There was a time, long ago, when action games were my favorite category. Sadly, those times seemed to have passed. Action games, for the greater part, seem to be rehashes of the same overdone concepts. Even Grand Theft Auto, a series I generally enjoy, is getting a bit stale. The super-hero genre, which seems to be somewhat popular, boosted by newly released movies every couple of seasons, just rehash what we've all already done. Shooters are shooters, even in the FPS realm, little sticks out as new and impressive.<br/><br/>En ter Crackdown. For those of you who are XBL fanatics (as am I), the achievements alone can keep the game fresh even when it feels like it might be time for a break. The collection of \"orbs\" for general and agility experience, while simple in it's approach, can keep you hoping building to building and searching nooks and crannies long into the night. The nearly RPG-style abilities and their progress add an extra edge to this fantastic game. The graphics are good, despite my usual distaste for cell-shading.<br/><br/> The overall game play, especially with the first (Latino) gang is fairly easy. Though the AI seems pretty decent in many cases. The bosses themselves aren't even that difficult, but the mass of gangsters throughout the city can keep you on our toes.<br/><br/>The variety of weaponry (though I overuse the Limpet Charges I admit), the collecting of weapons at the drop points and the vehicular usage in the game is on par, at least, with other games in the genre. Your ever-improving strength capability, even to the point of throwing vehicles, gives you yet another weapon, so-to-speak, in your arsenal.<br/><br/>Overa ll, the game is not terribly difficult, but it's \"fun factor\" is pretty dang high. I definitely recommend this game to everybody, doubly so for those looking to reignite a passion for action games.

Learning Curve: Takes a second

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Great game, lots of fun. There were some significant parts that I found a bit lacking (mainly the driving option... I think i drove once) and it ends a bit ubruptly.. but overall a superior gaming experience!

The game itself feels a bit constrained. For example you can upgrade your agility and leap around the city (a la spiderman) which IS indeed very fun. however all it allows you to actually do is avoid ever having to drive and to collect more agility.

The story is non-existant (but who really needs a story here, youre a heavily armed supercop) and the replay potential is virtually non-existant, the only real side missions are races of various sorts which are really just kind of silly. As i said, the game is great for awhile but it really does just drop you. however i have heard rumors of a fourth island available for download soon, which may spruce endgame up a bit. and hopefully deliver some new freakin' weapons....

Learning Curve: Instant!

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Definitely worth a try, story is very weak, the second itteration better have a longer and deeper story, because the gameplay is awesome its so much fun. Online is also really cool, but there isn't much depth here at all. Its a rental, thats all.

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Crackdown is the type of game where you should ignore the fact that the Halo 3 beta is packed in. Honestly I didn't give a damn for the game until they announced the pack in. Then and there I thought "Oh great a shitty game! I MUST PREORDER IT FOR HALLOOO!" Which I did.

Without the power hype that formulates when a game has the word "Halo" in it, I probably would of missed a fantastic game.

It's a little bit of Grand Theft Auto and a whole lot of superhero.

You're a super cop out to kick some ass in the fictional land of uh some city. This city is infested with 3 big time gangs. Your job is to beat the living crap out of them with your superhero like abilities. These abilities are stats that you can upgrade.

Agility - which you gain by finding these green orbs that are scattered around the city. And from what I experienced, it's like Pokemon cocaine. Increasing your stats in this will allow you to jump tall buildings in a single bound.

Strength - which you gain by beating gang members with your melee or by throwing junk at them. Increasing in this will allow you to have superman like fists and make you feel cool n stuff.

Shooting - Self Explanatory.

There's also stats for explosions and driving.

The real fun is walking around being a total idiot. But after that excitement wears off, you actually have to do some missions. Your non linear missions are pretty straight forward and lacking in any time of variety, each objective is to kill a key gang boss. The problem here is that with enough stats, you can just run and jump past all the enemies that swarm around the boss area and kill the boss himself with a few punches. Not much of a battle if you ask me.

Besides the lack of real boss battles and variety, there's no real narrative and the most annoying guy in the world talks into your ear giving you repetitive information and will just not shut up.

Though with these shortcomings, I have gain a strong liking for Crackdown. If you don't enjoy mindless destruction, stay away.

Learning Curve: Takes a while

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The game itself overall is a lot of fun, and the online coop is wicked, haven't been seeing enough of it in games.

While I'm not a huge obsessive fan of plot, this is almost exactly like Future Cop LAPD in the sense that you get "This person is doing this to support this person, go kill them" and that's it. A little more to tie the game together would be nice. As well, despite the commander barking at you the ENTIRE game you end up having to learn everything by trial and error, which overall is fine seeing as it's a short game.

