neyo

Despite picking this game up on launch, my attention was very much distracted by Viva Pinata, a game i’ve always meant to play properly, but never have. All over the weekend, my friends list was OVER populated with people working their way through some neatly arranged achievements, battling it out both in solo and co-operative modes. I have to say, for me personally, I bought crackdown because I was ‘curious’ and most of my buddies were definitely picking it up. The apparent lack of excitement for the title, is evident from the fact I didn’t actually play it til late Sunday evening, for a meagre 10 minutes or so. Today, I gave it a proper blast (no pun intended), with my buddy Matt, and i was pleasantly surprised. The co-op nature of the game, is both exciting and confusing and here’s why:

- On one hand, you join the game of the host, and both characters are able to level up their character, as they would in single player.

- On the flipside, despite helping your buddy to defeat gangs, you aren’t actually awarded the success, in your ‘own’ game. Sounds confusing? Well, to make it simple; host if you want to complete the game, and join a game, if you fancy more of a muck about.

One immediate annoyance is the way your buddies join or leave the game; both retire you to the main menu to either connect or disconnect you to your buddy. There’s no Gears Of War-esque, hop-in, hop-out system here, which appears harsh.

Despite the niggles I’ve picked up initially i’m really quite impressed, one thing that struck me, was the draw distance, which allows you to really see as far as the eye can see. Couple this, with a city which actually does feel more like it’s alive, than previous sandbox games like GTA & and Saint’s Row and it’s a pleasurable experience for sure; I can’t imagine single player is half the fun, however.

Some people have questions it’s longevity, and I see this, but I think the game’s designers really set out to offer you a environment to play in, rather than a hard-line story to work through and fellow reviewers may have picked up on the lack of a backbone to the game. You can choose to work your way through ‘cleaning up the city’, but really speaking we had more fun doing crazy jumps in co-op, or making massive explosions from cars we’d previously stacked up.

We had a good 30mins fun, driving down the freeway in a lorry, with ramps attached, whilst my buddy came steaming up, only to go flying overhead whilst trying to make a stunt hoop! Great fun! Another example, would be the achievements for climbing the agency tower, and subsequently jumping off, and trying to land in a small pool of water far-far below. I finally managed this, after falling from dizzy heights many times over, a really good use of achievements, though.

That segways nicely onto the first line of this blog post; never have I actually felt a feeling of height or depth from these games, like I have in Crackdown. Like my buddy, i’m not actually overkeen when it comes to ‘heights’ and the feeling of height was clear for us both to see/feel. It actually made me feel all the more worried about falling, and upon falling, it really had maybe feel ‘something’ during freefall. Very odd. I remember writing a brief preview for the title, for an e3 piece which never actually went to public reading, it seems as though much of Daves Jones vision for crackdown came to fruition with the final version.

Given that this almost feels like a review, rather than your usual blog rant, I feel I ought to score the game, and in doing so, i’d be happy to say it’s a solid…

8/10.

You’ll love it, if you have friends who do too, else you might get a little bored, once you’ve defeated the game’s 21 gang bosses.