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Crackdown
by Peter Berger on April 17, 2007
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Crackdown is a game where your objective is to murder as many immigrants as possible.
This makes it a problematic game for me to review because, to be frank, that’s not the sort of goal I want to collude in. Even for a technically brilliant game. Make no mistake: Crackdown is technically brilliant. If you can turn off your moral compass and embrace the mechanics of mowing down as many Latinos, Slavs, and Asians as you possibly can, you’ll have an absolute blast. The game presents you with a huge sandbox of architecture, vehicles, and weaponry to do with as you please. You’re given superhuman abilities, and the consequences of failure are incidental and ignorable. Divorced of its context, the feeling of leaping across the roofs of skyscrapers is thrilling and liberating.
But I have no wish to separate the game from its context. The heroism in Crackdown is thoroughly larded with hate. Roleplaying the jackbooted thug in this game makes me feel like a lesser person. It’s like watching a Lars von Trier movie: you can admire the craftsmanship all you want, but you still need to take a shower afterwards.
The attempts by the designers to wink knowingly at the player’s corrupt role don’t work. It feels like they’re trying to play both sides of the fence. To borrow a phrase from a certain song, “You can’t shake the devil’s hand and say you’re only kidding.”
It’s no fun being the town scold. Already, I can hear the counter-cry: you’re humorless, you don’t understand the anti-fascist subtext of the game, and the old standby… “It’s only a game.”
The truth is that it isn’t only a game. How we choose to spend our free time – and money – helps define who we are as people. Somewhere there is a marketing requirements document for Crackdown that identifies its target market as alienated American males in the 18-32 demographic with unresolved aggression issues. The makers of Crackdown decided that what we need now, more than anything, is a game where players pretend to be cops killing people of different ethnicities. There are any number of stories one can choose to tell in a narrative. I’m not inclined to cut the people who chose this story any slack whatsoever.
I have no doubt that the game will sell like hotcakes.
5 Stars, if you have no soul. Otherwise, 1 star.
[ed: Peter elaborates on this review on his blog. Check it out.]
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[...] PTDmagazine has posted the review as HTML, so you don’t have to download the PDF unless you want to. Also, if you’re so [...]
that has to be the worst review i’ve ever read. you have to be a complete asshat to think the game is about killing immigrants. i can’t believe you published this review, too bad no one will ever take you seriously ever again.
PTD Magazine doesn’t make a habit of meddling with our writers opinions — although we’ve been known to meddle in grammar. This is Peter’s opinion, you don’t have to agree with it. What type of organization would we be if we didn’t publish work based solely on a difference of opinion?
Take that!
I think this should have been a seperate article. I would rather have heard about the game itself. If you felt that strongly about the game, then an article about your objections would have been more appropriate. But not in the review of the game. A review should not be some one’s moral compas. I have my point of view below about violence in video games below. Seperate topic like this article should have been. I bought this game, so If you would like to read an opinion from someone that has no soul.
Violence in video games:
This kind of game is not new , see the GTA franchise. I do not try to link games to reality, that is one of the reasons I like to game. A release from reality. If my games start to come reality then there is a bigger issue with me. The problem would be with me not with the game. I write this in the shodow of the Virginia Tech Shootings, and I am a VT grad. Even as I mourn the victims at my university, I can seperate that tragedy with the games I play. I think people look for reason when there is none, and too often these games are made scapegoats. I saw Dr. Phil last night on one of the news programs talking of all things the violence in Video games. I think people are really missing the point and should really look to the individual that made the decision and not as society (as in games) made the decision for him.
Well, why shouldn’t a review touch on moral issues?
Movie and book reviews do it all the time, so what makes it not fair for game reviews?
Gamers expend a lot of energy expounding on how games are an art form just like anything else, so it seems to me that you can’t really have it both ways. Either they’re equivalent to books/movies and worth discussing and criticizing in the same ways, which includes moral and societal aspects, or they’re just toys and should only be reviewed on the same technical aspects that one might review a stereo system.
Pick one.
[...] Click Here for his post[PDF Magazine] [...]
I don’t remember Crackdowns objective to kill as many immigrants as possible. I don’t even remember immigrants even being in the game, I remember hispanics. Unless you think all hispanics are immigrants, I don’t know know what you are talking about. In fact I remember the objective being to stop crime, and stop criminals by being a police officer. The objective of the game is about stopping criminal organizations from taking over the city. Who ever said anything about immigrants?
