Cleaning up gets dirty

>> Gangs, civilians and fellow super cops are all potential targets in Realtime Worlds’ Crackdown

by ERIK LEIJON

Realtime Worlds’ Phil Wilson and Bill Thompson were in Montreal on Feb. 2 to promote their first Xbox 360 game, Crackdown, about a crime-ridden future and a superhuman cop ordered to clean the streets. As producer and lead designer respectively, the fiery Scots wanted their anarchical action title to “redefine the sandbox [like Grand Theft Auto] genre,” and act like “a large climbing gym,” making every building in the 40-square-kilometre world ascendable. Three-and-a-half years and two million lines of code later, the final version of the over-the-top game hits stores Feb. 20. The Mirror sat down with them recently to discuss (and test) the new game.

Mirror: Tell me about the cop’s five super-abilities (agility, strength, driving, explosives and firearms).

Phil Wilson: Each school [ability] has four levels that you achieve by finding orbs in the city. When you’re top level, you can run at 40 miles per hour and make huge jumps.

Bill Thompson (still totally immersed in game): You can survive 150-metre falls, and if you have the extra strength bars that come with the strength skill, you can survive almost anything.

PW: You can jump from skyscrapers like in The Matrix. With strength, it’s possible to pick up any object and use it as a weapon: corpses, vehicles or whatever comes to hand. The [police] agency provides you with three cars, and the better your driving ability gets, your car auto-modifies like a Transformer. One of them starts as a sports car that becomes a crazy batmobile capable of going 250 miles per hour. The explosions get bigger over time with the explosives ability, but what took a really long time to perfect was the firing system.

BT (demonstrating): I’m juggling this body by shooting him while still in the air. It’s a bonus achievement.

PW: Hold L and choose which part to target. For example, you can shoot him in the arm and make him lose his gun. Try aiming at a vehicle too, and you can go for the tires so the car skids out. Aim at the gas cap and you can cause some crazy chain reactions.

M: You play a good guy, but can you kill cops and civilians?

PW: Sure, but there are no specific missions if you do. Some people just enjoy mowing down civilians, pissing off peacekeepers and having hit squads coming after you. If you want to turn the game’s insanity up to 11, the best thing to do is piss off the gangs and peacekeepers simultaneously so they all chase you at once. The agency accepts a lot of collateral damage if you kill enough criminals.

M: What are the differences between single-player and online co-op?

PW: Everything you see in the game, two people can play online. If you’re in the middle of playing, a friend can jump in, play for a bit and leave. You can get better agents to come and help you if you’re stuck. The whole world is available to you—play the missions in any order you like [there are 21 gang lords and three gangs to eliminate].

BT: We’ve had partners just turn on each other.

PW: That’s what we’ve been seeing, playing with the press. We saw two guys get up on this crane, getting ready to beat the mission, and one just turned to the other and shot him. He falls off the crane and the guy who shot him is firing rockets down onto him. People can’t resist.