Crackdown is a game like, well, many others. A third-person action-sandbox game from Microsoft and Real Time Worlds, Crackdown is set in the crime-ridden world of the near future, which has apparently been stricken with some kind of faux cel-shading effect, making everything look colorful and pretty. Most open-ended games of this genre tend be more structured than truly “open”, but Crackdown manages to do the exact opposite: provide an extremely open style of play while lacking just about any story or mission structure whatsoever. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, of course.

Crackdown puts the player in the role of the Agent, a genetically augmented operative of “The Agency”, which has somehow become the only organization left on the planet capable of fighting crime effectively. Situated in a massive tower called The Keep on a central island between three larger land masses, the Agency attempts to clean up the three largest criminal syndicates plaguing the surrounding Pacific City. The player is given a brief summary of the situation and is told they need to go out and kill a bunch of people to make the streets safe for the law abiding once more. That’s the story, right there. I’m not even joking. It all basically breaks down to “You’re this dude, this city is filthy with crime, go kill these dudes and clean up”, and then turns you lose to go about your business as you see fit. While this sounds like a pathetic lack of the detail, the game doesn’t even attempt to tell a story to begin with, so it’s really not a flaw. The game doesn’t even feature missions as we’re used to them, and presents the tasks the player needs to complete to eventually bring down each syndicate as completely optional. Sure, you can directly attack each syndicate’s boss head-on if you want, but killing their subordinates first will make the job much less of a pain in the ass. Crackdown is, if anything, a true sandbox game, meant to give the player as much freedom as possible while providing a few goals to further the development of the player character’s skills.

The Agent has several core skills that upgrade as the player does certain things, like killing enemies with hand-to-hand combat, blowing stuff up, shooting people, etc. As the player performs these actions, they’ll collect what basically amount to experience points, eventually allowing the skills to be significantly upgraded beyond their initial levels. While the Agent is stronger, faster, and a better jumper than a normal human to begin with, at their peak these skills allow the player to lift and throw vehicles the size of a bus, run as fast as some cars, and jump from rooftop to rooftop in thirty foot leaps. The jumping factor, as well as the ability to scale buildings in a slightly parkour fashion, give Crackdown a surprising feeling of verticality, generally uncommon to these types of games.

Crackdown sounds pretty much like you’d expect a game with tons of explosions, gunfire, and pedestrians to sound, so there’s not much there that stands out. There’s no story whatsoever, so the only dialogue and voice acting the player encounters is through NPCs as the player is running through, around, and over them. The game’s narrator, however, is an incredibly annoying aspect of the game. While the voice work is exemplary, the narrator constantly repeats the same messages throughout the game, and it’s rather grating to be forced to listen to tutorial advice after you’ve played the game for thirty hours. Aside from that, the narrator will occasionally deliver messages about things you’ve done several minutes after you’ve actually done them, which really makes no sense. These are the game’s greatest technical flaws, and they’re compounded by not being able to turn the narrator’s voice off in any way.

Crackdown is a game a lot of people purchased when it launched due to the inclusion of the Halo 3 beta, but fortunately for me, I didn’t have a 360 at the time of release. Lets be clear that this is not a game I would have dropped sixty dollars on by far, but for what I did pay, a paltry fifteen bucks, it’s a steal. If you’ve yet to play this unique sandbox title, and can find it on the cheap, it’s definitely worth your attention.