I just finished playing the Crackdown Demo, and it is a blast! Crackdown is a cross between Mercenaries and Grand Theft Auto, except that instead of being, you know, human you’re some kind of a bionic cop. You can do things like leap 20 feet in the air, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, a-la The Matrix. You also have superhuman strength, lifting and throwing cars and dumpsters hundreds of feet. You’ve also got a mean roundhouse kick. We’re talking Chuck Norris-level roundhouses. I roundhoused some random car so hard I knocked the guy in the passenger seat clear out of the car, all the way across the street. It was funny as it sounds. I spent most of my time roundhousing everyone and everything in sight.
Visually, I’m in love with how Crackdown looks. It has a cel-shaded, comic book look and feel. Very pleasing, visually. I wasn’t a huge fan of the controls, but I am a huge fan of how big and wide open the game looks to be. I didn’t even complete any of the missions in the demo. I spent the whole time driving around the city, running over bad guys (and civilians), jumping from building to building and roundhousing cars. I was warned on more than one occasion that I was crossing the line of harming too many civilians. I felt like a robot renegade cop. It was quite hilarious.
Crackdown definitley will be going on my short list of games to get next.