So what’s wrong with Crackdown 2? Surprisingly, despite the score tacked on at the bottom there, not a whole lot. As a standalone game, it’s pretty great. As a sequel though, not so much. The first Crackdown was one of those games that split people into two groups. There were those that saw the flaws and found the game to be repetitive, short and lacking content. And then there were those who realised that it was more than the sum of its parts. Crackdown 2 should have been an opportunity to fix what was flawed and improve what was already great. It does both of those things. But not on a large enough scale to count as a good sequel.
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Crackdown 2 is still hands down one of the best super hero sandbox games around. And in its own way, it’s a purer sandbox experience than GTA or any of its other thousand clones. By the end of the game, you will be able to jump over 25 feet, run faster than most vehicles, glide over the city in a Wingsuit, and stomp down with your fist killing everything in a ten-foot radius. For making you feel like an all powerful godlike person, there aren’t too many games that can rival Crackdown 2. But it’s not without its issues.
The biggest problem is that it uses the same city that the first game took place in. Sure, there are some changes; some building are broken down, some are on fire, and the odd building here and there has an underground level, but by and large, it’s the same city. And it looks pretty much the same graphically as well. So barely five minutes into the game, deja vu hits pretty hard. And once you start taking back gang strongholds, the feeling intensifies further.
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But it’s not all the same. There have been significant changes; most of them for the better. The city at night has freaks roaming all over the place. Sort of like zombies, they replace the civilians at night and come out in huge numbers. They are mostly easy to kill, especially if you are running them over in a car, which fixes the problem of levelling up your driving skills. So unlike the first game, driving around isn’t a chore anymore. The transforming cars from the first game are gone though. Instead, you now have a series of incrementally better vehicles that unlock as you level up. It’s a good idea and it’s carried over to your firearms skills and explosive skills as well. You unlock better weapons as you evolve.
Orbs are back too, and they are just as addictive as ever. In addition to normal orbs, there are renegade orbs too (both driving and agility), which you have to chase down to collect. It’s a nice little add-on, but some of the latter ones are quite frustratingly hard to get. There are also online orbs, which you can only collect in co-op mode, which is a fun way to explore the city with someone. The game also keeps track of what you have collected in a much better way than the first game, breaking down the collectibles per island into what you have found and how many you are missing. In addition, pressing up on the D-pad sends out a ping that shows all nearby orbs; a great feature for the obsessive compulsive types that want to collect everything.
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Unfortunately, the list of improvements from the first game stops there. Worse, the game doesn’t bother fixing some of the flaws of the first one. The lock-on system deserves a special mention, because it seems to take a perverse amount of joy in screwing you over. For some unknown reason, it seems to consider a burnt out car or an explosive cylinder the same level of threat as a heavily armoured enemy shooting a Gatling gun at your face. This would be annoying enough in any normal game, but in a game where combat tends to get as hectic as it does here, it’s downright unforgivable. Swapping targets is still a pain. Instead of swapping with the right stick, you have to unlock from the target and then move the cursor to the next target to lock it. Why is it so needlessly complicated? Surely they could have done better than that.
And try to figure out how this makes any sense – you have to capture enemy bases through the course of the game, but if there is an enemy base close to a base that you have captured, then the enemies can recapture your base, forcing you to do it all over again. Now, I won’t honestly knock down Crackdown 2 for being repetitive. It’s the nature of the beast. It would be like knocking down Metroid for backtracking or Contra for having too much shooting. But did the developers really have to go out of their way to increase the repetitive tasks?
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Aside from these issues, there is a general lack of creativity in mission design as well. All missions are simple variants of assault on an enemy base or wave defence with a timer tacked on. Even the final mission doesn’t seem to break away from that tradition, which is a crying shame because it’s otherwise pretty epic. And while running and jumping is still a lot of fun, the game has some design issues where some ledges and window sills that seem grab-able just turn out to be texture. I don’t recall that happening too often (if at all) in the first game. Also, some of the later missions seem to be designed around co-op more than a single player, so the difficulty spike ends up being quite brutal.
Speaking of which, multiplayer is still a blast. In fact, get four people in there and it can be an obscene amount of fun. Accidental shootings turn into impromptu mini deathmatches, and shooting an unsuspecting co-op buddy off the top of a really tall building with a UAV shotgun doesn’t seem to loose its charm no matter how often you do it. It’s worth noting though that only the host saves campaign progress, so it can be a bother if both of you (or worse all 4 of you) want to complete the same mission. The game also has competitive multiplayer, but it seems randomly tacked on. It is fun in a quick blast, but the options are exceedingly Spartan; split between Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Rocket Tag. It’s a decent time waster if you have ten minutes to kill, but it won’t replace your current multiplayer main game.
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Crackdown 2 looks about the same as the first game. It does have more characters on screen than the first one ever did though, and this is most evident during the night time. When the freaks come out to play, the streets start to look like something out of Dead Rising. The draw distance is also quite phenomenal. Not many games will let you see that far with the kind of sharpness and clarity that Crackdown 2 does. Frame rate stays solid most of the time, barring an occasional dip when the action gets very, very hectic. The music is a bit of a lost opportunity, but what is there is really good. Like the rest of the game, everything visually and aurally is not exceptional, but acceptable.
Conclusion
There are lots of moments when the game feels like it has taken two steps forward, two steps back and stalled. But there is also the familiar magic present from the first game. Every time you jump between two rooftops with the wind rushing around you and the tantalising pinging of a nearby orb getting closer, it seems like everything is alright with the world. So for better or worse, not a lot has changed in the last three years. This is the game we wanted the first Crackdown to be and maybe not the game that we expected out of Crackdown 2. If that makes any sense, the score will too.
(+) Core gameplay is still amazing
(+) New orbs, freaks are a great addition
(+) Co-op is a blast
(-) Mission design is uninspired
(-) Targeting issues
(-) Uses the same city
(-) Not a lot of new content
Title: Crackdown 2
Developer/Publisher: Ruffian Games/Microsoft
Genre: Action-Adventure
Rating: 18
Platforms: Xbox 360 (Rs 2,399)
Reviewed on: Xbox 360
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