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Good: Co-op, abilities, city well built for climbing

Bad: No real sidemissions, announcer, glitches, A.I.

Addictive: Agility orbs

Crackdown is a title that was bound to sell well no matter what. Any title that had the Halo 3 beta attached to it is a guaranteed sell, so this game could have been crap and still flown off the shelves. Luckily, Realtime Worlds has put together a very solid title on its own merits.

The expansive demo on the Xbox Marketplace should give gamers a good idea of what to expect from Crackdown. You play as a sort of supercop in a futuristic city that's infested with crime. It's a sandbox game, but has much more in common with the fantastic Mercenaries than with Grand Theft Auto.

Like Mercenaries, the map features a large amount of boss characters that you can take on in any order you wish. The entire city is open from the start, and you can either take out gang members as you see them or opt to zero in on the leader's well-guarded locations. They'll be found on the roofs of skyscrapers, on oil rigs, hidden away near a lighthouse, and many other places.

The process of invading these strongholds is fairly simple load up on weapons and charge forward with all guns blazing. There's really no advanced strategy to the action, outside of taking cover when your shields need to recharge. Enemy A.I. is often dumb as a rock, stopping to aim at a ceiling or run into a wall. Some situations are extremely satisfying, such as blasting a large group of thugs off a skyscraper with a well-aimed rocket.

Based on what I've described so far, Crackdown sounds like a run-of-the-mill sandbox game from a cop's perspective. One important aspect of the game changes that, however. Your agent has five core skills agility, driving, explosives, strength, and firearms. By using each of these skills, you'll level them up and make them significantly more powerful. At the beginning of the game, your grenades will cause cars to do a little bunny hop if they're near the explosion. By the time you hit four stars, however, they'll be soaring through the air.

That's when the game really shines. A fully leveled up agent is a blast to control, as you can soar to rooftops, send bodies flying through the air, and toss semi trucks at enemies. Some skills take quite a while to level up, especially driving and firearms. After beating the game and spending about 20 hours with the title, I'm just now approaching the four-star mark with firearms. Agility is easily my favorite skill to upgrade, as this is accomplished by jumping to hard-to-reach places to collect up to 500 agility orbs.

While it's certainly enjoyable as a single-player game, it's a much better co-op experience. I spent many hours with my friend just messing around. We had rooftop battles, made huge piles of cars to explode, jumped off each other's heads to get to difficult agility orbs, and even filled a phone booth with pedestrian corpses.

I even earned one of the harder Achievements through some co-op creativity. The Achievement in question requires you to perform two front flips in one jump with a car. I tried at several ramps on my own to no avail. My friend found a truck that had a ramp attached to the back of it, which gave us an idea. We sat at opposite ends of a long stretch of road, and he sped towards me in reverse while I gunned it towards his ramp. I not only got the two flips achievement, I did four flips and wound up slamming into a ferris wheel.

Moments like these are excellent, and are a great reason to check out Crackdown. Unfortunately, it's certainly not a flawless experience. Graphical glitches pop up from time to time, and you'll sometimes get caught in a staircase or some other environmental snag. You can extract to a supply point at any time, but this is still frustrating if you were about to finish off a boss. There are also interiors that feature constantly appearing and disappearing enemies.

A great aspect of the visuals of Crackdown is the immense draw distance. I never noticed any pop-up or fade-in, and you can see for what seems like miles from the top of some of the taller buildings. Despite this, there's really nothing terribly unique or impressive about the graphics.

It may be slightly above average in the visual department, but it's clear they must not have had much budget left over for audio. The voice acting is some of the worst I've ever heard in a videogame, and I've played Elebits. When I kicked a henchman off the roof of a giant skyscraper, he sounded as concerned as he'd be if he accidentally spilled some nacho cheese on his pants.

The announcer also has an odd tendency to make statements that in no way apply to your current situation. There must have been at least a dozen times he said something along the lines of "An impressive ascent! It's rare for anyone to reach heights of this magnitude" while I was completely at ground level. At no point in the game does he just shut up, so expect him to say stuff like "your ammo's low, agent!" and "you're badly wounded, agent!" constantly.

I certainly have my complaints about this title, but some of the hilarious and impossible-to-duplicate co-op moments made it a worthwhile gaming experience. It can be beaten in pretty short fashion, and there really aren't any sidemissions or distractions outside of a few races. Your best bet would be to get a friend to rent a copy with you, and blow through it in a few days. It'll definitely be fun while it lasts.

Graphics: 7.5

Sound: 4.0

First Play: 9.0

Replay Value: 8.0

Gameplay: 8.5

Overall: 8.4