So it feels like the Crackdown demo was more of a curse than a blessing. It served only to whet my appetite further, without truly satisfying my need for super agent killing sprees. It showed me bliss, but didn’t actually let me own the feeling. The all-too-short demo, with its accelerated skill progression, gives a nice glimpse into what the game will be like. I think it was a wise decision to speed up skill progression for the demo, just so players unfamiliar with the concept of the game can get a taste of what its all about.

Of course the downside is that some people will probably assume that the retail game will truly be that easy.

I have to say, I was pretty annoyed that they removed the ability to directly invite a friend to play co-op with you. Instead you have to use the game search to hope to find the person you want to play with. I mean, it’s already a limited demo, what’s the point of not letting us play with friends?

As fun as the game is, it truly shines when in co-op mode. I think that if you don’t play Crackdown in co-op, you may very well be cheating yourself. I look forward to February for the full game.

And speaking of a full game, the beta test for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes came to a close last night. I’d been beta testing sporadically over the past four or five months, but the game really made some vast improvements over the past couple of weeks, as things all started coming together.

The retail game launches next week. There’s still a ways to go, and I think the first six months of game will be a real growth period, but then, that’s true of any MMO. An MMO is never a finished product… they are constantly evolving projects.

However, I see a lot of promise in Vanguard, that I admit I didn’t quite see six months ago. So I preordered and I’ll be playing when the servers go live.

At least until the Age of Conan beta starts…