Game Title Crackdown 2
Developer Ruffian Games
Publisher Microsoft
Platforms XBOX 360
Genre/Category Open World • Third Person Shooter
ESRB Rating Mature 17+
Release Date July 06, 2010
Link http://www.ruffiangames.com
The sequel to the award-winning vertical-world adventure, Crackdown 2 is the ultimate open-ended world action experience, only available on Xbox 360®. The game lets you be judge, jury, and executioner for a huge, fully explorable city. Crackdown 2 takes multiplayer gaming to unprecedented levels for the ultimate co-op and competitive multiplayer experience, providing you and your friends with the complete freedom to explore, destroy, and play your way as you restore justice and peace to Pacific City—by any means necessary.
The first Crackdown from Realtime Worlds was one hell of an addictive gameplay experience. It put you in the boots of a muscle-bound, machine gun-toting, rooftop-leaping super cop with a huge city to serve and protect. It was insanely fun. Impossible to put down. And you’d be hard pressed to find anyone with serious complaints about it.
Fast forward three years, and the newly formed Ruffian Games have taken up the mantle to blast the brains of gamers into oblivion with Crackdown 2. And while Ruffian is technically a new development house, they’re not exactly strangers to the Crackdown franchise, as many of the people that comprise it were formerly employees of Realtime. So in a way, the game is still in the same hands for the most part, and this becomes crystal clear as soon as you get Crackdown 2 up and running.
There’s a lot about Crackdown 2 that will seem very familiar. For all intents and purposes, the graphics are the same, with the exception of a few tweaks and improvements here and there. Things like a better draw-distance and improved water effects are the most obvious, but little details like your most recent vehicle staying where you left it, and vast hordes of enemies appearing on-screen, also point to the developers having a firmer grasp of what their game engine is capable of.
And although you’ll still find yourself fighting for survival in the same city, ten years have passed in the game’s storyline, and the whole place is falling apart. Mutated Freaks are roaming the city streets, a terrorist organization has taken most of the city hostage, and damn near every building you see is either half blown up, or crumbling to pieces.
The evolution of your Agent is still pretty much the same, although once again, you’ll find some improvements in the formula with new abilities and various tweaks on display. For instance, rather than guns of all kinds becoming more powerful and accurate as your Firearms skill increases, you instead progressively gain access to bigger and better weapons which unlock at different levels.
The same goes for Agency vehicles. In Crackdown’s first installment, every Agency ride was available right from the get go, and as your Driving skill went up, those vehicles gained the ability to morph and transform into more powerful versions of themselves. Well, this time around, you only start with access to the most simple law-enforcement vehicle around, the Agency cruiser. Then as your Driving level ramps up, you progressively unlock more powerful vehicles, like the buggy with it’s mounted machine gun, the ultra-fast super car, the SUV with it’s bouncing shocks, and finally the tank with it’s rocket launcher.
Interestingly, there’s also an Agency helicopter available in the game. And while you’ll see it flying around on a regular basis throughout your adventures, you only gain the ability to take one for yourself once your Agility has completely maxed out. So this may leave you feeling a little bit cheated, since your Agility skill takes forever to reach level five, but you do have the option to start a new campaign with your pre-existing leveled up character, so I suppose it opens up options for multiple playthroughs.
And speaking of getting your Agility to level five, once you do so, you’ll also gain the ability to glide through the air for short distances. This can be really fun to play around with, and the only complaint I can possibly lodge against it, is that you really should gain access to the ability much sooner. Because to be honest, I’m not sure if I’ve got enough Crackdown-love left in me to play through a second time just to make full use of my gliding power.
But aside from all these tweaks, improvements and additions, the whole structure of Crackdown 2′s gameplay is fundamentally different from the original. In the first Crackdown, you had three different gangs that ruled over different island sections of the city. Each of them had a main boss with several lower level lieutenants scattered around, and you had to methodically eliminate the structures of those organizations until the boss was weakened enough to challenge head on.
This time around, things are totally different. There’s only one criminal faction. A group called Cell, which the Agency has dubbed as terrorists. And they’ve got strongholds all over the map. But don’t think for a second that the game’s any less exciting because of it. Because you’ve also got a massive population of Freaks roaming around, both above and below ground, that can make your life extremely interesting.
During the day, Cell’s foot soldiers will be your main concern. They’re everywhere. Heavily armed, extremely motivated, and more than trigger-happy. They’ve got bases all over the place in which you’ll find them thick as thieves, and it will be up to you to eradicate their presence.
But when night falls, the streets of Crackdown 2 transform into something straight out of a John Romero film, with zombie-like Freaks milling around the streets like locusts. You’ll find it tough to survive, or do much of anything really, unless you stick to the rooftops at night. And you’ll find that your Driving skill levels up a heck of a lot faster when you go tearing down the roads at midnight with Freaks bouncing off your hood and bursting into green spray.
It’s your job to rid the city of both Cell and the Freaks. Because the Agency has a plan in place to eradicate the Freak population, but the terrorists of Cell are actively trying to stop them. So you have to go around liberating various points in a network of energy collection grids, and then once you’ve cleared an area, you have to go underground and fight hordes of Freaks to allow a big ultra-violet bomb to explode.
Oh yeah, did I mention sunlight kills the Freaks? It does. Which also makes for cool visuals when the sun comes up over the streets, and all the Freaks from the previous night go up in flames.
Overall, I found this fundamental shift in focus to be a welcome change, and kept the experience from being too repetitious by changing things so drastically from day to night. It’s a good formula, and I had a blast playing through. I can’t imagine anyone who enjoyed the first game not having fun with the second. This one’s a keeper, Agents!
My Review
Pros Just as fun as the original; Cool new gameplay elements; Helicopters!
Cons Helicopters and gliding take too long to unlock;
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