Crackdown 2
Publisher: Microsoft
Developer: Ruffian Games
Systems it’s available on: Xbox 360
ESRB rating: T for Teen
System reviewed on: Xbox 360
Pacific City’s really gone to hell. It was just a few years ago that legions of players assumed the roles of genetically-grown crimefighting Agents deployed to take out the gangs who ruled the city. Crackdown fused a robust third-person shooter with platforming elements and tied everything together with an addictive upgrade system. That system had players collecting orbs all over the city, jumping and climbing all over the architecture. Grabbing orbs and engaging in constant combat would let you grow your Agent into a superman, making him insanely strong, accurate with firearms or deadly with explosives. This formula made the Xbox-exclusive Crackdown into a cult hit with a recognizable look and feel.
Of course, with that much power policing it, Pacific City’s crime problem got eradicated and the Agency shifted its focus elsewhere. In the ten years between Crackdown 1 and 2, things have gone really downhill. An anarchist organization called the Cell has been trying to protect the city from the Freaks, mutated citizens who live underground and terrorize ordinary citizens when dusk comes. Into all of this turmoil returns the Agency, with a new crop of Agents and Project Sunburst, a plan to eradicate the Freaks with a weaponized solar power network. (For more background on Crackdown 2, check out my hands-on from a few months back.)
The Agents in Crackdown were working solo, but Crackdown 2 offers co-operative play. And if you’re a real orb-aholic, then you’ll want to grab a friend to pick up those orbs that are available only during Xbox Live play. It’s a nod to the social gaming of games like Farmville, where you need friends to help you acquire assets. I suspect we’re going to see more of this kind of thing in console games. To its credit, joining up to co-op play is dead simple and doesn’t break the flow of your single-player experience.
Crackdown 2’s two-tiered regenerative health system–shield and health–resembles that of Halo. There’s no cover mechanic in the game and it feels weird at first but you’ll get used to the run-and-gun style of play after a few hours. The look of the game differs a little from Crackdown the first; it’s still cel-shaded, but now it seems that there’s a layer of grit laid over it. I wish Pacific City had a bit more personality to it, though. Sure, the NPCs offer up a chattering commentary on what’s happening but it feels cookie-cutter.
The amount of on-screen characters that the game engine’s able to pump out is impressive. Crackdown 2’s not a horror game, per se, but I felt a definite chill run down my spine when I saw huge crowds of Freaks streaming down the streets. You’ll be able to mow down Freaks in any of the vehicles you can drive and they’ll meet satisfyingly gooey deaths. Random, emergent chaos is great but, oddly, I felt like there’s too much of it. It throws off the groove of exploring when a clutch of Cell terrorists suddenly pops up 10 stories above the city to shoot at you. The weapons, especially the Freak-specific ones like the UV grenades, feel nice and science-fiction-y. Leveling up to earn a new weapon increases the feeling of bad-assery you get as the game goes on. The cars don’t transform the way they did in CD1 but you’ll open up new ones as you play, eventually earning stuff like helicopters.
I experienced a serious bug when playing CD2 for review: namely, I wouldn’t be able to control my character after unpausing the game. You never realize just how much you rely on a pause until it starts screwing up. A screwed-up pause system makes it nearly impossible to do the things you need to strategize and chart your progress, like checking out objectives, or tactical locations on the maps.
There’s a few other troubling design decisions that plague Crackdown 2 as well. You can’t set down a waypoint to guide you, a big no-no in any contemporary open-world game. It’s too easy to kill civilians and Agency peacekeepers during firefights in the streets. There’s poor AI governing these NPC types and they get in the line of fire a lot. If you use the precise targeting auto-lock, you can’t toggle onto other targets. You can’t even move the reticule so it switches automatically. You’ve got to squeeze and un-squeeze the trigger to respond to multiple threats quickly. It’s a pain in the ass, given that you’re going to be blasting through increasingly dense crowds of people. And the targeting lock tends to focus on stuff like cars or explodables in the environment rather than enemies. It’s great that you want to make blowing crap up easier, Crackdown 2, but what I really want is to be able to shoot what I want to shoot.
Ruffian’s made clear that Crackdown 2’s focus is gameplay and not narrative. And that’s fine. There’s enough of a plot here to set up the action and give you a sense of the stakes. But the bigger problem is that the gameplay gets repetitive and even starts feeling tedious. The main quest’s got a rigid template: Find an absorption unit, kill the guys around it, do that two more times, go to the spot where the Project Sunburst beacon will drop, kill the guys around there. Lather, rinse, repeat. There are other mission types–sealing Freak breaches and taking over Cell bases–but they’re equally as rigid.
Crackdown 2 basically feels like it’s lacking polish and isn’t divergent or adventurous enough when compared to the original. The core mechanics are still addictive but I felt like I was fighting poor design choices or outright bugs in order to make any progress. For a game in a series that’s all about leveling up, Crackdown 2 comes across as terribly under-evolved.
Official Techland score: 6.5 out of 10