Laying Down The Law

Imagine a city rampant with crime. Imagine a governmental agency designing super soldiers to bring down the many crime syndicates terrorising the city. Now, if your imagination is in full working order, you should have thought of something akin to Crackdown.

Pacific City is the city, and The Agency is … the agency. And you, you control a super cop whose job it is to bring down said crime rings. The beauty of the game rests in this been-done-before concept - there are no missions as such, you just stop crime. So if you want to trot up the driveway of The Don, ring his doorbell and happy slap him into submission, you can. Doing this before gaining some experience, however, may result in a bit of a spanking for our super cop.

The experience system is essentially the driving force of the game; you beat on some low level cretins to gain experience and level up your cop (in strength, agility, guns, explosives and driving). As you level up you get increasingly kickass, for example your improved agility means that there is nowhere in the game that is inaccessible. You can scale massive skyscrapers to get a view into a secret mafia meeting and blow them all away from afar. Or if you are a bit more hands on you can stroll into said meeting and throw a car at them - as long as you don't die in the process, it's all gravy.

Another facet of the game which drives it's non-mission-ness is the hierarchal system of the gangs. While it may not be wise to go straight for El Jefe, there are generals in the gang which are slightly easier to kill. So take down the gang's arms dealer, and all of a sudden the remaining plebs have sticks where once were AK's, making your life that little bit easier.

All this gaming goodness can then be played in Co-op mode, over Xbox Live, and it adds a whole further dimension to the game. There is no strict multiplayer mode, instead you invite people into your world and you two can do whatever. Run around shooting each other, leaping from building to building in place of a death match mode if you want. Or more useful to the game, you can go tackle crime from two fronts. For instance if you get yourself stuck in single player, say you never really got down with the whole driving thing (of which there is a lot; think in terms of GTA for car numbers and variety), but you need to make a quick getaway from an assault; so you post a Wanted: Getaway Driver ad on Xbox live. They come into your game and, after you have been throwing grenades around the Godfathers crib, help you make a speedy and smooth escape. Brilliant.

There possibilities within the game are massive, it looks amazing and runs like a dream... a crazy, explosive, rooftop-hopping wet dream. Combined with the regular crime fighting mode, the game also remembers everything you do. Say you headshot 400 people in a row, the game remembers this and posts it onto a leader board of achievements online for others to try and beat. It will even remember if you grab a pedestrian, chuck them into the air and then juggle them with your rocket launcher for 10 minutes - giving you first place on one of the more obscure leader boards.





Brain Box: Dave Jones

Any similarities to Grand Theft Auto (and there are a few) can be entirely forgiven, since Crackdown comes from the brain that also begat the original GTA, all them years ago. Dave Jones is his name, and along being involved with GTA he also spawned the sickly simple Lemmings games - making Crackdown a game worth keeping an eye on.