In Crackdown, from Realtime Studios and Microsoft Game Studios; Crackdown is an open world game where the player is a super cop. As the player progresses they increase their abilities by collecting orbs. This is usually achieved just by using said abilities. The game centers around your character one of a group of super cops who work for the combined police forces of the future called, “the Agency.” The game's plot pretty much consists of going from one area to the next and killing bosses. There are 21 bosses in all and without collecting all the agility orbs and doing all the races the player will probably only spend around 10 hours playing. There is a co-op mode where the user and a friend can take on the bosses or just generally mess around. There is also a time trial mode where the user can try and complete a given area as fast as possible.

The game's shooting isn't exactly interesting or complex. Considering how much of a part of Crackdown shooting is, it would have been nice if it was implemented a little better. One can either aim without lock on which basically just means spraying bullets in a general direction or one can use the lock on feature which must be turned off and on when trying to shoot each separate enemy, which only makes shooting multiple enemies even more difficult. The explosive abilities in the game which include rocket launchers and grenades seem to be the remedy for this lack of shooting precision. For some reason the melee attacks consist only of kicking or stomping your enemy. I guess nobody taught these cops how to box. The player can also increase his strength by doing beating people up instead of just shooting them. Eventually, the player is even able to pick up cars, after gaining enough strength skill orbs. The player, after gaining enough orbs, can even kick over enemy vehicles while these vehicles are in motion. But even once this ability is maxed out the player still has trouble defeating enemies this way, as there is no lock-on for this ability. With all of these flaws it is not the silly story or lack there of or the stupid shooting/fighting mechanics that make this game good. It is the verticality of the design of the game.

Your character is constantly called upon to climb buildings or jump up to areas. This is mainly to access ability orbs or the rare orbs that will increase all your abilities. The game seems to have had some good ideas brewing within it but the developers ran out of time to implement these ideas or to properly further the game they have. The music and effects in Crackdown are your average fair of techno music and gunfire/explosions. In the end, as simplistic and unfinished as Crackdown is, it is probably worth at least a rental to get the achievements points out of it, if nothing else. It's not that Crackdown is a bad game, it's just that there isn't enough to it to hold your attention for very long unless you're just playing around doing non-game related sort of stuff. I would say that the game is a definite rental and if you really want the included HALO 3 Beta invite you might consider buying it as you will need the game disc to play he beta.

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