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I didn't expect much of Crackdown. I wanted a next-gen GTA and while this shared the same pedigree, it was about fighting crime rather than causing it, and spoken of mostly as a means to get into the Halo 3 beta. Keenly aware of my inability to keep up with Halo players, I steered clear, and it wasn't until a few months after release that I was persuaded to pick up a second-hand copy.I discovered an open world that broadly resembled GTA, but with a proper draw distance and almost zero interest in storytelling. The game was the criminal-stuffed city itself, designed for my agent to bound across like the Incredible Hulk with an assault rifle and a cigar-chewing narrator in my ear, and all of its many distractions represented a chance for self-improvement.
The Agility Orbs were the highlight, of course, their tell-tale humming a cue to drop everything and work out if I was capable of traversing increasingly elaborate routes across courtyards, stairwells and air conditioning ducts to reach them. Importantly, solving these 3D puzzles awarded not only Achievements but tangible improvements in my Agent's abilities - and taking time out to thin out even the smallest gang did too. Every enemy punched, shot or ran over spat out a cloud of orbs to boost my Agent's stats, and nothing was wasted time. It was, as many have pointed out, a superhero game, but one in which the hero earned his dominance, and the grind was so rewarding I never resented it.
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