You, Peter(puffer), are on a level of Jack Thompson’s ineptitude. After this, I recommend you just stop now.
I think he should keep his opinions to himself. Even though the volk did bring in immigrants for their crimes they game was about stopping crimes caused by all races present.
I agree one hundred percent that the questionable (or unquestionably messed up) underpinnings of the Crackdown’s “narrative” seriously undermine my enjoyment of the game. It’s a hell of a lot of fun vaulting around the city and blowing up cars (to compensate for the game’s prejudices, I try to only attack the cops), but it’s beyond me why developers perpetually fall back on racist, anti-immigrant stereotypes in their constructions of sandbox worlds.
Everybody’s ragging on Peter for trying to inject his “bias” into an “objective” review, but it’s exactly that type of detachment and apoliticism in the gaming community as a whole (which, for some reason, seems to be dominated by ted nugent types quasi-libertarian types) that encourages game companies to churn out content that indulges the institutionalized racism prevalant in our society. Anybody who doesn’t see how the content of the game is a critical (and, in this case, insidious) feature of the overall experience (and therefore relevant in a review) needs their head checked. Saying something like “the game targets all races equally” is total bollocks. Every enemy in the game is a mythological stereotype of a non-white or non-American bad guy , the dialogue and personas attributed to the mob bosses are ludicrous and hateful, and the non-white women in the game are all depicted as scantily clad succubi. This all in contrast to the macho All-American hunks that the player controls. If you’re trying to tell me that there’s not something seriously prejudiced about that set-up, I have to conclude that you’re making that comment from a position of total indoctrination.
This all being said, I think that it is possible to enjoy the game (especially if you steal it) at a purely mechanical level if you basically turn down the volume and ignore all the plot.
I won’t deny that this doesn’t help the fact that thousands of fifteen year old boys who fetishize violence will buy and enjoy the game for all the wrong reasons, and I desperately hope that somebody will release a game with equally successful implementation of city-scaling , real time physics, and vehicle exploration and none (fewer) of the problematic character elements. Until then, I guess folks can either take Peter’s angle and choose to avoid the game entirely or find a way to play it without giving Crackdown’s developers their money.
OK for starters Most of the “heros” in crackdown are non-white characters, hell the agent on the cover is black. so I
dont see how this game is promoting racism or Xenophobia
when in fact the character youre playing isnt exactly the SS soilder the writer and some other people made out to sound like. although i can see how the game could be used in that way depending on the mindset of the player….yeah some prejudice white kid could select a white
agent and play out his sick racist fantasies but that could be true of any open world game. also i dont think the writer
even played the game, the Shai-gen is mostly made of white guys (with stereotypical “hill billy ” accents) rather than asians
I can easily see where this reviewer is coming from. The first two gangs are all of one race, and the last one is questionably asian (all the bosses except for one is asian, and over half of the mobsters are american). However, you should note that one or two of the agents are Asian - heck, one is unquestionably Spanish or Mexican (I truly apologize for this gross generalization, I haven’t learned the difference yet). Plus, all of the civilians in each area are of that area’s nationality….I will take note, however, that all the Peacekeeprs are either white or black.
wow, its just a game okay so you need to calm da fuck down and shut da fuck up u faggot ass fucker. if one fuckin race was creating all da crime den hell yea u bring dem down, buh daz not da fuckin case in real life, buh in dis game it is, so fuck you you lost all respect and shit and who da fuck reads dis fuckin qeer magazine? daz rite so ur reviews mean fuckin shit.
I am a hardcore gamer and I dont know where this guy gets off trying to think this game is about killing immigrants. The only thing I think about when im playing is stopping the bad guys. In no way am I taking out my wrath for society. This reviewer needs to get his mind checked.
From
A Souless Individual
this reviewer is an absolute moron.
the point of a game review, is to yes, point out the specifications of the game.
how many players. how long you will play the game, what genre it fits into,
you know, REVIEW THE DAM GAME! not give ur opinion on why you dont like it. No one gives 2 shits IF you think its going to sell or not, we want to know WHY its going to/or not going to!
learn to become “emotionally unattached” .
hahahaha.
“you know, REVIEW THE DAM GAME! not give ur opinion on why you dont like it.”