My other gripe is the control scheme. It's setup as a 3rd person shooter, but the jumping and travelling mechanics really needed a more dynamic camera system. Some of the rooftop races had me thinking I was playing an old school Tomb Raider. I think it could also use a quick turn around button, while you can take a great amount of bullets it's annoying to not be able to immediately smite your opponents behind you.

Everything else however is really fun. The driving, the powering up, the destruction and mayhem. As well, it's excellent for those people who just love to explore the landscape and find new nooks and crannies.

I'd say however to give it a rental. While the online coop is great, it's not enough to keep the game fresh for even the next few weeks.

Learning Curve: Takes a while

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There was a time when I thought no free-roaming game could beat the design of Grand Theft Auto's. I came to this conclusion because of the fact that SO many others tried and failed miserably. True Crime put you in the shoes of a dumbass in an obvious mock-up of the GTA world; it was worse. Saint's Row copied Grand Theft Auto's design exactly, but pumped up the graphics; it was worse. Driver 3, well, I'm not sure exactly what it wanted to do, but it definitely copied GTA; it was worse. It just seemed to me that, perhaps, the free-roaming genre had reached its peak with San Andreas.

Boy, was I wrong.

Crackdown for the Xbox 360 is the biggest leap (no pun intended) the industry has seen in the sandbox genre since the release of Grand Theft Auto III. You assume the role of the Agent, a genetically altered police officer, sent out in the streets to rid the cities of crime, and whose abilities allow him to do everything a normal human can do...times 20. You're given 5 abilities to play around with: Agility, Strength, Driving, Explosives, and Firearms. Each time you do anything pertaining to one of those five abilities, your experience increases in that category. For example, say I'm facing 20 Los Muertos gang members and I choose to throw a grenade at them, sending them flying in all directions. This will increase my Explosives ability via differently colored orbs that fly out of the enemies and into me. As a result, my grenades will have a larger blast radius. If I choose to kung-fu kick a gang member and send him sailing away to his doom, my Strength ability increases. The same goes for if I decide to throw a garbage dump at someone. As a result, as my Strength skill increases, I can carry larger and larger things, until eventually I'm throwing 18-wheelers at 18 gang members. It's really wild, and the inclusion of this RPG-styled leveling up really adds to the addiction factor.

But, the greatest thing about Crackdown is its Agility ability (hey, that rhymes). In order to increase your agility, you must collect Agility Orbs, which are strategically placed on buildings in each of the four cities. The more you level up your agility, the faster you can run and the higher and longer you can jump. Imagine, for a moment, taking a running start off of a skyscraper, and catapulting off of it. Soaring through the air, you obliterate 25 gang members below you with your rocket launcher, sending them screaming through the air in flames. It's a huge rush, and it's also a major contributor to the game's uniqueness in comparison to other free-roaming games.

The second factor which sets Crackdown far apart from any other GTA imitator (Crackdown doesn't deserve that title; it's better) is the inclusion of Xbox Live Co-op online gameplay. I've played a lot of Xbox Live, but I've never played multiplayer like this. What it does is pit you and another online player smack dab in the middle of the city. And it leaves you there. The genius of this mode is that you and your friend can do whatever you please. You can choose to scale buildings and waste time together, or you can choose to buckle down and defeat some druglords together. It's really ingenious, because it takes the concept of free-roaming and makes it the guiding theme of the multiplayer component.

There are a few minor downsides to Crackdown, however (and I do stress MINOR). The first is the lack of a target switching button. For example, when I lock on to an enemy with the left trigger, and I kill them, the target remains on that dead enemy. In order for me to switch to another enemy, I must let go of the trigger and press it again to target another one. This can be frustrating when fighting crowds of 10 or more gang members. It would have been very helpful to be able to press a button to switch your target to the nearest enemy. The second issue I have is with the connection process in the multiplayer mode. If you're in a single-player game and choose to connect to a friend's game, and the connection falls through, it exits you entirely from your single-player game and takes you to the main menu. This can be a bit annoying but, again, a truly minor complaint that, in the scheme of things, really doesn't matter. It will probably be fixed in a later patch, too.

All in all, Crackdown is a magnificent game and should be right up there with any other must-buy 360 title (Oblivion, Gears of War, Viva Pinata). If you enjoy Grand Theft Auto, and you enjoy having fun, then it is a guarantee that you will go gaga over Crackdown.

If not, well, then, get a damn life.

