The genre is typically bloated with incomplete ideas, frustrating missions and broken gameplay. Crackdown does away with all the underdeveloped excess and instead focuses on a handful of core ideas, polishes them up, and then sends them straight into comic book superhero territory.

Controlling the nameless Agent is similar to playing as Master Chief, but more like a Spartan designed by Stan Lee himself. Agility is exaggerated to the point of leaping across rooftops with ease, strength allows you to throw a truck like it were just a stone, weaponry is so powerful that a single grenade can send countless gang henchmen flying skywards. The Agent is a tremendously over the top Master Chief, and it’s this single achievement that makes Crackdown such a success.

Though starting with relatively limited abilities, every time a gang member (or gang boss) is removed the Agent’s abilities slowly improve. Run someone over, complete a race or perform a stunt and the Driving skill increases. Shotgun to the face, Firearms goes up. Explosive weaponry will quickly send that skill up, while Strength is increased by kicking or throwing objects to kill. Finally, Agility is improved by either killing from a height, or collecting the Agility Orbs scattered about the city. Each ability can be levelled up four times, and with each upgrade comes a vast increase in skill.

Though the entire city and all of the bosses that inhabit it are available to discover and hunt from the very beginning, limitations in the Agent’s current abilities provide some boundaries to exploration, and with each skill increase comes more potential, power and enjoyment. Frustration may set in early on when Agility is low, but give it time and that building causing problems at the start can be jumped over in a single leap. With each gang boss being protected by seemingly endless hoardes of henchmen, the action is frantic and wonderfully chaotic. Bullets fly by in such numbers that they almost fill the screen. Explosions thunder from all directions. Countless innocent civilians get blown across the map. Vehicles are launched in the air before crashing down to the ground, detonating and creating further explosions. This is comic book violence at its most extreme, most satisfying, and most brilliant.

Though the twenty one gang bosses are not difficult to exterminate, to rush in and win the game would be to completely miss the point. Anyone who wishes to run to the finish line will be very disappointed, however Crackdown has some particularly shiny distractions; five-hundred green ones and three-hundred blue ones, to be precise.

Crackdown’s eight-hundred coloured orbs are the most bizarrely compelling aspect of the whole experience. Where usually these Rare-like collect-um-ups are a frustrating way of adding length, Crackdown’s Orbs are equal in interest to the main experience and painfully addictive to find. With almost every rooftop in the entire city hosting a green Agility Orb, it becomes almost your duty to climb to the top of the city and leap from building to building, collecting as you go. The speed and precision of each jump further solidifies what a marvel and absolute joy the Agent is to control. As you leap from a huge building onto a slim walkway hundreds of feet below, there is never any chance that you will miss.

This level of control also comes into play during the intense action – you are able to leap from building to building, onto various objects and make a mockery of the world design, all without breaking a sweat. The player can remain focused on the action as the epic free-running just comes so naturally. Only the best dedicated 3D platformers are as gifted as this.

Crackdown has a level of polish and refinement that has so far been lost of practically every other Xbox 360 title. The graphics are virtually flawless, stylised and consistent with an eye-popping draw distance. The presentation extends to a constantly brilliant narrator who barks instructions and information frequently in the most pitch-perfect tone you could ever hope for. Even the Xbox Live Achievements have been implemented better than any other game on the format, becoming a focus of the whole experience with genuinely enjoyable tasks.

While it is true that the twenty-one bosses won’t take long to dispose of, everything in the game is of such high quality that it does not matter. It’s easy to spend hours without even bothering about the main objectives, just blowing stuff up and admiring the physics at work. To rush through would be to miss the enjoyment of bettering your time in the roof-top and driven races, or the fun that can be had chaining together earth-shattering explosions, causing absolute mayhem everywhere you go. And when everything is done and dusted, you can do it all again in time-trial mode, or even with a friend in the fantastic online-coop mode.

Crackdown is exactly the kind of original IP needed for the Microsoft Game Studios banner, a terrific title for the Xbox 360 and a triumphant debut by Real Time Worlds.