Doesn’t reviewing the game mean giving your opinion on why you don’t like it?
Reviews are objective, Criticisms (which is more or less what this is) are for opinion and though provocation.
“Reviews are objective?”
Since when? Says who?
While I certainly respect everyone’s right to disagree with my opinion, I’m afraid I have to reject categorically the idea that a review of a product represents anything _other than_ opinion.
If all you’re looking for is objective fact, then I’m sure the product specifications sheet will be more than adequate. If you read a review, you should expect to be reading an opinion. I’ll go further, in fact, and say that any review that _doesn’t_ give you an opinion is, in fact, not doing its job.
“Reviews are objective, Criticisms (which is more or less what this is) are for opinion and though provocation.”
Objectivity and criticism are not mutually exclusive. Are the criticisms grounded in reality? Are they legitimate? Are they reasonable?
But reviews cannot be purely objective - if they were then everyone would come to the same conclusion and we could all read Consumer Reports. Reviews are inevitably rooted in the experience and perspective of the writer.
This doesn’t mean that all reviews are equally valid or equally useful. But it does mean that reviews can’t be “just the facts” without being PR blurbs.
Whether or not you think social commentary belongs in a game review is a matter of taste. And Peter even noted that if none of this stuff bothers you, Crackdown is a technically excellent game (5 stars).
But if reviewers are only allowed to complain about frame rates, weapons choices and multiplayer matching, games will never be more than an addendum to the tech pages.
Reviews are meant to be objective. It’s the same reason why we’re not supposed use the words “I” and “you” in a review but the word “player/s”. And yes it is based on one person’s experience, but that experience can be reported in an objective manner. I encourage every journalist here to get the Video Game Style Guide.
What Peter basically just did is a game criticism. That sounds like a bad word, but it’s really just an opinion piece, and he also mixed in a few bits of review.
And in all honesty Peter did his job as far as telling the people if the game was good or not, but some people (as you can tell from some of the statements above lol) just don’t care about someone’s opinion on the game and all they want is the facts.
^^and by opinion I’m not meaning whether you liked the graphics or not, but your thoughts and feelings of the game, which i believe should have been in a completely separate article (which probably could have been well received), but the fact that you mixed it in with the game review will set some people off, especially if they’re huge fans of the game. As for me, I enjoyed the article, and I agree that we’re far too desensitized to violence.
I’ve finished the game and I have to agree that there is a dark subtext to Crackdown. Only the naive or wilfully ignorant will state that the casting of enemies in this game is innocent. It’s just too much coincidence that three enemy factions correpond to the three main immigrant groups in the US.
Actually, the game takes place in a near-future set of islands. It is never said that the U.S. or any other country controls that area, and is entirely possible that the gang members are native to their respective islands. And even by your logic, the game isn’t about killing immigrants, it’s about killing violent lawbreakers that happen to be immigrants.
P.S.
The three largest immigrant groups in the U.S. are Middle-Eastern, Hispanic, and European. Slavs aren’t even in the top 5.
I’ve been playing Crackdown for the past two weeks, and I agree about 50%. The game absolutely does traffic in stereotypes, and the foreign nature of the enemies is meant to make them more fun to mow down. I don’t know how I’d feel if I were Mexican and battling Los Muertos, however.
On the other hand, you are penalized for killing innocents or police officer in the game, and only rewarded for killing criminals. So you must actually distinguish between the immigrant-criminals and immigrant-innocents, which seems like the most non-racist possible element.
I’d not considered that aspect before, seamus, but you raise an interesting point. Just because we’re killing immigrants doesn’t mean _all_ in-game immigrants are thugs.
peterb seems to suffer from the same ‘political’ problems as Crackdown, and it isn’t racism, it is generalisation. The designers behind Crackdown have obviously gone for stereotypes in styling their gangs. Ask yourselves this, how would you style a street level gang, a corrupt military gang, and a corporate gang? Chances are you will have hit on a stereotype. But, I believe there is only one mention of ‘immigrants’, and that’s in context to the Volk gang exploits in human trafficking. Is he generalising that every Hispanic is a game context is an ‘immigrant’, who is to say they are the indigenous population? Talk about irony…
[...] name, are more Russian-Polish than German), and the South-East Asian Shai Gen. While some (such as PTD Magazine) see the ‘kill immigrants’ theme of the game as profoundly racis, I prefer to look at [...]