Crackdown Preview

Grand Theft Auto meets Robocop meets Spider-Man

Lately I've been wasting A LOT of time playing the Crackdown demo I downloaded on Xbox Live Marketplace a few days ago. The game, which is set to ship in roughly a month (Feb 20th), may look like a GTA clone at first glance, but the demo is damn addicting and it seems to be a breath of fresh air into the already cliche genre.

The thing that I'm looking forward to the most about this game is just how vertical it is. I'm sure most gamers have played GTA and gone around jacking cars, shooting thugs, and the like. Crackdown isn't much different, except it has much more emphasis on vertical exploration. The buildings are taller, some almost seem TOO TALL, and all of them are accessible (once you're character's stats have progressed and you can jump high enough). Once I reached a high enough agility, which is done by collecting orbs scattered around the city, I was scaling buildings like Spider-Man. Jumping from rooftop to rooftop and dropping down on criminals like it was going out of style.



Initially the demo starts out fairly slow as your character's attributes haven't progressed at all. You can't jump very high, your driving skills are junk-ass, and you could barely hit water shooting out of a boat (lame, I know.). Eventually though, after gaining a few levels, you feel like a supercop and the game gains a huge appeal. Jumping around on rooftops doesn't get old and soon I was wasting precious time just collecting hidden orbs and finding secrets, it's just that fun.

I'm not sure if Crackdown's storyline is going to be worth the price of admission, or if this game is going to be that much different than a GTA clone on crack, but the demo is damn fun. I'll be picking up my copy come February 20th. If it does suck, at least I get admission into the Halo 3 beta.

Cheers.

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