http://xboxyde.com/news_3905_en.html

Xboxyde is reporting this as well ;) Lots of new pictures, as well as coop.

Hehe came over here to make the thread.......

CRACKDOWN HANDS ON IMPRESSIONS

Righty, I've been lucky enough to play a bit of this the last week or so. It's difficult to talk about much that is new, but I shall give it a go.

First things first, the art style. It's definitely an aquired taste as you will see from the screens. I don't have a problem with it personally and a colleague of mine loved it. From up high, the city below you looks impressive. The lighting it's more difficult to say because of the cel-shaded style but there were times when it did look purdy.

Frame rate rock solid in this build I hasten to add. I see a lot of stuff when it's not done and usually stuff that isn't optimised totally. This felt really good to be noteworthy, and I'll imagine they will have had a few more weeks to tweak before RTM.

Gameplay is more difficult to assess as I was going through with cheats and a bumped up character. I quite like the way your abilities are improved by "doing things" . Win races, driving abilites go up, shoot and kick people, your weapon and combat skills level up accordingly. There aren't a huge number of levels, like an RPG but when you do reach the next one, there is a very noticeable difference in what you can do.

One thing the game does really well is emphasise the vertical paradigm. The world extends upwards even more than it does along the ground. Some of the buildings are VERY high so there is tons to explore. Your ability attributes are increased by discovering "Agility Orbs" and there are a LOT of these. You will need to find at least some, because missions can get very difficult if you are unable to make the right jumps. Jumping around the city is very much like the Incredible Hulk game, only done better, in my opinion.

Speaking of the city, it's very much alive. Lots of people and cars milling about the place. To think they actually had to reduce the traffic!

As for the mission structure, it's quite nicely laid out. Everything is available to you at the start of the game, you could head straight for the higher ups in the gang but I imagine it will be balanced to make it hideously difficult to cut corners. I couldn't explore much in this area during my time.

You do get a briefing for each "Mission" or target which gives you some background and intelligence on the location so you can plan one of several ways to approach the target.

Unfortunately I couldn't play co-op either, but I think that will be the DE FACTO way to play this game, or even just to mess about. With two people, you could really create some crazy stuff in the world.

Other nice touches, being able to focus on limbs/heads was quite cool, you could do the same for cars (i.e. aim at the petrol tanks!) . Explosions look great, as you can see :)

The achievements look dead fun, but I can't reveal what they are :P

Anyway, apologies that was a bit of a ramble. If there are questions I will try and answer them but I won't be giving anything quantative that isn't public knowledge. Opinion and public domain stuff only :D

How did you find the difficulty, a bit easy?
Edit: see you was cheating so scrap that one.
And what was the furthest you threw a Pro? ;)

Whats a Pro? :)

Prostitute! (I don't know, such a sheltered life you live deftangel) ;)

tut, tut Slabs :0 true though.

That's a point, the press in the UK will probably jump all over this one at the mo.

LOL I see :P I'm not so sheltered, you haven't seen the office I work in! I also did a presentation earlier this year and used Saint's Row for some footage. My goal for the clip was to have as many hookers running around on fire as possible :D

Anyhow, Crackdown will never escape the GTA comparisons but in terms of the gameplay, you are definitely more encouraged to kill the bad guys, rather than target the civillians directly. The cops turn against you pretty quickly (though with the god mode on I merely laughed in their face).

So basically, I don't remember seeing a "Pro" whilst playing. For sure, I wasn't really looking, and a lot of the time I was favouring the buildings over the streets :D but that doesn't mean they aren't there. One of the gang characters could easily be a pimp for example.

You could certainly throw people about pretty far...some of the achievements seemed to hint about throwing "things" , that's all I can say! :D

Secondpost by none other then slabs, and you'll see what I mean :D.

Hahaha! that's an awesome screen! I'm not at work, but if I get a chance I shall investigate! :D

That's pretty much it. You get a briefing on each character that talks about them for a bit but there didn't seem to be a story thread that linked characters in the gang together. Remember, you can tackle these missions in ANY order so that would be difficult to do.

One thing, you have to find the targets first, only then are they highlighted on the map. (You get intel, it's not as bad as that sounds!)

I didn't see anything in terms of character development of the player character either but again I should stress, I wasn't playing this in the "proper" fashion. Just messing around, though not enough to answer Roxwell's question properly

I would definitely say try the demo. The gameplay is a lot of fun.

Yup. You could go after the leader of Gang A straight away, or you could take out his henchmen first. If you took out his weapon runner(s), you would find they have less guns when you get to the head guy. And so on from there.

Yea I'm looking forward to this too, a demo will definitly be nice..but I'm gonna be renting this one either way. Thanks for the impressions deft, keep up the good works :P