Well as mentioned before Crackdown is a game that throws you in an open environment and makes you go on a hunt for orbs in order to upgrade your skills. Here is a map of where all 300 hidden orbs can be found, this will also unlock an achievement once you collect them all. Good luck and happy hunting.

Microsoft has teamed up with Warner Brothers to sponsor a contest involving the new bloody gladiator movie, 300. There’s 5 videos on the Xbox Marketplace, (2 trailers, 3 behind-the-scenes journals) that all have a special code at the end. So go download the free clips, watch the videos, then visit the contest website to enter. There will be 300 winners (ironic?) who will all get a free copy of Crackdown.

I gotta say, Microsoft is marketing the hell out of Crackdown. And it’s definitely worth it. I’m hoping 300 lives up the hype, because I watch the trailers on the Marketplace at least every couple days. I’ve been looking forward to this movie for months. Can’t wait until it gets released on March 9th.

Crackdown is a game that mixes the best of the GTA series with a mix of the Matrix. In essence Crackdown is a game that puts you in the future where crime has run rampant and all police forces have joined together to combat them. You are a special agent hired by the Agency to help take back your city, you are also a bio-engineered individual that can build your skills and talents to a super human level, allowing you to throw cars, leap buildings and run at super human speeds. You level your skills by performing different acts like races either on foot or by car, killing enemies with certain weapons or your bare hands, or finding orbs that are scattered around the city.

The basic premise of the game is to defeat a main boss on each of the three islands, which is done by beating smaller under bosses that work for them to make then weaker. The first island is run by the Latinos, the second is run by the Russians and the third is run by the Asians. The third island is the most challenging with snipers and enemies with rocket launchers, which always make running around fun.

All in all the game is fun and is very open ended as far as where you can go on the map, but it is extremely short and once you are done there is nothing left to do. Once you beat the final boss there is a foreshadowing of a sequel and then you have free rain of the city. When you try to start a game again on a different difficulty like psychotic the bosses do not re-spawn so you are just running around the city trying to max out your skills.

Overall rating : 7 out of 10

Blowing things up and building your skills is a blast, but after that there just isn’t anything to do. Crackdown is a rental in my opinion, unless you want the disc for the Halo 3 Beta.

(There is also an easy way to get the best weapons - just run a coop game with a buddy that has the rocket launcher, or weapon you want. Kill him and loot his body, then run it over to a safe house and you have instant rocekts for the rest of the game.)

I figured with St. Patty’s Day coming, the luck of my ancestors might shine in my direction. Alas, no. Xbox 360 #5 died this morning. She was only a little over a week old. I’ve gotten 10 disc read errors in the past 2 days in 4 games. Crackdown, Lego Star Wars, and Gears wouldn’t even load up. MLB 2K7 loads, but I get disc errors halfway through the games. Ugh. Looks like this is going back to Best Buy today for Xbox 360 #6.

There’s WAY too many stories of people having gone through multiple 360’s. I don’t know a single person still on their first. 3-5% failure rate my ass!

I came across a quote from Bungie that I thought was hilarious, they pretty much told everyone that the Halo 3 beta was not going to launch with Crackdown and would be ready no earlier than the Spring. A lot of the hype over getting Crackdown was to get into the Halo 3 beta that isn’t even ready now, but may come out in a few months. I give the marketing guys at MS a gold star though for padding their sales of Crackdown units by including the prospect of a Halo 3 beta, well played gentleman, well played. I think next MS should make a shitty game and just put a big Halo 3 sticker on the box, should sell over a million copies easy.

Xbox Live will be down starting at 2am PST (that’s 5am EST for all you math majors out there). It “should” only be down for 3 hours, but we all know how that goes. I find it odd that it’s going down the day Crackdown is coming out at retail, which is such a huge release because of the Halo 3 Beta (not to mention the fact that it’s a great game).

So if you wanted to play into the wee hours of the morning, you’re shit out of luck. Get some sleep and play some Crackdown tomorrow.

It’s worth it to note that there will be NO new features on the 360 Dashboard, Live, or xbox.com. This is just server maintenance, as confirmed by Major Nelson.

I was able to get out today and get a new 360 from Best Buy. Unfortunately, I didn’t get one with the new quiet Benq/LG drive. I’m going to spend a good portion of the week playing Rainbow Six: Vegas, Lost Planet, and Gears of War… that is until I get Crackdown Tuesday afternoon. Look for me online so I can pwn you all

Check this out.

These are some sick achievements and the video gives you a nice view of the game play.
Crackdown is slated to release with 900 points of achievements available, with more to come with content download. The video makes me want to buy the game.

So I got bored and listened to Panda to download the Demo for Crackdown, mainly cuz I don’t make any posts. LOL. The game loads a lovely photosensitive seizures warning, among other suggestions, please make sure you sit far away from the tv. Decent start up techno music with the start up screen consisting of a 360 view of the city with 3 tabs for options, main menu, and agency info (which includes map, gang dossier, achievements and leader board - not accessible now though) Playing the campaign mode you can choose Tough, Ruthless or Psychotic difficulties. Demo Mode has an accelerated skill progression, with only certain capabilities able to be unlocked and used. It starts with you standing in a garage and you must run to pick a vehicle and then drive off to part of the city. In the Agency I chose the SUV to “drive over any obstacle.” Los Muertos “The Dead”, is the only gang island you can go after in the demo. The other two gangs I can tell right now are Volk and Shai-Gen.

Driving into the city to help the local authorities takeout part of the gang, is a main part of the game and you can explore and kill anyone in site. You are able to take any weapon from the dead criminals and bring them back to your hub to use them any time later on in the game. Which is a cool feature if you find a gun you really like and the ability to jump to any agency during the game.

While in the mission I ran over an green Agility orb (1 of 500). These I assume update your characters abilities. You can enter these supply points and choose any weapons to place in your arsenal, reload all your ammo and exit, and go to another supply point you have entered previously along your travels. Pretty tight when you run around the city collecting Orbs, almost like the packages in Grand Theft, except these actually help you out. HAHA. Every time to you encounter gang members and shoot at them, squad cars fly into action and help you out. I reached 2 stars in firearms and I have 30 minutes of demo time remaining. Low level bangers is a key phrase used often and I will now have to start saying that in person, hopefully to the next person that calls my phone. As well as the Agility Orbs, there are also Blue Hidden Orbs (300). My time limit ended, but overall this seems to be a great game. I am very pissed I have to stop playing because you can pretty much do anything with your character, running and jumping across the city, lifting objects, shooting people. Falling and getting shot doesn’t seem to do much damage…on this level at least, mainly because body armor regenerates and body cloning is available.

Overall I rank the Graphics a 9.0, even though it isn’t life like, the cartoonish feel is amazing and every character looks nice. The music isn’t as advanced as other games, but that really isn’t a huge factor to me. I think the game play is very simple, so I give the learning curve about 10 minutes and overall a 9.5. I think this game has a lot of potential, especially with online and coop play for those that enjoy it. Thats all. This is basically my first main, in depth review. So I am sure it sucks. Oh well.

The Crackdown demo, which was previously delayed on the 360 Live Marketplace, now has a date set. Members of the Crackdown team posted on the official forums that the demo is now expected at 2am PST on Tuesday January 23rd. There’s been a lot of hype around this game, mainly because of the Halo 3 beta codes. I’m interested to see how this game plays.