When I had first seen and heard deals about Crackdown, I was a little skeptical of the game. It looked interesting enough, interesting use of visuals, interesting concept, but to me it didn’t sound like that fun of a game. This skepticism ended once I played the Crackdown demo on the Xbox Live Marketplace. I was floored by this game. Some were saying, oh it will just be another GTA knockoff that falls on its face, but they were dead wrong.

Gameplay
Crackdown is a game like no other I have ever played. You start off the game and are given some info about how to start, and you are basically thrown into this city. I have no problem with this as this game is pretty straight forward from the beginning. The city is huge, and while some games will hamper you to the streets, this game basically lets you go anywhere, and the more you progress, the more places you can go. The main concept of the game is upgrading your agent. There are five different areas of upgrades, Firearms, Driving, Explosives, Agility and Strength. Each has their own way to upgrade them and has different affects on your agent.  Firearms include your gun skills, it increases accuracy and damage, and you simply kill people with guns to progress. Driving can be upgraded by doing races, killing gang members in a vehicle or performing stunts and driving through stunt markers. This upgrades your driving skills and upgrades the agency vehicles. Explosives are progressed through using explosives to kill enemies, upgrading this will increase your explosive power when using items like grenades increasing damage and the blast area. Agility is upgraded through a few different ways. You can kill enemies while in the air, perform roof top races or pick up some of the 500 agility orbs spread throughout the city. Upgrading this increases you’re running speed and height you can jump to. Strength is upgraded by meleeing enemies, throwing stuff at enemies or even throwing enemies to kill other enemies.  These all show their level on the left side of the screen and if you find a hidden orb, it will upgrade some of every skill. These skills are very cool to have, and as you gain levels in them, up to a four start rating, but they are essential to the game.  You will not be able to kill some of the bosses or kingpins without upgrading your skills as it would simply be too hard to do. Also, increasing the agility skill, my personal favorite, you are able to access more of the city, such as climbing up buildings and being able to jump to places you weren’t able to before your agility was at a certain level.

The basic concept of the game is that you are an agent, and your job is to eliminate the various gangs in the city. There are different gangs in the three areas, each with different bosses and kingpins.  The main idea is to defeat the bosses before you defeat the kingpins, because doing so will weaken them because the bosses control certain aspects of the gang such as weapons. These are generally straight forward tasks and you are given intel and locations once you are near the boss. This is very helpful and they will then show up on your HUD.

The game does include some other modes to play in including coop and time attack.  The coop is pretty much straightforward as in you and another player on Xbox Live can play the game together, going along and defeating the bosses or just screwing around. The time attacks involve you starting at the front of the bases and going until you defeat the boss as fast as possible. This is an interesting addition to the game allowing you to try and find the best way to defeat the boss. The coop is quite unique in this type of game, and it adds a good amount of fun allowing you to play with a friend through the campaign.

The controls in this game are pretty straight forward, with all of the buttons clearly defined in the manual with its own function allowing for fluid gameplay. The game also includes a download for the Halo 3 demo, but at this time that option is grayed out and will be available once the demo is released. You also must load the demo from the game menu. All of the usual options menus are built into the menus, and they are very easy to navigate and find what you are looking for.

The gameplay is unique and innovative, and creates a new level of fun on the Xbox 360. This game is really unlike anything I have ever played before, and was extremely impressed with the gameplay, compared to my initial impressions.  The amount of area to explore in this massive city is impressive, and you are actually able to go pretty much anywhere you want opposed to other games of this magnitude.  The lack of load times is impressive, and is beginning to show what the Xbox 360 is capable of compared to other games where it would have to load in this span.

Graphics and Sound
The graphics in this game are excellent, but also very unique. They sort of look slightly cell shaded, but the detail is outstanding on the many objects in the city. The draw distance is outstanding, and you can clearly see tall skyscrapers all over the city from a single point, allowing you to see where you want to go if you are exploring. The characters are detailed and move fluidly with no clipping or sketchy animations. The effects included in the game, including massive explosions, and the ragdoll physics work extremely well in this game as it has so many NPCs in the environment.  There are a huge number of objects in the game to utilize, and the only issue I really ran into is sometimes not being able to pick certain objects without moving around a bit. This game does show a lot of power of the console with the number of people and objects onscreen at a single time, with huge numbers in various parts of the city. This is very impressive in this game, along with the massive environment and draw distance. While it may not be the most visually impressive title on the Xbox 360, it is right near the top.

The audio in this game is done very well. The voice-overs are excellent, and keep you updated in the game.  The sound effects such as explosions and gunfire sound very real, and add to the atmosphere of this game. The use of surround sound is also useful as you can hear the happenings going on around you in the game, whether it is gunfire or the chatter of enemies. The soundtrack is lacking a bit in this game though with really no well known music included, but the soundtrack does fit this futuristic game very well.

The graphics and audio in this game suit the concept very well in this futuristic city. They really make it seem like a possible time frame compared to mismatched visuals and audio which would completely confuse the gamer. This game is very visually impressive with the massive scope of the city, and the audio works well but the soundtrack could use a slight tweak here.

Overall
I was extremely impressed with Crackdown, and Realtime Worlds has done an excellent job with this highly anticipated title. Many have been saying they are using it for a quick and easy way to get the Halo 3 demo, but this game will most likely hook those gamers in. The graphics are unique and portray this futuristic city extremely well. The audio is crisp and the voice-overs tell you what you need to know, helping you through this game. The coop is very well done, and the availability of a Halo 3 demo in the future makes this a very tempting game. The campaign may be quite linear and can be short for some, I feel that this game would have enough replay value to suit most gamers for quite awhile. This massive sprawling city has plenty of things to do and areas to explore, and with hundreds of orbs to find, this game could keep most people interested for quite awhile.