14 DAY TRIAL // Crackdown is what the gaming industry calls a “sleeper hit” because it was not a huge best seller at launch but it managed to sell steadily for a long period, resulting in a lifetime total of 1.5 million copies sold until now. It is one of the initial action titles for the Xbox 360 and, as the console has seen remakes of launch titles like Halo, Gears of War or Fable, another Crackdown title would not come as a great surprise to gamers.
It seems that a new studio has been set up in Scotland by some people who have worked on Crackdown. It is called Ruffian Games and one of the persons behind it is Billy Thompson, the lead designer on the game. Sources told Gamasutra that Crackdown 2 would be the first game created by the studio and that development was in very early stages.
The first game was created by Realtime Worlds, which is currently working on All Points Bulletin, a gang based MMO. Microsoft is the company holding the rights to the intellectual property of Crackdown and it can give development duties to whatever studio it wants.
In early 2008, Shane Kim from the Xbox division of Microsoft made comments related to the game and Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft Game Studios, mentioned on a podcast that “Yes, Crackdown's one of my favorites. I'll leave it at that.”
The original Crackdown puts you into the role of an agent that needs to take out three crime families in the fictional Pacific City. The game was open world, with the player determining the way each objective could be tackled. There are a lot of side missions, which can be completed to level up and the title offers the option of two player co operative play.