Crack it on down
Crackdown is a good example of how a game can be fun but not very good. The reviews I read when it came out seemed to be a bit confused by this too. It’s sort of a Grand Theft Auto clone, except you’re a genetically-engineered-or-whatever super-cop rather than a criminal, and you can jump really high and pick up cars and stuff.
I’m trying to think of other fundamental differences and coming up short. It’s basically the same except everything about it is a little less good. There’s not nearly as much stuff to do, the missions are straightforward shoot-em-ups, driving cars is a huge pain, the city and its inhabitants aren’t convincing at all, and the story is an interruption at best.
It’s still fun, though! What everyone remembers is that you can jump really high and thereby galavant across the rooftops of the (implausibly laid-out) city, and they remember that because it’s fun. To jump higher you can collect green “agility orbs” laid out on various rooftops, and I find that more engaging than the other stuff.
I WILL RESTORE PEACE TO THE… WHEREVER THIS IS
Where the game doesn’t work is that it doesn’t seem to know how to play to its strengths. It’s a silly jumpin’ around game, but it has this premise that the city has been so overtaken by gangs that law enforcement is just barely holding on — hence their decision to somehow produce a dude who can jump really high. (I hear this is how Giuliani cleaned up Times Square.) But the city, as artificial as it looks, is full of people walking and driving around. They don’t look particularly oppressed by crime, or even poverty.
Basically the problem is that they took the gameplay of GTA but changed the premise, and now a lot of things don’t make sense. The biggest problem to my mind is that, since you’re a cop, you get penalized (your experience points are sapped) for harming civilians. You quickly realize that the reason GTA lets you do that is because it’s really hard not to sometimes, and it seems completely stupid for your voiceover commanding officer to tell you to engage in a street race (why? I mean, in-game it enhances your driving ability, but why?) and then yell at you for hitting pedestrians as you try desperately to finish the race through busy city streets before time’s up. It’s hard to feel bad for those pedestrians, given that they’re not real and they’ll often jump out in front of your car as you try to avoid them.
Your commander will also tell you to drive your car through purple “stunt markers” by launching a car off a ramp or whatever. Why is he telling you to do that? If you’re going to bother to give your game an underlying premise you might as well stick with it. I’m all about Raph Koster’s observation that the look and story of a game are “dressing”, not really part of the gameplay, but your game fiction can also really undercut the game. I don’t know if it’s just the cognitive dissonance or the fact that shooting dudes is just shooting dudes if there’s nothing to make you care about who’s shooting or being shot, but to me Crackdown is a fun hide-and-seek game that seems to want to be something else.
