Thankfully for me the biggest problem was to decide what to delete to make room for the download. I’m considering getting the 120GB drive when it comes out later this year. The game appeared in the “Demos and More” section, and started up no problem – with a simple loading screen that said “Loading”, “Halo 3 Beta”, and “Love, Bungie”

Once the Beta loads, there’s the familiar Bungie logo screen, then a very simple main menu that allows you to jump into Matchmaking, View Saved Films, and Quit to the Dashboard. The background is a fly-through of Valhalla, one of the three maps included in the Beta. The music is typical Marty fare, with the same music as Halo 2 , but with bits from the Halo 3 Announcement Trailer too.

Personalisation and Settings

The first thing I did was hit the Start button to go into my profile and change my appearance and controls. The options for your appearance now include a greater range of colours, as well as a tertiary colour on your armour for further personalisation. The emblems seem to be the same set as Halo 2, but I didn’t really go through them all to be sure. For the Beta you can only be a Spartan, but the implication is that other character models will be available, such as the Elite from Halo 2. I hope that the full set of characters will be available in the final game.

The other way you personalise your character is with a three character callsign, which is made up of a letter and two digits. This shorthand notation is used in team games particularly, with each team-mates callsign shown hovering over their character in the game. As you get closer to players, including opponents, their Gamertag is shown. The idea of the callsign is to make it easier for team mates to identify each other and issue commands/request help/etc. It’s not clear how the game will handle duplicate callsigns – perhaps this will feed into matchmaking and automatically exclude players with identical callsigns?

The options for the controls are pretty much as found in Halo 2, with presets such as Southpaw, Boxer, and Green Thumb available. I’m currently using Green Thumb, since I have the tendency when going head to head with someone in close combat to press in the right thumbstick by accident, so I’d rather accidentally melee them than accidentally zoom in Plus it means I can keep pointing at my opponent as I attempt to melee them, which gives me a better chance of hitting them than taking my thumb off the thumbstick to hit B – during which time they’ve moved away from directly in front of me. This also fits my preference for close combat over ranged, though I think that’s because it’s easier to actually hit the person when closer I think I need to improve my accuracy at distance, since I don’t believe I actually am significantly better at close range!

Controls

The control system itself is mostly the same as Halo 2, but the XBox 360 controller’s bumper buttons introduce some changes. They are used to reload your left and right weapons independantly when dual-wielding. When holding one weapon, the left bumper cycles through your grenades. You now can carry only two of each type of grenade, though there are now three types with the addition of the Brute Spike grenade. The right bumper is held down to perform actions such as picking up weapons, getting into vehicles, and opening doors, while a quick press performs a reload. This frees up the X button, which is now used to deploy pieces of equipment such as the Bubble Shield. Apart from that it’s pretty much the same, though there is now an option to toggle crouching on and off with the left thumbstick instead of having to keep it pressed in to crouch. That should make it easier to crouch-walk.

I can’t wait to get home and start enjoying the Halo 3 goodness! I’m going to make the most of the next three weeks. See you all online!

Major Nelson has a whole podcast dedicated to it, and has been going on about the game for a while now. That said, he is a Microsoft employee, and despite his claims about doing his shows and his site in his own time with his own cash, etc., he would have a certain bias, and would no doubt be happy to help promote XBox games. It is unlikely that he would promote a crap game though

JVB from Podtacular has put together a review of Crackdown. He was pretty impressed with it, and he was one of several XBox community members invited to Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington to a special Crackdown community event. You can hear all about their experiences in Podtacular Episode 99.

So, I decided to take a look for myself. In the game, you play the role of a genetically enhanced super-cop in a city overrun with crime. Your job is to clean up the city any way you see fit. It’s a sandbox-type game, similar in some aspects to the Grand Theft Auto series of games. You can go wherever you like, and do whatever you want. There are missions and objectives, but you can approach them in whatever order you like, and there are many ways to complete them.

The game also has some RPG elements, in that you can develop and improve your character’s abilities. These include skills such as driving, firearms, and explosives, and atributes such as agility and strength. The more you use the skills, the better you get at them. Driving, shooting, throwing grenades, etc., all develop your skills – “skills for kills” as one of the developers of the game put it. Strength is improved through melee atacks and lifting/throwing items. You can build up your strength to the point where you can throw trucks around the place!

The agility attribute is possibly the most interesting. You improve it through finding Agility Orbs – glowing green spheres dotted around the rooftops of the city. Finding one of these improves your agility – allowing you to jump higher and further. This introduces an element of platform gaming to the game. Soon you start keeping an eye out for the telltale green glows (easier to see at night), and before long you’re making Matrix-style jumps across the skyline – complete with concrete-crushing landings. It is surprising how quickly you start looking at the city from the point of view of “can I jump up there/that far?” or “how can I get to that orb?”, and of course each time you get another orb, those limits are pushed even further. There’s 500 to find throughout the city, and there’s other mystery orbs to find too.

Overall, my impressions were positive about Crackdown. It successfully coveys the impression that you’re a genetically-enhanced super-cop that can do whatever he likes in his attempts to clean up the city. The city itself is well populated, with realistic inhabitants and environments that feel very three-dimensional. Apparently the co-op system is fun, with each participant completely independent and can go wherever they want – they can help their partner too if they want The achivements are supposed to be good too, with fun achievements in there too. For example you get an achievement for climbing up the top of the tallest building (and successfully jumping off it too!), juggling a body with the rocket launcher, and so on.

I don’t tend to buy many games, mainly because I don’t get enough time to play the games I already have However, I’d definitely pick this up if it was on sale, or perhaps pre-owned. For regular game buyers, I’d definitely recommend it.