their own accord. Co-op players can race against each other in both rooftop and road races, if both should choose to participate.

Skills

Agility

Of the five skills this is the only one that isn't specifically obtained by killing enemies. It is increased mainly by finding some of the agility orbs placed around the map in the game. Agility can also be attained by killing enemies from buildings from great heights (by landing on them, sniping them, etc.), and completing rooftop races in less than the target time. This skill is also notable for being one of the few skills to change the character's physical appearance, in this case changing the avatar's armor appearance. Increasing this skill's level greatly increases the running speed and jumping height for the player. The first upgrade will allow the user to jump 15 ft into the air. The second upgrade will allow you to jump 20 feet. The third upgrade will allow you to jump 25 ft. The last upgrade gives you running speed that is slightly faster than A.I. controlled cars and the maximum jumping height is around 30 feet.

Driving

This skill increases the player's control over all of the vehicles in the game. Driving skill is increased by running down gang members in a vehicle, completing vehicle races in under the target time, and performing stunts. In the later levels it can also allow for limited control over a vehicle while it's in the air, by making it roll or do vertical flips. One of the notable focuses in this skill is the character's influence on three select agency cars, which change the vehicle in both terms of cosmetic appearance and power. These changes become drastic at the fourth level where each of the cars gains a unique trait, such as car mounted machine guns, the ability to jump, climb up walls and a large nitro boost that destroys most oncoming cars on contact. These abilities can only be obtained by choosing an agency vehicle. The supercar features the mounted machine guns, the SUV features a hydraulic action that allows you to jump and climb up walls, and the truck cab allows the driver to gain an extra nitro boost through traffic.

Explosives

Training this skill increases the impact radius of all explosives in the game (grenades and rocket/grenade launchers), starting from small explosions to large (15 foot radius) blasts. Along with the larger impact radius comes increased force, and damage inflicted by the explosions.

Strength

Like the agility skill, increasing your strength skill also changes the character's appearance. The character's muscle mass and height increases drastically, and their face/headgear changes as this skill is trained. Increasing this skill changes how much a character can lift and how far a specific object can be thrown. In the later levels of this skill it is possible to kill an enemy with one kick (depending on difficulty level), kick a car several dozen feet through the air and lift a weight of over 10 tons. Another noteworthy advantage of training the strength skill is the increase of health - with each level gained, another level of health is obtained, adding four extra health bars at level four for a total of five full health bars.

Firearms

The firearms skill focuses on damage given by all non-explosive firearms. It also aids in precise targeting speed, decreasing the time needed to completely target an enemy. With specific guns this skill can increase the ability to see and shoot enemies from longer lengths from a first-person perspective.

Playable demo

A demo was released via Xbox Live Marketplace on January 23 2007. It was originally dated for January 18 2007, however it was delayed due to Microsoft's certification process. This demo includes both single player and co-op play. Silver account members received the demo one week later.

The demo lasts for, at most, 1 hour, with a timer starting when either the player trains a skill to the second level, has eliminated two of the gang bosses, or has been playing for a half hour. At that point a 30 minute timer will start. All of the in game skills can be trained up to the highest level at an accelerated rate. Four bosses of Los Muertos are possible to take down, but are not required to fight through the length of the demo. The demo allows for online co-op playing, but does not allow for jump-in co-op like in Gears of War.

The Crackdown demo quickly broke download records for Microsoft's Xbox Live Marketplace by becoming the most downloaded demo over a 24 hour period and a seven day (week-long) period. In the week after its release, the Crackdown demo was the second most played Xbox Live game after Gears of War. The demo went on to become the most downloaded and most played overall. [1]

Halo 3 Beta

Every pre-ordered and specially marked copy of Crackdown included an invitation to beta test the highly-anticipated Microsoft game Halo 3. The Crackdown game disc was required to download and launch the Halo 3 beta through the in-game menus.. On April 10, 2007, Bungie announced that the beta would become available for download for those that own this copy of Crackdown on May 16, 2007. This beta was playable for three weeks from this date.

Reception

In addition to breaking download records on Xbox Live Marketplace, Crackdown received positive reviews from such media outlets as Official Xbox Magazine U.K., Electronic Gaming Monthly, IGN, TeamXbox GamePro, and Famitsu.

Review scores:

• Eurogamer 9.0/10
• TeamXbox 9.0/10
• TalkXbox 82%
• GameTrailers 7.5/10
• Famitsu 34/40 (Reviewed as Riot Act)
• GameSpot 7.8/10
• IGN 8.0/10
• GamePro 4.5/5
• Edge 8/10
• Official Xbox Magazine UK 9/10
• Official Xbox Magazine Australia 9/10
• Official Xbox Magazine 7.0/10
• Electronic Gaming Monthly 8.3/10 (3 reviewers)
• Game Informer 8.5/10
• X-Play 5/5

The average score is 83% on Metacritic based on 74 reviews.

Commercially, as of February 12, 2007, Crackdown ranked 8th on Amazon.com's video game products sales chart, while at Play-Asia.com's Xbox 360 product sales chart, it was ranked at number 4. Crackdown was listed as a bestseller among online stores, including EBGames.com and GameStop.com.

Criticism

Some commentators have expressed dismay at the moral underpinnings of the game. One magazine review summarizes Crackdown as a game where "your objective is to murder as many illegal immigrants as possible."

Downloadable content

On February 19, 2007 a free downloadable pack was made available for the game. The pack includes four new male agents to play as in the game, three of whom have unique, upgradable headgear.

A title update was released on May 11, 2007 which allows the player to reset gangs, makes it easier to find orbs, improves stunt ring visibility, enhances targeting and camera angles when driving amongst some other minor fixes and updates. This update also includes a new ground strike attack.

In addition to the free title update there were two packs of downloadable content released, one free and one premium. Seven new achievements are included with these downloads totaling an extra 350 Gamerscore points. Some of these achievements are only able to be unlocked if the player has the Premium Pack.

The recent title update and downloadable content has been linked to a glitch which has reset a number of players saved games when they play co-op. A statement was made on the official Xbox forums which apologised for the glitch and promised to release a fix soon. However, saved games already lost to the glitch are not recoverable. On May 16, 2007, a title update was released, resolving the issue.

Free-For-All Pack

• Keys to the City - Players will be able to spawn ramp trucks, vehicles, and explosive barrels at any time. Characters skill level can be changed and infinite ammunition can be activated as well as god mode, changing and freezing the time of day, super agility and strength, and unlocking all supply points. (Achievements and leaderboards are disabled when in this mode).
• Vehicle Impounding - Players can now commandeer certain vehicles and store them in the Agency garage, along with being able to change their primary color.
• Co-op Trophy sequences
• Psychotic Mission Trials

Gettin' Busy Bonus Pack

The Gettin' Busy bonus pack costs 800 Microsoft Points ($10 USD) and includes:

• Three new vehicles: Peacekeeper Buggy, Peacekeeper Race Car, Peacekeeper Armored Vehicle
• Four new game types: Max-Agility Rooftop Races, Stockpile, Checkpoint Chase, Rocket Tag
• Five new pieces of equipment: MSK Lobber, EX1 “Proximity Charge”, HRX “Harpoon”, MZ360 “Mini-Gun”, VS1 “Cloaking Device”
• Street racing: six road races that can be raced against 11 other opponents (including one player over Xbox Live)

Soundtrack

See: Crackdown Soundtrack.

External links

• Official website
• Official forum
• Hidden Orb Locations Map
• Crackdown at Curlie
• Crackdown at BNW
• Gamepage at Eurogamer
• Unofficial Wiki