Crackdown

In an era when GTA reigned supreme and the clones were coming hard and fast, no game took the basic formula and brought it in a more unique and successful direction than Crackdown. For while the basic premise is there -- an open world filled with gang bangers and innocent bystanders and vehicles and explosives and the sandbox mayhem one could create with these elements -- Crackdown painted it candy colored and set it in a dystopian, police-state future. If GTA wanted to be Boyz in the Hood (or Goodfellas if we're talking about Vice City), Crackdown wanted to be the Judge Dredd comic book: fascist, almost super human law enforcement struggling to maintain control over a violent, hyper-capitalist, garish neon nightmare of a city.

It's not just the setting where Crackdown stands on its own, the gameplay adds upgradable stats to your character, particularly in your run speed and jump height, which changes the game fundamentally from a grind-it-out third person shooter to something far more fast and fluid and vertical. Your early game will mostly be spent running and driving around the map, while the mid and late game sees you frequently in the air, scaling the sides of skyscrapers and leaping from rooftop to rooftop. Crackdown goes up as much as it goes left and right, which was positively unique in 2007, half a year before the Assassin's Creed series hit the scene.

Absolutely one the most original and groundbreaking games of the 360/PS3/Wii era, and certainly one of my favorite.