Format: XBOX360(version reviewed)
Hits the Shelves: 9th July 2010
Publisher: Microsoft
Developer: Ruffian Games
Site: www.xbox.com/en-us/games/c/crackdown2/

No comparison to the original Crackdown title will be made in this review as I have not played it.

Crackdown 2 takes place in an open world and is a sandbox-style third-person shooter video game. Everything can be reached with a jump – if you have collected enough Agility Orbs that are scattered around in various places….if it has a ledge you can jump to it and scale large buildings. This is fun when you are equipped with one of the more powerful weapons such as a harpoon gun or sniper rifle. Plus it’s also the location to the majority of the agility orbs that you will need to progress through the game.

This game is very much built for co-op and when you reach the final stage you will see that it’s best to not do it alone but with friends. At this time you can have up to 3 more players randomly join your game at ANY POINT or you can invite your friends and they will help you complete the game, In more detail; a co-op game type allows you to party up with up to 3 more friends. In co-op, you can obtain special orbs known as “Online Orbs” or “Xbox Live Orbs” which give an overall bonus to all your skills. There are no limitations to the co-op mode. It plays like single player except the campaign missions will only advance for the player that hosts the game.

Your character is known simply as an Agent for what appears to be a private police force named the Agency. Each of the NPC agents are referred to as Peacekeepers. If you kill too many either by accident or because you “feel like it” then you will become a suspect and other Peacekeepers will try to kill you. The same for civilians, too many die and you are hunted. There is actual enemies to kill. These are referred to as the “Cell” and also some Zombie/Genetically modified people who have green blood (this a fact as I have hit many with trucks) and referred to as “Freaks”. These 2 sets of enemies require different weapons to kill. I am not saying that you cannot use normal weapons on the “Freaks” but I felt that the UV weapons are alot more useful but you get points for using melee so maybe you would prefer to max out your strength a little more? The “Freaks” are out on the streets at night and the “Cell” are the main threat during the day. So in order to take over the “Cell” strongholds I guess you are best to attack during the day as less of them are protecting the strongholds.

To make your fight against everything non-agent you will have the ability to max out 5 skills and when maxed out you will find that anything you fight against has no chance of survival.

1. Skill #1 is Agility, to obtain agility you go from rooftop to rooftop collecting agility orbs or by doing Rooftop races.
2. Skill #2 is your Firearms skill which is leveled up for using any sort of firearm (not including rocket launchers, or hand-hand weapons.)
3. Skill #3 is the driving skill, which can be upgraded via killing enemies by running them over, racing, and collecting renegade orbs with your vehicle.
4. Skill #4 is the explosives skill which can only be upgraded by using rocket launchers and grenades.
5. Skill #5 is the strength skill which is upgraded by punching, kicking, bashing, and smashing with melee weapons like stop signs and street lights.

This game is a lot of fun even in PvP but be careful as just when you think you have the upper hand someone may take it from you. The multiplayer playlists include the well known game modes such as Team Deathmatch and one of it’s own modes Rocket Tag. The game modes still take place in Pacific City, but the players will be limited to certain areas for the length of the matches.

What I didn’t like about this game is that the missions are very repetitive. Your missions all require you to activate “absorption units” dotted around town. Turn on three and you can then go underground to permanently clear out a nest of “Freaks”. This repeats for the duration until you hit the end credits. Unlike most games that use weapons there is no cover system involved in this game at all which at times can become annoying so you are forced to hop around like some kind of child on e-numbers.

This means that collecting agility orbs remains by far the most entertaining part of the game. At first you can only jump normally but the more orbs you collect the higher you can go and the faster you can run, until you’re bounding around Pacific City like a crazy kid on even more e-numbers. The problem of not knowing which ledges and prominences can be climbed up though is present. It has been said though that DLC is going to be arriving soon so hopefully they will add more to the title to keep you wanting to play. Unless you just want to play Multi-player modes and help out other people with their games. Also your player can only be one of four choices and the colours are also not very good neither, even with the preorder colours it lacks the customisation as seen in other games. I really do think they should have added the ability to have your own colour in the game. This would have been alot cooler for players who play online and represent some kind of clan.

This leads us to final stage of the review, the low score because other than the chance to help out other people complete their game when you have completed yours I cannot see it having much appeal to many of the virtual gun slingers out there. Unlike other titles for the XBOX 360 such as Mass Effect 2 there really is no reason to keep playing. As mentioned before though the DLC may change my thoughts but I can’t see it happening and other people I have spoke to via twitter feel the same way too. Others have commented on the fact that the game looks great and the controls are easy and that it’s great to play against people in PvP mode but what else can they do?

By all means check out the 30minute demo first. The narrator is funny to listen to also, especially when describing 1 of the vehicles you can have which is called the Agency Supercar. “The agency supercar is as fast as a speeding bullet and sticks to the road like shit to a blanket”

Now the score:

Gaming News