courtesy of teamxbox
The gaming industry has been forever changed since the release of Grand Theft Auto and even though we are sick of using it as a comparison point, the fact remains that there have been loads of imitators hoping to capitalize on the franchise’s overwhelming success and notoriety. While a majority of these knock-offs have come and gone without nearly as much fanfare, there is one title on the way that demands attention and it’s not just because it’s being developed by the designer of the GTA series. David Jones and his hand-picked crew at Real Time Worlds is currently working on their latest open-ended action/driver Crackdown, and they are hoping that their efforts will once again set a new standard for the genre. Prior to this week’s X06 event in Barcelona, we managed to get a sneak peek of Crackdown while visiting Microsoft’s Redmond campus. We sat down with the game’s product manager Craig Evans to bring you our updated hands-on impressions of this highly ambitious Xbox 360 exclusive.
GT-Who?
While Real Time Worlds hasn’t forgotten its roots, the creators of Crackdown are determined to break the mold and go much further beyond the limitations of the past generation in order to serve players up a hot dish of open world goodness. We’ve all played plenty of so-called free-form games that allow players to roam a city’s streets in a somewhat non-linear fashion. Crackdown is designed to take that into an entirely new level by offering an unparalleled level of exploration. By allowing players to exploit practically ever possible reachable area of the map, Crackdown enables one to explore the full width, depth and height of the city. This means in addition to running throughout the surface level players will also be able to scale the heights of the buildings as long as they are physically able to do so as their character’s attributes increase throughout the game. It’s somewhat like the way we were able to explore New York City in the Spider Man titles, but with a lot more detail and a lot more depth thanks to the Xbox 360 hardware. And while you won’t be taking on the role of a super-hero, your character will posses a good deal of above average abilities thanks to the benefits of the game’s futuristic technology.
Crackdown takes place within Pacific City, a sprawling metropolis that is made up of a three islands that have been overrun by crime thanks to the growing number of thugs who have risen into power. To be exact, there are 21 such crime lords who control various areas of Pacific City and the game is essentially a non-linear compiling of 21 missions that involve the elimination of each of these bosses. The interesting point to make here is that the game does not progress in a way that some missions are available at the start of the game and others unlock as a player completes certain goals. Rather, all 21 missions will be available from the onset of the game, allowing players complete freedom to pursue tasks as they see fit. However, there is certainly a level of scalability to these missions in that some will require players to build up their attributes before they have a reasonable chance of success over others. For example, if you plan on strolling into the most notorious crime-lord’s fortified mansion at the beginning of the game, you’ll quickly find yourself outnumbered, outgunned and simply out. Of course you are still free to give it a shot if you manage to reach such a location, but the odds of completing the game’s more difficult challenges early on are greatly stacked against you.
Since none of the game’s missions are locked from the start, this obviously means that the entire map of Pacific City is available as well. Crackdown encourages players to explore every aspect of the city and doing so is how their character’s physical attributes will increase over time. As a member of the city’s elite crime-fighting force known as The Agency, the game’s unnamed main character is simply known as an Agent. A tough looking African-American fellow, the Agent begins as a fairly fit character who benefits from The Agency’s top-secret performance enhancing drugs that have been designed to give them an advantage over the city’s growing number of criminals. These injections give the Agents super-human abilities allowing them to run faster, jump higher and do just about anything anyone else can do with more efficiency. In addition to The Agency's "by any means necessary" attitude, the performance enchaning effects provide for some over-the-top gameplay.
Getting Down to Business
Getting my hands on the controller, I started out in the ultra-modern headquarters of The Agency and was able to select from a trio of vehicles to begin the action. There is a sports car, a SUV and a semi-truck, each with their own obvious advantages and disadvantages. In addition, each vehicle, much like the Agent’s physical attributes, will morph into a more advanced, more capable vehicle over time as players rack up experience driving them around. In order to save some time, I was able to enable a couple of preview-build cheats to take a look at the various stages of each vehicle and how those changes would affect their performance. As expected, the sports car goes from a standard looking, futuristic automobile to a completely tricked out high-performance machine that goes much faster than anything it will face on the streets. This means it can cover more ground, jump a lot higher and pretty much feel like you are behind the wheel of the slickest racer to light up the streets. The SUV is a well rounded vehicle that offers a bit more ruggedness than the faster, more responsive sports car and it can upgrade to a well fortified gas-guzzler that is still quick on its tires while packing a punch. The semi-trick is a flat out battering ram that is noticeably slower and bulkier to drive than either the sports car or the SUV, but it comes in handy when you need to blow through a blockade with extreme prejudice. When the semi-truck is in full force it looks like a cross between a rocket powered Kenworth and something from a futuristic version of Mad Max without the barbed-wire.
