Crackdown: Cracked

I didn't intend to finish Crackdown this weekend but I did. Offing Wang was too alluring a temptation for me, even after 2 full (and late) nights of happy orb-hunted, punctuated by the occasional gang boss assassination.

If you have yet to kill Wang, let me give you a little heads-up on what to expect. Don't worry, this isn't a spoiler: Wang's a friggin' push-over. I suppose I let myself believe unreliable accounts of message forum dwellers and a few reviewers who hinted at Wang's awesome powers. Hell, even the Agency Director got my hopes up. Dark arts you say? Oooo, maybe he can teleport or fly or shoot laser beams out of his eyes! The dearth of solid information made me think Wang would provide a different, substantial challenge compared to his underlings or the criminals of the Volk and Los Muertos. Alas, as I rocketed, grenaded and roundhouse-kicked his flaming carcass off the ledge of the zen garden pagoda, I realized an epic battle this was not.

Was it still satisfying? I would answer an unqualified "yes". As a final gesture of triumph, I hurled Wang's corpse off the top of the Shai-Gen Tower. My co-op partner was already halfway over to the Final Crime waypoint and I giddily asked him to see if he could spot my Wang shot-put from halfway across the island. "Have a taste of your skyscraper, Wang!" was my main motivation for tossing him in the first place.

Getting to Wang was the difficult part and that applied to almost all of the other gang generals. It's their entourage that gave me the most headaches, combined with the enclosed areas these bosses would hole themselves into.

Now I'm left to pick up the pieces of left by the obliterated gang factions. Nothing left to do now except hunt down the remaining 50 Agility Orbs and 150 Hidden Orbs, complete more Achievements and max out my Agent skills. Oh well, that's at least another 5-6 hours of play right there on top of the 2o or so hours I spent up to this point. That's value.

A proper review for this game seems like a foregone conclusion right now. Crackdown has been out for 2 weeks and there really isn't a lot to be said for it that hasn't been said already. Allow me to sum things up with a handful of quoteables, if I may...

Crackdown is one big mess of a game. It's also a sandbox masterpiece and is the sandbox game to beat from this point forward. Games like GTA 4 are going to bring things down to earth - no more rooftop races, homing missiles and superhuman strength - and boy, is it going to take some getting used to! And when I say the game's a mess, I mean to say it's buggy, quirky and has it's fair share of maddening design flaws. I mean, kudos to the first 360 game that brought me so perilously close to stomping my $60 controller into the ground so many different times. And yet, I love the game and wouldn't rate it anything less than an 8.5 out of 10.

If Gears of War was the last, best reason of 2006 to buy an Xbox 360, Crackdown is your best reason in 2007 to finally become a believer. It's a virtual "fond gaming memories" generator and it stands as the purest execution of real sandbox experience in any action game.

Hyberbole and adulation aside, Crackdown is simply shitloads of fun. If you reeeaaally have to have your arm twisted, then come for the Halo 3 beta, but stay for the Crack.