For Everyone Who's Ever Wanted to Blow Up Their Sandbox
Say what you like about Grand Theft Auto, the game that spawned the open-world genre of video games. Whatever your opinion of it, it did a lot of things interesting enough to spawn plenty of games that imitate the formula.
Crackdown is one of those games, putting you in the character of a bio-enhanced Agent of (wait for it...) the Agency, the umbrella security/military/police force in the world of Pacific City. The Agency has got its hands full with the three gangs that are running rampant in the city, each controlling their own area. Your mission is to take out the Kingpin of each gang, which will cripple them to the point of making it easy to eliminate them. Each Kingpin has Generals that enhance the gang in some way - providing weapons, enhanced vehicles, physical training, and others. Take out the Generals, and the gang becomes easier to deal with - which is important, because the tougher the gang, the less likely you'll even get to look at the Kingpin, much less make the kill.
Your character has five core skills - brawling, shooting, driving, jumping, and blowing stuff up - that can be enhanced. Punching a gang member to death will enhance your brawling skill. Running him over with a car will enhance your driving skill. Since you can't exactly 'jump' an enemy to death, there are 500 'agility orbs' that are hidden around the city (mostly on the rooftops) that will enhance your jumping ability that way. Also hidden in the game are 300 'hidden orbs' that enhance all of your skills.
Aside from killing bad guys, you can also participate in 'rooftop races' which have you jumping from beacon to beacon, trying to get under a set time (rewarded with agility points) and 'road races' which have you driving the game's vehicles from beacon to beacon, trying to get under a set time (rewarded with driving points). Sadly, these added elements of gameplay are not stellar, and are rather clumsy (especially the driving races, which will invariably cause you to run over civilians, which hamper your skill progression).
The combat in the game can be pretty satisfying, however - wandering through a forest, approaching an enemy stronghold, looking for baddies to snipe off before they see you - the process is rather easy and uncomplicated, which is good for this genre of game - Counter-Strike, this isn't.
In the final analysis, the game comes off a bit bland. The story is... well, it isn't, and some of the modes added for variety are clumsy and a bit frustrating. The core of the game is good, though there isn't a lot of it, so while the game is ultimately easy to enjoy, it's also ultimately easy to forget.
