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Cosmetics aside, what sets Crackdown apart from other sandbox games is the way the skills become the game. The bosses are just a cheap excuse to run, jump, shoot, and explode with wild abandon, although the later ones take their fair share of strategy to defeat. The real meat of Crackdown is had just exploring the city, bounding from rooftop to rooftop while tossing grenades at the thugs below, basking in the warm glow of a five-car chain explosion that sends debris four stories high as you plot a course to the next agility orb.
While most skills are improved primarily by killing enemies, the agility skill that governs the agent's speed and jumping height is enhanced by green balls of light found on top of buildings. There are 400 orbs scattered through the city, and though collecting them all is by no means required to max out the skill, getting every single one quickly becomes an addiction. While they're all sitting out in plain sight, snagging an orb on top of the spire on a thirty story tall building can be tricky and fun, and there's a great view from the top to boot. Crackdown's sleek, clean graphics have a draw distance that seems to go on forever, and the view from the top of the tallest buildings is very impressive.
Of course, there's a time to take in the sights and a time to blow things up, and it's always more fun with a friend. Crackdown offers two-player co-op, but doesn't tie the players together. They can run around the whole city independent of each other, tackle bosses together, or find new and entertaining ways to cause rampant, gratuitous destruction. You can't go wrong gathering a huge pile of cars, wiring them up with triggered explosives, and having one player jump the pile while the other triggers the inferno.
It's the idea of a "city as playground" that makes Crackdown so much fun. While the basic elements of the game are simple, the way the player is allowed to do whatever he wants with an overpowered agent in a giant toy box of a world makes for a ridiculously good time. There are the usual issues with the sandbox style of game, unfortunately, such as a camera that needed a bit more tweaking and no ability to replay the boss missions outside of a time-attack mode, but Crackdown's biggest fault is how it leaves you wanting more. The nature of the game encourages you to make your own challenges (and I will get the SUV on top of that tower!) but the bosses, races, and orbs that seemed so plentiful at game's beginning are taken down far too quickly.
Still, it's a great ride while it lasts, and there's plenty of replay value in addition to just screwing around in the game world in addition to chasing some of the more creative achievements. While more would have been better, what's there is ridiculously entertaining and the sandbox elements never stop being fun. Crackdown is big, bold, direct, filled with stuff to blow up real good, and there's a million goofy things to do for those creative enough to see them. Really, you can't ask for better than that.
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