Many people are unaware of this game and ask: what is Crackdown?

Quite simply, Crackdown is Grand Theft Auto, made by Microsoft, and featuring a government agent with superhuman powers instead of your average joe. Also, the objective is not to steal cars. At this point you're wondering: if you don't steal cars, and you're a superhuman soldier, how exactly is this the Microsoft Grand Theft Auto?

Well it's because this game is essentially based off of the same principles as GTA. You run around in a city called Pacific City that's free and open, with 3 islands (4 if you count the small home island) and you can steal cars, shoot people, and most anything else that GTA is known for.

To start with, you pick out your agent's appearance. This isn't highly customizable as it first seems to be, but any choice is good, giving at least some variety. You're given some tutorial on your abilities, explaining that you have five areas to improve: Agility, Firearms, Strength, Explosives, and Driving. They all have their own color codes and are easy to identify as you go through the game. These abilities get leveled up as you use them; that is, if you shoot an enemy, you will collect Firearms experience, if you beat someone, you get Strength experience in the form of colored orbs. When the enemy dies and these orbs drop, your character absorbs them. As you gain experience, the attribute in question gets leveled up to one of four levels. For example, if you go from level 2 to 3 in Explosives, you'll be able to create bigger explosions than before. The exception to collecting orbs is Agility. The only way to increase Agility is to jump around buildings and various structures and grab all the green glowing orbs. It will take collection of a few hundred of these orbs to max out your Agility, at which point you can leap tall buildings in a single bound.

That's the RPG element of Crackdown. The meat of the game is in completing missions to defeat various mob bosses. This is where the game is like GTA. There are people to assassinate, enemy agents to kill, etc. Except that you're not trying to make your way to the top, you're already on the top of the food chain. It's your job to rid Pacific City of its recent overrunning of mobs and gangs. Pretty simple, not much more to it than that. You have the access to weapons, vehicles, and superhuman abilities that people wish they had in GTA, RPG elements, and beautiful graphics. The story is pretty weak, you're simply killing people and wiping out gangs, and that's really the the whole story. The end, however, presents a twist for the player, which won't be spoiled here.

All in all, Crackdown came out to be a great game. I would highly recommend it to anyone who likes GTA or Action/Adventure games infused with RPG elements.