Cell strongholds are the most direct missions: enter a stronghold, summon some air support at a control point, then clear out the immediate area of Cell insurgents so that helicopters can drop off Agency units. The challenge with these comes in holding off waves of insurgents single-handedly. The first few of these are a cakewalk, but the difficulty steps up rather quickly, so you have to make sure you have the weapons equipped that you want to use and have a strategy for clearing out the area. I went too quickly into one control point and spent most of my time hiding behind a wall to let my shield and health recharge as I was out of ammo for one gun and had used all of my grenades. Ammo is normally plentiful, but only if you take down opponents. When taking on a stronghold, you have to be sure to clear all of the stronghold's control points to completely take it over. Bail out early and pursue other goals and Cell will take back these control points, requiring you to clear them out all over again.

Freak dens are a more interesting undertaking. I mentioned earlier that the Freaks are sensitive to UV light in a manner like vampires, so any exposure to UV fries them to dust. This means that you only have to deal with Freaks at night, but the tradeoff is that they come out en masse once the sun sets. It's like Dead Rising, but over the entire city. (Resisting urge to make obvious Frank West joke...). The Agency has developed a weapons line called the Sunburst Defense Unit to take the fight underground into the Freak lairs that works by activating three Light Beacons to charge an SDU Absorption Unit with UV light, after which the AU is dropped from above into one of the many den breaches across the city. Cell, willing to use the technology but not trusting the Agency to do it properly, have taken over all of the Light Beacon stations, so after you find one, you have to clear out all Cell insurgents so that you can activate a Light Beacon. Once three are activated, you head to the nearest breach, drop underground, and call for the AU to be dropped in. Because these things are never simple, the AU has to take time to warm up before discharging, and the Freaks are just smart enough to know that the thing is a major threat to them, so you have to hold off waves of Freaks and protect the AU until it can discharge and completely clear out the den. These sections were actually incredibly fun for me as Freaks are your typical canon fodder units that you take down in droves. What made it extra fun was that I had found a UV shotgun that would send out a large blast of UV light and crispify swaths of Freaks at once.

If you tire of the main missions, there are side chores to do, such as street racing and rooftop foot races and winning either will boost your stats in the respective abilities of Driving Skill and Athleticism. No doubt there will be other fun asides that get revealed as well as the game progresses, but that was all that I had managed to uncover during my time with the game.

Multiplayer gets some love with the game as well as you can invite friends into your game at just about any time. The assumption is that they will most likely tag along with you to complete missions, or at the very least to activate Live Orbs (stat-boosting orbs that, unlike the regular ones scattered throughout the game, can only be collected when playing online AND at least one of your friends stands next to it with you), but they're completely free to run about the city as they please. A game plan is probably in order before you start so that you don't wind up neck-deep in Freaks underground while your bud is faffing about to see how many pedestrians can be run down in 30 seconds. A bit of advice regarding non-hostiles: don't do this. You can mow down civilians in the GTA series with little repercussion, but the Agency doesn't look kindly upon this. Accidents happen, but take out too many innocents and local police force and even Agency units will start firing on you on sight.

If you're feeling more competitive than cooperative, there are multiplayer modes for that, though they're nothing special. Fragfests, team fragfests, rocket tag.... fun stuff but nothing ground-breaking or new. But then again, Bionic Commando is the only game I've played recently that seems to have done anything interesting with the third person shoot-'em-up competitions. Super high jumps just don't compare to bionic arm vine-swinging.

Four hours later, having played multiple gameplay modes and socialized with the friendly reps, more than one of whom was sporting a charming Scottish brogue, I'm sold on the game. The art style is great, the controls are pretty tight and responsive, and the game's just fun to play. Plus, Crackdown 2 is going to feature avatar awards, which is a feature that not enough game developers are taking advantage of. Suit up, agent: the game releases on July 6 in North America, July 8 in Asia, Australia and New Zealand, and July 9 in Europe.