"Crackdown 2" Review

"Crackdown 2" Review

5/10

2010
Developer(s): Ruffian Games
Publisher(s): Microsoft Game Studios
Genre: Sandbox, Action-Adventure, Third-person Shooter
Mode(s): Single-player, Multiplayer Co-op

Pacific City has fallen into Anarchy, and the Agency is forced to send out Agents to deal with the growing anarchy group Cell and the mutants which roam the decimated streets at night.

I am not the first person to hold the opinion that the game is too similar to the original with too few improvements made to graphics and effects and plot. This is the main reason for the low score. The other reason is that this could have been just a Halloween add-on to the original game rather than being marked as a sequel.

There has been some changes to the Heads Up Display which aren't all that bad, but initially confusing when the player is used to the old game. But the biggest issue I have with the HUD is that the cross hairs glow red regardless of whether the target is friendly, hostile or civilian, which can cause quite a lot of penalties for the Agent who isn't paying attention.

Throughout the game, the leader of the group Cell will attempt to make the Agent see reason and spare the mutants who are turned much like zombies, and like vampires can't survive medium to strong UV exposure similar to standing in sunlight. There really should have been a choice as to which faction you ended up favouring through your actions, opening up options and missions to either cure or destroy the mutants rather than having to follow the rigid plot line set out before you in an otherwise open sandbox game.

Another change which is rather annoying is that the weapons dropped by mobs disappear after a relatively short period of less than a minute, which means that the Agent has to anticipate a shortage of ammo whilst fending off a number of enemies and seek out dropped weapons to resupply rather than wait until the fighting is done.

One change to the abilities of the Agent is that when a certain level of Agility has been reached, they activate the Glider ability, which means that when in free fall they can trigger this ability and like a flying squirrel spread out a membrane or wing between the torso and arms to slow the fall and allow a little control as to where to land. This is not easy to control, but it is very useful when jumping off a very tall building which would normally cause even the strongest Agent to croak when hitting the pavement.

In all, a decent game, but hardly original nor an improvement on the old game.