Pacific City is the setting, and the Agency is a police force that's seriously outnumbered and outgunned by three major gangs: Los Muertos, The Volk and Shai-Gen. The gangs have split up the city's seven islands into three territories, and the Agency's best hope for taking control of the city is a bio-engineered supercop with a lot of potential.

The game begins in the underbelly of the Agency Tower, where you'll choose a vehicle: a sporty supercar, an SUV or a truck. After taking the tunnel into town, you'll be on your own to patrol and look for mob figures that need some discipline in their lives. Gang members are tagged by a symbol above their heads, and they are all fair game. Every time you take one out, experience is added to your character and their weapons hit the pavement. You'll start with a pistol, a submachine gun, grenades and zero points in driving, firearms, agility, strength and explosives, but all that changes very quickly.

The more you use a skill the more quickly in improves, up to a rating of four stars. Progress is always visible in the upper left of the HUD, and gaining a new rank offers noticeable differences in performance. Increased strength and agility, in particular, mean more fun. At the outset, you can lift and throw things like any other very strong but normal human, like tossing bodies or crates a few feet, and it takes several kicks to the head to take a bad guy out for good. But after just a few ranks, you'll be chucking dumpsters and cars.

It may not sound like much on the surface, but increased agility means you can jump higher and farther and it's what makes Crackdown special. Cities are, more than anything else, vertical living spaces. Crackdown makes use of that space in unexpected and exciting ways. For example, there's something exhilarating about simply choosing to leave a hairy situation by leaping over the building next to you. Your character will crouch and throw himself, very believably, over great distances and land with a pavement cracking crunch. The visuals owe a lot to the Matrix, and the first time you take a huge leap from one building to another or survive a dizzying fall, don't be surprised to hear a dumbfounded, “whoa,” escape your lips.

Pacific City is, without a doubt, meant to be climbed. Window ledges, pipes, ducts, you name it, it's there to help you get from point A to point B, straight up. If you're not a fan of heights and sometimes blind jumps, you might miss out on some of the coolest views in a video game. Bad guys put their hideouts in the strangest places, so you'll need to explore and jump to find them, but you'll also end up doing it just to see what the city looks like from a bird's eye view.

The campaign centers around removing the gang leaders and their bosses, a total of 21 targets. Along the way, you'll confiscate many different weapons and rack up huge body counts as you draw the attention of every thug in town. Once you finish off each leader, you can play a Time Trial mode which challenges you to take down the target again in a certain amount of time.

Driving plays a very small part in Crackdown. The Agency offers a good selection of special cars and the standard cruiser is plenty fast to get you around town. There are driving challenges to help you raise your skill faster, but Crackdown isn't about driving or racing. It's about taking control of the city away from the gangs and exploring while you do so. For added incentive in that regard, there are agility orbs and secret orbs stashed everywhere (300 and 500, respectively). Agility is the only skill not improved through use, you need orbs.

Through Xbox Live, you can also play Crackdown cooperatively. That means you can take on the bosses together, but you can also clear out a neighborhood and start making a pile of explosive objects. Chain reactions are easy to start, but putting together a truly huge pile of cars can take time by yourself. It's one of those things in life that's much more fun when shared.

The only thing missing from Crackdown is a story. There are a lot of bad guys, each with unique careers (drugs, weapons, vehicles, etc.), but there's nothing to fill in the cracks. Granted, a story isn't necessary in a game like Crackdown, but it would be nice. Everything is better when it's made more personal. Real characters with human dimensions could have added another layer of entertainment.

The easiest way to describe a new game is to compare it to an old game. In the case of Crackdown, that's not so easy. It combines the vast environments of GTA, the quick, the satisfying combat of great action games, a vertical dimension of game play and the character progression of RPGs in a very entertaining and unique package. The content is strictly for adults, but otherwise, it's a slam dunk.