After selecting a vehicle, I couldn’t resist the sexy sports car, I sped through the tunnel leading from The Agency HQ to the city. As soon as I got outside, I found myself in the middle of a shootout as gang members had gathered outside and were currently engaged with other crime fighters known as peace keepers. Using my car as a weapon, there was no need to step outside as I plowed over a number of gang members, who were signified by the skull icon over their heads. This proved to be an excellent way to mount up experience points. Once I cleared out as many criminals as I could I got out of the car and picked up a weapon lying on the ground before I moved outward into Pacific City and began to explore my surroundings. As cool as driving around in the car was, it was pretty clear that in order to appreciate the full potential of the city’s scope I would have to venture out on foot to dig into the depths of each location.
One of the 21 missions I ended up trying out first involved an assault on a criminal stronghold in what appeared to be an apartment complex where the female kingpin had been holed up. Getting to her would require blasting my way through a barrage of foot soldiers and bodyguards intent on helping me meet my maker. Since she was high above on the roof top, I would have to work my way up into the complex while fighting bad guys every step of the way. In some cases it was quite clear how higher attributes could have made this task much easier than having none. The first time through this area I had to gradually walk along staircases and hallways leading to other means of elevating myself to the roof, which was somewhat of a challenge combined with the nonstop action taking place. While trying to fend off the enemies I had to find a way to the top of the complex, and in some cases this meant grabbing hold of ledges and pulling myself up to the next level and so on. Eventually, I was unable to get to the top before getting killed, making it apparent that some more practice and a better strategy would be necessary to complete this section of the game.
Thanks to the beauty of preview builds, I was able to retry this mission with full blown physical attributes maxed out, making my Agent one hell of a bad-ass who was more than ready for action. Taking a look at him, there was a noticeable increase in his overall size and muscle mass, making him look much more like a super-hero than the above average crime fighter he was to start out with. This time around, I was able to leap much higher, making the complex’s staircases unnecessary, and climbing the building’s floors was as easy as climbing a ladder. Once on the roof, I was able to eliminate enough enemies to close in on my target and take her out once and for all. Going through a second time really helped make it more apparent how the game’s natural progression of physical attributes really lend themselves towards the gameplay. As I mentioned earlier, all of the areas and missions of Crackdown are available from the start, but some seem near impossible to pull off unless you have a certain number of skills built up. This was just one example of that, as there are countless paths each player can take as they explore their way through Pacific City.
Building up attributes is fairly straight forward and the way that Real Time Worlds has designed the game some are actually given as rewards for exploration. For instance, there are lots of icons hidden throughout the map that once obtained will increase experience points. Many of these hot spots are in various elevations of the map that you’ll be able to reach as you rack up experience while exploring. Other ways to build up attributes is simply by performing many of the basic actions over and over. As the game begins, the Agent won’t be strong enough to pick up a car and toss it around, but as you pick up smaller, more manageable objects, he will gradually be able to pick up larger and more heavier items. The same fundamental goes for every other attribute such as running, jumping, accuracy and so on. This means that if you chose to rely on weapons more than objects, your accuracy will increase at a faster rate than your strength. If you drive around more than you walk or run, your skills behind the wheel will increase. Crackdown is by no means a RPG, but it does have some dynamic character development that helps tie in with the game’s open-ended, non-linear feel that should give each player their own unique experience.