Learning Curve: Takes a second

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"Crack" is all too appropriate in the title of this game, as most everyone seems to be pretty instantly addicted to it. Crackdown is, more or less, a cross between Grand Theft Auto and Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. Your goal is to rid the streets of gang members. As you do, you level up certain character attributes (strength, firearms, vehicles, agility, explosives), which take you from human to super-human. The vast, open ended world is big, but not so huge as to leave you lost. With a ton of achievements and online co-op play, Crackdown can keep you busy for quite a while. The only drawback is that there are only 3 gangs and 21 bosses to eliminate. The game could have benefited from at least one more faction, increasing the number to 4 and 28. Moreover, if the gang leaders employed a few more tactics, the difficulty could have been increased. Other than these few shortcomings, Crackdown is a very entertaining game.

Learning Curve: Takes a while

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A rather amusing diversion, but most of the fun comes from character progression rather than game progression -- in other words, you'll spend much more time jumping, shooting, driving and throwing just for the sake of building your skills than you will doing such to eliminate gang bosses.
Each level of skill progression offers a substantial boost in your character's ability, so it is a fine reward for putting in the 'practice' time, but there's nothing to really drive you to actually complete your missions. I've mostly done them just because I happened to be in the area.
Controls are generally intuitive, just press a button and you know what it does. There are some actions which are not so obvious (like crouching) that may force you to read the manual to figure out what the voice in your head is talking about. (Is he supposed to be a dispatcher or what?)
As with the overwhelming majority of 3D games, there are plenty of annoying moments where you can't see what's going on as well as you'd like, but nothing major enough to make the game frustrating.
I really enjoy the comic-book look of the graphics, and it's also fitting for a super-cop rampaging through the city and beating the snot out of crime any way he feels like. I don't know what method they use, but the visuals don't have any of the glitches common with cell-shading, so I'd call it an improvement.
The game has the same structure as the Spider-Man and Hulk games, with collectibles and challenges scattered around the map and missions popping up as you play.
Over all, a very strong title that gives the player just a little too much freedom to not play the game.

Learning Curve: Takes a second

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Yes, Crackdown has gone beyond GTA and all the clones. It differs with letting you play the cop instead of the bandit, but it also changes things by allowing your gene-modified body to do extreme things. You jump insanely high, throw cars at people and so on. Funny, and a good move away from the simple "GTA Clone"-characteristics.

BUT , the sandbox-style games needs to be smart to be fun. The game mechanics of these games is not _that_ impressive, although diverse, so a great story is alpha and omega. Without an interesting story to make you feel you'r actually doings things for a reason, the genre falls apart, imho. And Crackdown is in a strong fight with Saints Row for the "worst game storyline of the year" contest. Except different years :)

Disclaimer: I've played the full game, but not completed it by far. This is just my ten cent so far.
Disclaimer2: Ignore my lack of writing correctness :)

Learning Curve: Takes a while

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If the actual game is even remotely like the demo I will be ignoring my friends and fighting over the xbox 360 with my boyfriend to play it. The demo is so addictive that I have had to force myself to stop playing it for my own sake. It is similar to GTA, but that isn't always a bad thing, right? They have taken good gta stuff and made it even more fun with boosts in abilities. I haven't been this excited for a game to come out in a very long time!

Learning Curve: Takes a second

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I've only played the demo at the time of writing this review, but I have the game on preorder.

If you like GTA, or Saints Row, there is a good chance you will love the hell out of this game. You can jack cars, and beat the crap out of everyone. You can shoot guns, and throw grenades. All the stuff you can do in other sandbox games...and then it goes farther.

The game starts you out as an agent with starter stats, that increase as you do activities. The more you shoot people, the more your Weapons skill improves. The more you use explosives, the more your Explosives skill improves. There are 5 core skills: Agility, Strength, Weapons, Explosives, and Driving. Strength, Weapons, and Explosives are simply improved by killing with it's respective skill. Agility is improved by either killing while in the air, doing rooftop races, or by collecting Agility Orbs that are spread out on buildings and ledges everywhere. Driving is improved by killing with your vehicle, or by doing races.

It's no small improvement when you increase your abilities. My two favourite things about this game are increasing your agility, and increasing your strength. When you get your agility up you can jump incredible distances (all the while targetting and throwing grenades, etc.) and incredible heights. When you increase your strength you eventually can lift cars (or trucks, etc.) and toss them pretty far. You can kick cars and people, or whatever, and send them flying.

All in all, this game is a blast. I've played the demo more times than I can count and I plan to play the game a lot when it arrives. Give it a try, the demo is free after all.

Learning Curve: Instant!

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