Spontaneous Monotony

Crackdown has overcome initial skepticism to become a Grand Theft Auto clone that has everything a comic book lover could want - cel-shaded graphics, superpowers, and very little ‘fluff’ to get in the way of the core gameplay (no ridiculous ambulance minigame required to get 100% completion here).

When Crackdown was released, very little attention was paid to it as a game. Aside from the fact that it was another GTA clone on a console which already had Saints Row and Just Cause, it was the delivery vehicle for the far more anticipated Halo 3 beta. Thousands of fanboys dutifully went out and paid £40 for a game they had no intention of playing just for the ‘privilege’ of acting as unpaid beta testers for Microsoft.

This in mind, prior to release many people were expecting Crackdown to be a real lemon. The logic being that the fanboys would buy any game that the Halo 3 beta was bundle with, and that Microsoft would exploit this in order to shift copies of an underwhelming game. (more…)