Crackdown [X360]

Remember how it felt to play Pro Skater for the first time? Remember how it felt to walk out into the daylight after that first all-night session, and see the familiar scenery of your morning commute through Tony Hawk's eyes, picking out the perfect string of flips, grabs, and grinds from the handrails, ledges, and inclines of your street? Free-roaming, crime-fighting, building-leaping Crackdown recreates that same atmosphere, hundreds of feet above its city streets.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. At the start of Crackdown, such lofty pursuits are (literally) out of your reach - in order to start leaping over buildings you'll need to spend some time working on your agility skill. Level it up a time or two, via green orbs that hover in hard-to-reach places, and suddenly rooftops, windows and cliffs that were once inaccessible become just stepping stones in your path to rid the city of its crippling crimewave. Like some kind of webless Spiderman, you'll quickly find better ways than streets to get around.

Weapon proficiency, driving, physical strength and explosive use round out the game's portfolio of upgradable skills, and each of those is leveled up by using it in combat effectively. Cars go faster, and some transform into ever more powerful vehicles. Guns are more accurate and do more damage. You can pick up increasingly larger objects and take more hits. Explosions get bigger and more impressive. You start as a souped-up cop; you end up as a superhero.

Only a game with such a compelling structure could withstand Crackdown's total lack of plot. There's next to no narrative, and what's there isn't too good. All you need to know is that the game's city is made up of three islands, each with its own controlling gang. Your task is to knock out the kingpins of each gang, and you can exterminate them in more or less whatever order you like. Some are simple matters of finding and taking them out, but a few require more structured procedures like blowing up specific switches before the boss ventures out into the open. It's not a complicated game.

Although the plot isn't exactly intricate, the graphics, with their odd, half-cel-shaded look, are a real feat of engineering. Climb the police base's vast tower, right in the center of all three islands, and you really can see the whole damn city, complete with traffic. Whatever voodoo Realtime Worlds is doing to draw such an incredible amount of scenery is seriously impressive. It's certainly much more graceful about simulating its city than any of the Grand Theft Auto games, and doesn't resort to the kind of cheap tricks they had to pull to keep things running smoothly. Only the ugly HUD spoils the party, but you'll soon learn to look past it and enjoy the show.