johng Blog

Crackdown is about doing whatever the hell you want whenever the hell you want to. It doesn’t have the traditional story line based missions of most games, just the overall goal of wiping out every gang leader in the city at some point. This doesn’t sound like much but it ceases to matter when you start hoping about from roof top to roof top gunning down crooks and stealing agility orbs. There is plenty to do here be it races through the city or powering up your character that will draw you back even without a plot.

This all leads to the fundamental core of the game.

Achievements.

Most titles use achievements to reward the player for general progression or doing a certain thing. Many are merely side effects and the rest are usually obscure ones that only achievement junkies go after. Crackdown is the first game to revolve around achievements. Because there is no plot, no story and no character development the focus is instead on doing the craziest things possible just in order to see that glorious ‘Achievement Unlocked’ message.

Aside from Gears this is the best use of achievements yet. They are all realistically reachable yet challenging but most importantly of all they are fun. No more sitting through hundreds of hours of Rainbow Six Vegas’ Calypso Casino just to get a few hundred points.

This is the way points should be done - as a non frustrating way of drawing the player back into the game and allowing them to explore new areas and do things they otherwise wouldn’t have seen or done.

While collecting these points the polish in the graphics and sound design is very pleasing. There is no noticeable pop up while bombing around and whenever you scale tall buildings you can see the entire city in all its glory. I would have preferred more players in co-op and maybe a split screen option but any co-op at all right now is good stuff in my book.

Only 90 points to go! Make that 190 when the new achievements are released.