Crackdown is a modern day Space Invaders
After beating the game I am drawn in for hours at a time, get random requests from people for co-op and I don't see it stopping any time soon. With the game's bosses down some are complaining the game is "too short", "too easy" or some variation. Taken in the modern context of game design that may be true, but going back to the dawn of videogaming Crackdown's charms are in line with many classic games: simple fun.
Space Invaders, the first real videogame "hit" consisted of wave after wave of enemies coming at you, getting more challenging as the wave reaches its zenith. After a wave is cleared, what came next? Another one. And another. Why did anyone keep playing, it was just the same thing over and over? Well, it was fun. In the same context I find my love for Crackdown.
I want to shoot overwhelming odds of baddies. I want to get creative in their disposal, from shooting to kicking to crushing them under a car. I want to do nothing more than work my itchy gaming trigger finger. Crackdown gives me that from its beginning to well past modern traditional "missions" or "story". I revel in the lack of story, it would just get in the way of killing.
Jumping from rooftop to rooftop, scaling heights to rain down rockets on the hapless bad guys gleefully saying "Time to die", firing up one of the agency vehicles to gun down, jump or crush enemies, luring them into odd situations to see their burning corpses fly through the air, this is simply the beginning. I don't see the end, by myself or with a friend, or a stranger who becomes a friend as you have fun together.
Space Invaders and other classic shooters were nothing more than that, shooters, and I was happy with that as were millions of others. Crackdown is just a new twist on the same model: pure killing joy.