Running and driving around Pacific City is similar to the way we’ve been getting around in Saint’s Row, but the level of detail and the amount of activity in Crackdown far exceeds THQ’s valiant effort. Just about everywhere you look there are crowds of people going about their business, but they aren’t just randomly walking around from place to place muttering the same repetitive dialog we hear in games like Saint’s Row. In Crackdown it almost appears as though things are taking place within the game’s engine regardless of you being there or not. Some of these types of things did in fact occur in Saint’s Row but with Crackdown there is a much great sense of activity and non-scripting “life” taking place. Some of these actions are simply there to realistically populate the environment while others may actually serve a purpose players can take advantage of for the game’s progression. It’s really up to each individual player how they interact with their surroundings and the events taking place within them. One cool event that took place during our time with the game was that a car load of thugs sped through an intersection and crashed into a street lamp, causing it to fall to the ground, causing some damage to a few other cars nearby. As a result a brawl broke out between the gang members and some of the citizens in the area. After watching for a bit, I decided to pick up the street lamp and use it as a weapon, taking out most of the bad guys with one swing as if I was stepping up to the plate ready to send them to deep left field. A few other Agents showed up to help clean up the mess, but by then I had already taken care of things as I saw fit.
Visually, Crackdown has come a long way since the first cel-shaded images appeared and since we last saw the game months ago. The game still has a heavily comic book theme to it, but the cel-shading is a lot more detailed, giving objects and characters more definition than we’ve previously seen. Thanks to high-definition textures the building and objects of the environment look very pleasing to the eye. The dark outline around characters helps set them off from the environment creating an interesting, eye-pleasing stylized impression. The idea behind Crackdown’s visuals is that of a living graphic novel in which players are the center of the story. Using yet another preview-build tool we were able to fly around Pacific City to get a bird’s eye-view of the environment. Here we really got a better appreciation for the game’s size and scale as well as the differentiation between the three islands that make up the entire map. One island is a more industrial, blue-collar type area while another is the more high-scale, downtown center of modern architecture and big business. The third area is a more suburban area with less hustle and bustle than the other two, but there is still plenty of action and exploring to be had here as well. Most importantly to note, all of the gameplay was taking place without any type of transitional load times allowing for a seamless integration of the entire map for a more cohesive user experience.
Crackdown features over 100 licensed tracks covering nearly every popular genre of music from rock to rap as well as talk radio to keep in tune with the city’s current activities and topics. In the past, this soundtrack is something that generally plays while inside a vehicle, but Real Time Worlds has decided to allow players to make use of a soundtrack while on foot as well, providing a backdrop to all of the game’s action. Aside from the game’s impressive soundtrack, the sound effects of the action and the environment come though with the support of 5.1 surround sound putting players in the middle of the experience. Most impressive where the explosions and weapon sound effects, which is quite important since much of the game revolves around this type of gameplay. The background chatter of other characters on the streets is also quite interesting and it seems much less repetitive and scripted than games of the genre we’ve played in the past. While it might not be exactly like walking through Times Square, it’s just about the closest thing to it we’ve seen in a video game.
One of the most exciting aspects of Crackdown lies within its co-op gameplay supported by both offline and online play thanks to Xbox Live. While we weren’t able to get into much in the way of the game’s co-op modes just yet, it’s great to know that Real Time Worlds is helping push the genre’s envelop even further by offering the first ever co-op that promises to expand upon the single player gameplay. Craig explained that Crackdown’s co-op mode is getting just as much attention as the single player mode and that it is not simply being slapped on in hindsight to the rest of the action. It is just important that the co-op gameplay be as innovative and impressive as the single player content otherwise Real Time Worlds wouldn’t be making such an effort to include it. They are hoping that by including the first co-op the action/driving genre has seen, that it will help to unlock new types of gameplay experiences that continue to establish them as trendsetters within the industry. Best of all, the entire campaign is totally playable cooperatively at any point, meaning players can play any part of the game alone or with a friend. It's as easy as another player jumping in on the action or leaving on the fly. The design is so that there is a seamless integration of both single player and cooperative campaign gameplay.
The Outlook
Often times games today are still compared to the GTA franchise, but its not so often that such a game is actually being developed by its creators. Initially that was what sparked our early interest in the game before we had the chance to see it in action. Having spent some time investigating just what Crackdown is all cracked up to be (sorry, couldn’t resist that one…) its clear that Real Time Worlds is moving far beyond their roots by leaps and bounds. While the game still has some time before it’s complete, it appears as though we just might be comparing future titles in to Crackdown, a wild, over-the-top action/driver developed by the genre’s pioneers. Stay tuned as we continue to follow the final stages of Crackdown’s development as it is currently slated for release in early 2007.
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