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We take the new demo of Crackdown for a test drive and give our first impressions.

For those of you who don't know about it yet, Crackdown is a new sandbox style action/driving hybrid game from Real Time Worlds.  What is a sandbox style action/driving hybrid game?  Well, if you have ever played any of the Grand Theft Auto games then you already know, because GTA pretty much invented the genre.  As a matter of fact, Dave Jones, managing director of Real Time Worlds is credited as creator of Grand Theft Auto (and Lemmings... go figure).  Of course this was back when Dave Jones ran DMA Studios (Rockstar North before it was called Rockstar North).Needless to say if Microsoft was looking for someone to make a GTA-killer, they certainly got the right man for the job.

I must admit that I have been looking forward to Crackdown ever since I first heard about it.  GTA style gameplay with some nice RPG elements and super-human abilities; how could you go wrong?  The more I learned about the game, the more I had to get my hands on it. 

At least until I learned that Microsoft was going to pack in Halo 3 beta trials in with the first run of Crackdown games.  This instantly raised a red flag in my mind.  I thought, "If Microsoft is packing Halo 3 trials with this game, then Crackdown must suck and they are doing whatever they can to sell copies.  Things didn't look any better when Microsoft announced that they were delaying the demo of Crackdown to an undisclosed latter date.

Well despite that brief hiccup, the demo is finally here and I am happy to say that all of my last minute doubts were absolutely unfounded.  Based on what I have played so far I think Microsoft and Real Time Worlds might have a big hit on their hands come February 20th when the game hits stores.  At the very least I can say that the demo has been worth the wait.