Vitals
- Products: Crackdown 2
- Genres: Sandbox, Shooter
- Subchannels: Xbox 360
- Release Date (US) - Xbox 360: July 6, 2010
- Publisher: Microsoft game studios
- Developer: Ruffian Games
To my knowledge, there's only one game in the world that lets you team up online with three friends playing as super-powered SWAT agents, make a rendezvous by leaping over skyscrapers, pile everyone into (and onto) one car, tear down the street at 100 mph (rendering a road-clogging zombie horde into a messy green spray), then crash that car into a terrorist hideout in an explosion that rips through most of the bad guys inside. That game is Crackdown 2, and for that reason Crackdown 2 is ridiculously fun.
The problem is, four-player co-op is really all the game brings to
the table over its
predecessor. Doubling the number of Agents capable of teaming up
over the previous game was a great move and makes Live play
exponentially more entertaining than before. But everything else about
Crackdown 2 is a letdown: The best parts are those lifted straight from
the first game, while all the new additions are annoying at best,
infuriating at worst. Crackdown 2 is ridiculously fun, but it owes that
success entirely to the first game.
Real Time Worlds' 2007 hit was a genuine sleeper, a subversive and unexpected success that earned accolades and word-of-mouth praise on the strengths of its addictive blend of open-world design, over-the-top character powers, and the stick-and-carrot lure of Agility Orbs. Crackdown gave players a crime-ridden metropolis as a playground, then encouraged them to explore its heights and hidden corners by doling out hundreds of collectibles that empowered them even further, enabling their Agents to reach even higher heights and better-hidden corners. The main mission was almost incidental, something we did almost as a footnote to scavenging for orbs across Pacific City. Sure, it was a messy, half-baked game in a lot of ways, but it was genuinely addictive and fun to play.
The sequel is basically the same game with largely cosmetic
changes, most of which work to its detriment. Once again, players
explore Pacific City, which is more or less the exact same city as
before; the difference is that this time many of the most memorable
landmarks have been damaged, and the town is overrun with zombies at
night. Zombies are a questionable gimmick to begin with, because it's so
difficult to make videogame zombies feel genuinely fresh and
interesting. Left
4 Dead succeeds; Crackdown 2, on the other hand, doesn't. Here, the
throngs of zombies simply serve to amplify the series' shortcomings.
One of the big disappointments of the original Crackdown was that
by the end of the game, you'd become so powerful that the last few
missions felt almost trivial. A high-level Agent could simple wade
through mobs of weakling bad guys, mopping up the mooks without a care,
and even killing most bosses without breaking a sweat. What Crackdown
really needed were enemies on par with the Agent, capable of facing the
player on his own terms. But instead, developer Ruffian has taken the
opposite tack; rather than challenging players with smarter, deadlier
enemies, they just flood the screen with rabble and hope the numbers win
the day.