Title: Crackdown Platforms: Xbox 360 ESRB: M

Crackdown was packaged with the much anticipated Halo 3 Multiplayer beta which ended June 10, 2007. This was a smart business plan as Microsoft made it so that you had to keep Crackdown to download and play the exclusive beta resulting in Crackdown selling extremely well. But is Crackdown worth buying or is it just an added freebie to the Halo 3 beta?

Crackdown takes a shot at the "sandbox" genre similar to "Grand Theft Auto", "Saints Row", and "Just Cause". You assume the role of a super cop, the result of a cloning breakthrough made by "the agency", the law enforcement of Pacific City. The goal of the game is to clean up the city by taking out and crippling the three gangs of Pacific City. Once you roam around the city for a while, agency intelligence will reveal the location of key gang leaders. By taking all these leaders out, you will be led to the gang's kingpin in whom you must kill to advance. Once he is gone, you must stop the gang's final crime in which there are a bunch of lesser thugs in one area that you must kill and then the gang is no more. You must perform this method three times to free the city of the Volk, the Shai-Gen, and the Los Muertos gangs. This becomes very repetitive, and this is the game's weakness. But the game is saved due to its interesting ability system.

You have five different attributes; agility, firearms, explosives, driving, and strength. As you level up in these skills throughout the game, you get faster, jump higher, have more effective grenades, shoot more accurately, upgrade your vehicle capability, and be strong enough to lift up and throw a bus the distance of a few buildings. You level up in these skills by using them against enemies. If you kill a person by shooting, kicking, throwing something at them, driving over them or blowing them up, you will get special orbs accordingly for that skill that level you up depending on how many orbs you get. For leveling up in agility, green agility orbs are hidden on building tops or near places in a higher-than-ground altitude. The higher the orb is, the more you level up in agility.

All these things prove to be quite interesting as you can eventually hop over some buildings in a single jump or kill and enemy with one bullet. There is also an online co-op mode for Xbox Live. You can team up with another agent and tackle the gang leaders together which can be fun. However, without really good communication, it's easy to get separated from each other, especially considering you are in a massive 3-part city with high-speed vehicles and the ability to jump 30 feet. You do have radar that tells you where everything is, but you might accidentally kill your pal in a fire-fight.

Crackdown is definitely worth the buy if the Halo 3 beta was still valid. But since it's over I would suggest renting it one or two times and save your left over money for a different game.

Score:

6.5/10