Crackdown Mechanics

Much has been made concerning the massive open-ended world available in Real Time Worlds' Crackdown™, but little is known about how it plays. The mechanics have remained a mystery … until now, that is. If you're looking for details on the world, the plot, and the basic foundation for Crackdown, check out our game preview, but if you want to know how you interact with the world, read on.

A man prepared for a day's work.

Gunplay
Combat in Crackdown comes down to a matter of intuitive choices. Unlike many games, which let you simply auto-target, Crackdown offers the target as the first step in the process. Once you've targeted an enemy, vehicle, or object, you then have the opportunity to select specific areas within the target.

Certain vehicles actually morph into
more potent versions of themselves.

For example, let's say you need to take down a getaway car. You auto-target the car, and can then choose to:

• Shoot out the tires.
• Shoot the driver through the windows.
• Hit the gas can and blow up the offending vehicle.

You can do all this, as well as cycle through available targets, with the flick of the control stick or press of a button. It's about what's most strategic, most efficient, or, in some cases, most entertaining. The choice is yours.

Interactive Highlights
Few things are more frustrating in a game than finding out what you can and cannot interact with through endless trial and error. Luckily, most of the items you would expect to interact with in Crackdown work just like you hope.

Laying down on the job. Tsk tsk.

What's more, the game highlights these items as you get close to them, so you know you can grab or use them. Whether it's picking up a telephone pole to bap someone over the head with or hoisting up a dumpster you want to throw through a plate-glass window, you don't have to wonder if you can use objects; you know for sure beforehand.

Evolution
The depth of a roleplaying-game exists in Crackdown's foundation, but, like the game itself, the process is streamlined and easy to understand. You don't have to worry about applying bonuses or buying skills; you simply "get better" at the actions you practice. If you spend most of your time in a car, you naturally become a better driver. If you run about, climb buildings, and lift heavy objects, you become faster and stronger, and boast better endurance.

Moreover, your naturally increasing skills affect the weapons and vehicles available to you. Weaponry becomes more exotic and powerful, and certain vehicles actually morph into more potent versions of themselves. Where once you might have driven a basic semi, hopping into an Agency truck with your driving skill jacked up transforms the truck into a lethal battering ram able to obliterate everything in its path.

That's one way to make an entrance.

Vertical Content
Crackdown focuses its content not just on the street level, but vertically as well. It's not merely that you can climb buildings and use the high-level architecture for a tactical advantage, though. Loads of in-game content exists in these faraway places as well. You don't just find crime on the streets, but high above in the skyscrapers too. This focus on the vertical also offers loads of unique angles (that simply have not existed in games before) from which to attack enemy bases or compounds.

World Achievements
There's plenty of self-driven adventure in Crackdown. The world itself is a playground just begging for experimentation. To this end, some of the achievements available in Crackdown focus less on standard objectives and instead on unique and surreal goals that help demonstrate the game's open-ended possibilities. For example, one achievement requires you to blast an enemy into the sky with a rocket launcher and do all that you can to keep them airborne for a set amount of time.

Crackdown marks the first "sandbox" game on Xbox 360™, and with Dave Jones heading the team, it's set to explore and expand the genre in ways not yet seen or even imagined.

Article by Ryan Treit