I wrote this to be it's own thread but it's really not necessary at this point. Thought people might like some of the info so gonna put it here - though its mostly just stream of consciousness with no real editing.
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Current playtime and progression:
~12h playtime on agent difficulty
All campaign stuff done except last boss. Finishing collecting orbs & races
Played on PC 1080p60 & x1x 4k30 on a 1440p monitor, regular and elite controller
Campaign:
The campaign structure is mostly completely freeform. This means, as I understand it, that if you can figure out how, you can go right to the last boss. For those of us keeping track, this is similar to how Crackdown 1 (CD1) played out.
There is a very popular more recent game that pulls this off – Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
By almost necessity, having this structure means the game is very hands off on pushing a player to do anything. You scour the map looking for things to do and at some point beat the game.
Some people will absolutely despise this lack of structure, but I personally feel it makes the best open world gaming.
This also ties in to the depth of the…
Plot/Story:
There is an opening cinematic, and I will admit I was barely paying attention. Something about flying around with Terry and you get hit by some green stuff and die, but are brought back to life through some kind of tech.
As you travel around and complete activities, there are two NPCs who kind of narrate your actions and comment on what you do, similar to the original, and I felt this time it had a very Bastion vibe.
As you defeat bosses, graphic design strong cut-scenes play out to flesh out the repercussions of killing said boss.
I can safely say it's all irrelevant (at least to me), except when Terry yells out "fuck gravity". I get a smile every single time.
Really though, when you have a freeform campaign, telling a deep story is just not in the cards. I think it can be done, but it would be just a gigantic undertaking.
If you need a story to drive you to play more, this game will probably not be your bag.
Gameplay – Interactivity:
Crackdown's interactivity has three main components.
Jumping/Movement/Agility/Mobility
Shooting
And two not so main components.
Driving
Picking stuff up.
Jumping, and the modifiers to jumping, will be the main thing you do in this game. I will have to start the game over to properly asses how good the overall feel is at the start versus near the end, but I will come out and say it – the mobility/accuracy/amount of control you have for a 3rd person 3D action game is probably now my favorite, edging out my previous favorite, Re-Core (I have been told there may be some shared DNA between the games so the similarity in controls shouldn't be all that surprising).
You start with a jump, a dodge roll when on the ground, and a directional dash (that loses some of your height) that also serves as an air dodge.
Shooting can be hip-fire, but that is largely useless except for a few weapons. Most of the time you will be doing a lock-on on an enemy and using movement as your defense.
The lock on is a good solution to the problem of controller + huge amounts of movement, and movement being one of your only defenses. If the gameplay got slowed down a lot (say, gears or halo speed), going more traditional routes would fare well, but I feel it keeps the speed of everything is pretty nicely paced. People watching or reading about the lock-on might be put off by the concept, but I think it still works in the context of everything.
There is also the ability, once you are locked on, to change what you are aiming at. So you can finesse a headshot, and also target legs etc. You can also take out tires or blow up gas tanks on cars.
Driving is a huge mixed bag. The oddest thing is it is entirely 100% an optional activity (unless for some reason you need it for the last boss). Driving itself is usually great. Cars are weighty, very arcady amounts of drift. One super appreciated thing is other non-aggressive cars usually actively want to not be in your way. I bring this up to contrast with something like GTA, where the timing of the lights and traffic are all spawned to be in your way to provide the challenge.
You can enter any of the cars littering the game world, or summon a transforming agency vehicle. The first one is for speed with a sideswipe attack, the second is a weird buggy that can climb walls and jump, and the 3rd is a tank. Once unlocked, you can instantly transform to any form. I found this useful for solving some of the puzzles for the car rings, where I would build up a lot of speed then transform into the buggy to get a jump off. Pretty neat! You can also use the buggy to get to some places your current agility level may not let you get to, which is also pretty neat. You can also pick up your transforming uber car to put it in position for a variety of things, also neat. And to top of this list of neat, you can eventually get an ability to eject yourself out of your car to a great height, kind of adding another jump to reach places.
