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When Crackdown 2 arrived on my desk, I decided I would take it home and have a play around with it for about n hour or so. I didn’t want a late night as I’ve been burning the midnight oil a little too much recently. So after the training level and a couple of early missions, I decided to explore a bit and see how many of those magic orbs I could collect. At some stage the game prompted me to look at my stats to see where my mission objectives were, so I did. But rather than looking at my mission objectives – which I already knew, but was choosing to ignore – I looked at some of the other stats, and something struck me as weird. When I looked at ‘time spent in Pacific City’ it stated that I had been running around the fictional, cell shaded location for close to four hours. Odd I thought that it didn’t use real time like most games. Why on earth would it use an excellerated time keeping…. hold on…. wait, it’s almost 1am already? Damn.
So yeah, if nothing else, Crackdown 2 is the same level of addictive fun as the original Crackdown.
But unlike most other sequels, Crackdown 2 doesn’t seem to subscribe to the bigger is better mantra. Infact there seems to be a huge amount of sameness to the game. Same location, same graphics, same gameplay.
The main differences are that you have two enemies, the mutated freaks – lets call them zombies, because that’s pretty much what they are – and the resident gang who don’t seem to like you, or the peacekeepers you work for.
The main story-line is pretty blah, and kind of repetitive – but to be honest the original’s story-line wasn’t what kept me playing either. The real fun was in exploring Pacific City, climbing containers and buildings to collect the magic orbs, which in turn gradually increased you ability to jump higher and collect even more orbs. Fighting the zombies helped increase your strength so you could pick up objects – such as cars – and kill even more zombies. Driving skills unlocked better cars. You get the drift, Upgrade your character so you can do more and more outrageous stuff.
Of course, this is fun, but only to a point, and this is the games biggest failing. What happens if the story-line and missions don’t engage you and you’ve maxed out your character by collecting every single orb there is to find?
Well the developers are hoping you’ll take it online for some continued fun. Be it co-operative play – I came across a number of orbs that could only be collected in co-operative mode vis Live – or the usual death match style. This was a feature that I was unable to explore however – due to having an early review copy and there naturally being no one else online.
For me, I’ve still got a fair bit of exploring to do – and once my character is maxed out I may even decide to breeze through the missions just for the heck of it. I’m keen to hop on Live over the weekend as well just to see what it’s like. But the overall feel is a little underwhelming. For fans of the original, Crackdown 2 won;t feel like a full sequel. But for virgins looking for a sandbox game with a major infusion of over the top fun game-play, this might just be the nirvana you’ve been looking for.
Reviewed on: XBox 360
Available on: XBox 360
Reviewed by:
