Random Retro Review: Crackdown

[IamLEAM1983]

So Microsoft's finally decided to take its stick out of its ass and offered up something approaching the PlayStation Plus membership to all Gold subscribers. Being one such participant, I get to nab meself one free game per month, starting with this month's Crackdown. As a game produced by the now defunct Realtime Worlds – itself a product of Grand Theft Auto's father David Jones – Crackdown is largely remembered for being the one disc you had to nab in order to get yourself a code to Halo 3's open beta. Is it any good?

Well – let's just say that PROTOTYPE and inFAMOUS both are much more memorable than what we've got here. Does it mean the game is bad? No, far from it. It's just – there. It's a set of mechanics dressed with halfway-decent textures, but there's no real impetus to it all. Crackdown assumes you're okay with blowing shit up for the sake of blowing shit up, and that being involved in a collect-a-thon that sees you leap across the map like a rabid monkey is your idea of fun. The hooks are slight and very quickly glossed over, and the drive to keep going doesn't exist beyond wanting to see your character's statistics increase. You've killed the last boss? You're done. No recap, no satisfying epilogue – you're done.

How unsurprising, considering that David Jones is the father of GTA's pre-Rockstar incarnations. These also had no story, no precise goals; nothing other than three factions and a big map to wreck havoc in.

The setup, as meagre as it is, goes as follows : it's The Future, and Pacific City is your typical City of Adventure-slash-nonspecific open-world sandbox metropolis. This is where you'll walk your beat, and PC is plagued by some of the worst gangs imaginable – all of them stereotypes from your average Gangster Culture stories. You've got your Spanglish-shouting vatos, your Russlish-bellowing Eastern Bloc motherfuckers and the requisite Triad-ish gang that's helmed by – facepalms ready – the “elusive Wang”.

Get it? Because “wang” is slang for – yeah. Immature, ain't it? Crackdown don't give a fuck about maturity but it doesn't even have the class to go all-out bonkers like the upcoming Saints Row IV. In any case, as the game's title suggests, it's time to crack down on these fools with some serious posthuman genetic engineering shit. See, you've been tampered with thanks to the genius of some nondescript and totally not evil Russian scientist, whose work has been co-opted by the transnational peacekeeping force known as the Agency. Crime being at an all-time high despite the game not being terribly keen on showing you scenes of chaos, you're required to dish out generous helpings of street justice. Pacific City is divided into three islands, one for each gang, and each of them had Agency outposts you'll have to retake.

So how does it play out? Surprisingly – a lot like the Fable series. Shoot your guns and you'll raise your proficiency with firearms, unlocking various degrees of precision aiming that eventually veer into ridiculous efficiency. Curb-stomp enough mofos and you'll eventually get jacked up to the extent of being able to hurl semis and buses at Uzi-toting idiots. Jump around town and find enough Agility Orbs and you'll eventually find yourself abandoning Pacific City's streets and bounding over neighbourhoods like an overly muscled eagle armed with a rocket launcher. Crush enough baddies under your wheels and you'll become a master stunt driver. Everything you do contributes to the progression of at least one or two skills, so it's hard to not get the sense that you're progressively turning into a superhuman badass, after starting out as a can-do type with disappointingly normal-looking arms and legs.

When you're not doing that, you're taking down each gang's power structure one head at a time. When you're not doing either of these things, odds are you're racing across rooftops to get an Agility Orb timed bonus. If that still doesn't apply, then you're probably racing by car.

I'm grasping at straws, honestly. Defeat the lass of the mob bosses and that's it. That's all there is to it. No sense that you've saved Pacific City from the oft-mentioned but seldom-seen moral degradation, no comment on how superhuman or perhaps inhuman you've become, no sense of character progression on a deeper level. Absolutely nothing. Where does that leave us, then? Looking at Crackdown, it's hard not to see it as an example of the slights of game design mechanics of yesteryear. You've got a minimap but no GPS; you can bound across a fictitious metropolis but there's none of Assassin's Creed or even PROTOTYPE's offered flexibility and fluidity to be found. Your agent is stiff and floaty all at once, and jumps you'll want to precisely control – even at low levels – often end with you flailing on a downwards path a few meters short of where you wanted to latch onto. You might bitch about Alex Mercer being a shitty protagonist (and you'd be right) just as you could moan about Cole McGrath's circle of friends being fairly meh - inFAMOUS having lost some of its lustre to me once I realized Zeke Dunbar wasn't going anywhere – but the fact remains that none of these characters feel as devoid of sense or purpose as your own player-controlled Agent.

You're essentially yanked about by the infuriating and woefully chatty presence of your commanding officer, who never, ever shuts up. Yes, sir; I can see there's enemies shooting at me. Yes, sir. I can see there's a supply depot up ahead. Yes, sir, I know there's a goddamned race track here, but I don't give a crap about your races because Realtime Worlds can't program decent 3D car handling to save their lives. Yes, sir, I know I'm almost dead. Yes, sir, I'm fucking finding fucking cover...

Jesus H. Christ. This guy seriously could go neck-and-neck against Navi, the annoyingly helpful sprite from a few Zelda titles. He'd probably yank the title of “Most Annoying Source of Assistance to the Player” and walk away with honors.

What else? Oh, right! The interface! It's shitty as fuck! Good luck trying to find anything on the patently useless minimap, and good luck trying to get your bearings without trying to find recognizable landmarks from a distance! Plus – why can't I play as a female Agent? What, the devs wouldn't want to look at butch broads?

A few years back, I'd have said Crackdown was a great contender for whiling hours away with a friend. The chaos you can unleash is fun and feels appropriately superhuman in scope – but it's not exactly new. If anything, co-op superhuman chaos is much more Saints Row : The Third's speed, and I speculate that the upcoming sequel will also offer more of that.

As is, I've had a free look at a relic from the XBOX 360's distant past, seeing as Crackdown was part of its launch line-up. It certainly fills the criteria, too; with a design philosophy that feels ripped straight out of the XBOX Prime's development manual and the kind of lean and hungry focus that doesn't so much suggest purpose or power as it does desperation or sheer lack of care. Are story-driven games so recent that we're taking them for granted and assuming they've always been there? Because this is RAGE-level design. It's “go here and kill stuff and shut up and like it” - and strictly nothing else.

I feel like I've guzzled down a melted Freeze Pop. The taste was weak, the colour was fake and there's something sticky and vaguely vile stuck to my fingers, now. Oh, and I've also got the Gamer Claw again. Fuck. Ow.

It's fun, it's good on an absolute base-line level – but it's empty. There's absolutely nothing there that other games haven't done better.