But, there are some issues. The first is hitting anything not flat is way too unpredictable. That's basically what you are trying to avoid and your arch-nemesis in the timed races you can do. It also make using the buggy weird a lot of the time.
Second is summoning your car can put it out of reach. Its annoying mostly because the summoned car is on a cooldown and you cant (well I am pretty sure you cant) re-summon it if it exists.
The last thing to touch on here is picking stuff up. It also falls under the category of something you never have to do, but it is there, and is affected by your strength level.
You can pick objects up to throw at enemies, you can pick up cars to get them in position for stunt jumps, you can pick up boulders to sabotage some machinery.
Gameplay – Systems
Crackdown's systems are pretty basic – level your skills. This is done in a few ways.
Agility, which affects your jump and dash, is only leveled through picking up orbs and completing foot races.
Strength, Shooting, Explosives, and Driving are leveled up by doing those activities, as well as hidden orbs. In the case of driving, completing stunt jumps also raises your skill.
Leveling the skills gives new abilities or weapons, like more defense with strength, and things like double jumps and dashes with agility.
Gameplay – Activities
I will just list what there is to do:
- Jump. Jump on all the things. It's all jumping puzzles, everywhere.
- Collect Agility orbs
- Collect Hidden orbs
- Kill enemies
- Collect intel points
- Collect Agent DNA
- A variety of points on the map that need to be taken over, which involve a mix of platforming and shooting
- On the outside of the map, taking these points over will spawn a boss attached to those points
- Kill bosses in the center of the map.
- These bosses generally have a building they reside in that you have to fight up, which can be made more difficult if you have not taken care of the associated bosses on the outskirts
- Destroy kiosks
- Scale propaganda towers
- Take over spawn points
- Collect cars
- Collect weapons
- Collect gadgets
Pretty standard action game stuff. I have to say, not having fluffy language prodding you to do all the things, or have fetch quest to essentially do all the things… I think the point is there's no real quests or context to anything you do. And I think this leads to the campaign being pretty short, if you are ploughing through it.
I don't mind. Some will. Putting dressing on repetitive activities doesn't make them less repetitive to me, and I think actually ends up respecting my time.
Controls:
I find the controls tight, responsive, and honestly so good in general that it feels like they aren't there. Smart default things like putting jump and dash on the L3 and R3 so you can jump and turn without an elite controller are just brilliant. Jumping on rapidly moving platforms 100 yards away just works.
My only complaint is sometimes your character is too grabby on ledges and you get kind of stuck in place and… well I mostly died to this.
AI:
Everything shoots at you. That's about it. Drones are annoying because they will hover just out of range of where it's easy to look up. There's nothing here to write home about, but again, it's serviceable for what it's trying to be. If this was a slower paced game it would probably be unacceptable, but as is things don't last long enough to matter.
Graphics - technical:
The graphics are technically pretty good (see Digital Foundry for detail). But they are tied inexorably to…
Graphics - design
In my opinion, the game eschews over complexity/clutter/detail in 100% service to gameplay. When you are jumping around, it's always very easy to read every surface you can use, without ambiguity.
I think this tends to make the game look "simple". It's not a complaint to me, because it's on purpose and is effective, but it really looks meh if you take it all at face value.
Animation is a mixed bag, but to be honest, the transitions on your character are fast and reflect your actions instantly – so it may just be the speed of the game.
Explosions are very very fast (I sometimes want them to linger longer) but look good.
Other thoughts:
The game is fun, and gathering orbs is addicting (and towards the end has become challenging). Some things are not so exciting. There are to many bosses that are just a guy in an exosuit, making the bosses somewhat repetitive. The is a lot of repetition in almost everything, so while play sessions all start off fun, being able to take breaks definitely helps keep things feeling fresh. The map could also use some work – like color the icons of completed races and other completed objectives.
