Admit it – doesn’t this look like fun?

(~3 minutes, footage of various carnage in Crackdown, an Xbox 360 game)

It was. Crackdown was excellent. It’s a 3rd person action game set in a dystopian future city where you’re a genetically altered supercop out to put the smackdown on the gangs that have run amok in the city. The city itself is fantastic – it’s huge, diverse, detailed, populated with tons of people wandering and driving about, and graphically it looks great. The game is free form – aside from some hand holding in the beginning you’re basically free to do as you please, exploring, fighting wandering thugs, and seeking out gangleader hideouts as you see fit. Your skills increase as you use them, so for example in the beginning you can only jump about 10 feet, and by the end you can leap about like a bionic jackrabbit superhero. The core mechanics of running, fighting, shooting, jumping and climbing are really solid and really fun, so much so that even though I’ve solved the game I’ve still been playing it a bit, continuing to explore the nooks and crannies of the huge city. It’s not all perfect – enemy AI is poor, which is especially obvious when you fight the bosses, and the driving is ok but much less compelling than the other gameplay mechanics. Still, the game is a solid, engaging A level game and well worth a look, especially since you can get it dirt cheap – my copy was only $13 shipped from an ebay seller.

It’s also got coop which I haven’t tried yet but which I intend to if I can only manage to convince my buddy Trevor to pick up a copy.