Crackdown was created by David Jones, the same guy who created Grand Theft Auto and Lemmings. Seems like, Mr. Jones has a thing for mass-murder centric games.
Lets get cracking
Crackdown 2 takes place 10 years after the events of the first game. To fill you in with what happened during those ten years Ruffian Games released a series of web comics. You can find the episodes here.
The story is pretty basic, and the premise reads as follow: Pacific City is over run with gang bangers and zombies. Gangs and zombies? Wow, that is bad luck. To combat the menace, Pacific City police created the Predator-like Agent.
The Agent is what you get when you mix the jumping of Sonic the Hedgehog, Predator’s armor and a constipated Vin Diesel look-alike. His ability to jump tall buildings and super strength makes him more than a match for the zombies and the gangs.
At the start of the game you are introduced to the Agent and a quick set of tutorials teach you how to control him. When you are done with the tutorials they let you loose in the city.
In order to get rid of the gangs you have to reclaim the territories controlled by them. So rush in there and kill off the gang members, once done call for air support. Air support will drop off a few dudes with guns to hold down the now certified gang-free area.
Then there are the zombies. Even my untrained military eye can see that the zombie blasting plan needs some fine tuning; a bomb is dropped near the zombies, but does not go off. It just lies there. It is up to you to protect the bomb till it eventually does explode.
In a game of deadly Ring o’ Roses you run round and round the bomb punching any zombies that get close to it.
Silly as the idea is, it is lots of fun and is quite hard to put down. Messing up gangs and zombies are not the only tasks you have. There are all kinds of Orbs to collect and challenges to take. Each Orb collected or challenge completed increases your skills.
Each time you think you can now save and quit, you see one more thing to do. Just one more thing, this is the last one, promise! Highly, highly addictive. Don’t start playing if you still have other things to do.
Graphic wise, the game is astonishing. The graphics have been cell-shaded to give the game a comic book look, and it really fits well with the super hero crime fighter theme.
The game world
The world itself is a bit bland and it could do with some attention and extra detail. The people don’t do anything interesting; they just stroll around until killed by gangs or zombies. Likewise the buildings are dull with no distinguishing features.
If they want to go toe to toe with games like Mafia II or even Saboteur they will have to up their game.
Mafia II with its highly evolved and detailed world sets the bar very high, and Ruffian Games’ effort here just can’t compete.
Multiplayer
Crackdown is an open world where friends can come together and help fight crime (or wreak havoc depending on the mood).
Multiplayer and cooperative play is highly integrated into the game. If you don’t have friends online playing the game, the system will hook you up with some random people busy playing the game. Although it sounds like a good idea, you will find that aligning your goals with the goals of random strangers on the internet is a bit hard.
I joined a co-op game and the other guy, simply walked up to me and punched me off a building (how rude). He followed me down to street level where we beat up a few civilians together until he got bored and wandered off – heartwarming buddy-buddy stuff.
Although this online interaction was a little absurd, it is actually what David Jones had in mind when he created the first Crackdown. You are not bogged down by a story or time line that you HAVE to follow. What you can do is limited by your imagination. It is a place where you go to write your own story.
The verdict
The finely tuned addictiveness and comic book graphics makes for a great super hero game. Perched high up on a building looking down at the ants below gives the feeling that you are indeed a superhero and nobody can mess with you.
However, Crackdown 2 does not really do anything that has not already been done in the first Crackdown.
This year has seen the release of many brilliant games and I am afraid that Crackdown 2 does have what it takes to be ranked among the best games of the year.
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