For a game that most people would see as a GTA clone at first, Crackdown has managed to create a large fan base in a very small timeframe. Could this be due to the Halo 3 Multiplayer Beta invite slammed on the front cover of the game, or is Crackdown actually a fulfilling addition to your Xbox 360 games library?

Crackdown works like most other free-roaming games. You can jump, shoot, hijack cars, and beat the *** out of innocent civilians. The difference is that you can improve on skills that other games only wish they could do: Super Strength, Super Speed, Super Jumps, Super Driving! Crackdown offers a new way to play free-roaming games, by controlling a genetic freak that can jump from building to building while blowing up large groups of mobsters.

The game pays a lot of attention to detail when destroying targets. You can lock on to the head, arms, legs or chest of people to do maximum damage to those particular areas. As you increase your marksmanship skill, it becomes easier and faster to home in on a particular part of the body, or car. Cars work similarly, you can blow out the wheels and make cars spin off the road, or you can even select the gas tank and blow the car up with one bullet.

To complete the basic story of the game, you have to take out all the gang leaders throughout the city humbly named Pacific City. They are located in all three major areas of the game and slowly increase in difficulty. Jumping online, you can join a friend in co-operative play to take on the gangs, and once your skills are maxed out the time trials can prove to be both entertaining and challenging. Some of the gang leaders only take a few seconds to kill once you can do a super jump to their location.

What really seperates Crackdown from other shoot-em-up's is the explosions. Don't turn your speakers up too loud, or the neighbours will think your suburb is getting bombed. The explosions really are some of the loudest blasts ever before seen in video games, and they actually look fairly realistic. As far as how Crackdown looks, there's some framerate issues and loading issues here and there, the game finds it hard to load everything sometimes if you're speeding through the city, but when you slow down and take a look at the graphics from a standstill, you can see how detailed the city really is.

Once you've killed all the gang leaders the game isn't over. There are still lots of achievements to be unlocked with 800 orbs scattered around the city to find, and lots of purple stunt marker circles that you have to drive a car through. The cars are another impressive addition to the game, with the three agency vehicles being fully upgradeable as you increase your driving skill. The SUV is great for stunts and driving over traffic, the Supercar is great for driving under vehicles and the high speed races, and the Truck Cab is great for driving through everything, especially groups of bad guys.

All up, the game offers fresh new ideas to the free-roam style genre, and Crackdown is a title you don't want to miss. The Halo 3 Beta is just an added bonus to this already outstanding title.