Crackdown 2

    
 

Welcome back to the streets of Pacific City. Alot has changed since you've been gone, but you still get that familiar feeling. 10 years have gone by and you are once again in the shoes of an Agent. You have been cloned by the Agency in order to fight the new threats that have risen. The Cell is a terrorist group that is slowly taking over Pacific City to battle the Agency, while the Freaks are leftovers from  Dr. Balthazar Czernenko's experiments from the first game. And that folks, is all the story you get from Crackdown 2. 
  
For those of you that played the first game, you may be wondering about that twist ending. Yeah, none of that matters anymore. Seems that after 10 years, the Agency has still managed to keep their little dirty secret under wraps. The previous agents that you played as in the first game are not mentioned and the only returning character is the Agency Director/Narrator. Apparently, Ruffian decided to put out 5 Webcomics that explained the time between Crackdown 1 and 2 instead of putting it into the game. So, the only story you'll be getting in here is that in order to stop the Freaks, the Agency has pulled out Project Sunburst. Using becons with sunlight power within them, the Agency planned to plant them deep into the Freak lairs and take them out as light is the main weakness of the Freaks. Incidently, the Cell decides to ruin their plan by taking over the generators that were set to power the becons. Now, as the Agent, you must recapture all generators from the Cell and then plant becons in the Freak lairs to destroy them. Do this 9 times and the game is over. This is the first problem of the game. 
 

Now this was also a problem that occured in the first game as well. You were tasked with killing key members of gangs around Pacific City. After eliminating all 21, the game ended. This is mostly the same case. Each becon need 3 generators to become active, which means that there are 27 generators in the game and 9 becons. After doing these missions, there is a finale at the Agency tower and then the game's "story" is finished. There are still many other things to do in the city though, which is one of the things Crackdown 2 does best. Just like in the first game (starting to notice I am using this phrase alot?) there are plenty of side objectives to do. You can go for rooftop or street races, collect orbs, and of course, increase your skills. But, added into this game are also faction specific side missions. There are tactical locations that the Cell have all over the city. If you go to one and activate it, you will be tasked to defend the area from Cell soldiers while the Agency sends over reinforcements. Once you finish these locations, you unlock it as a resupply point, making these more of a challenge to unlock than in Crackdown 1. On the other side is Freak Breaches, where Freaks will arrives from the ground and you will have to hold them off until a helicopter comes to seal the hole shut. Both of these side missions aren't very enjoyable and start to get repetitive the more you do them, which is kinda how I felt after finishing off the campaign missions. 
 
 Now, let's go more in depth with some of the other features of the game. In a attempt to add more story to the game, you can find audio logs scattered around the city. There are different types of ones as well, such as Freak Bios, News Casts, and more. As I said before, orbs returns to piss more people off with collectables, but guess what? There are MORE types! Not only do you have to find 500 agility and 300 hidden orbs, but now you get to track down Renegade orbs and LIVE orbs. Renegades come in two flavors, Agility and Driving.  What these do is run from you, hence the Renegade name. You must chase after them afterwards in order to get them, but it isn't really hard as they just do laps around the same area. LIVE orbs on the other hand are a pain as you need another player with you in order to get them, but the other player can't just be in the game, no that's too easy. They have to be right next to you and the orb for you to pick it up. I don't really understand why Ruffian decided that this was a good idea to go with. I'm sure that they should of saw the negative comments about the orbs in the previous game, but they then decide to not only do it again, but add more than the first had, sure...why not? Along with the orbs return, stunt rings are making a come back as well, and just like orbs, they have new types. The Vehicle rings from the original are here and just as annoying. I never really bothered with these stunt rings in Crackdown as some required setup before the payment, which I don't have time for. Along with the Vehicle rings are the Wingsuit stunt rings. What is a Wingsuit you ask? Well, let's move on to the skills of Crackdown 2. 
 

Just like in Crackdown 1, there are the 5 major skills that you can level up by using....that skill. You have Agility, Weapons, Strength, Explosives, and Driving. Each one can be leveled up to rank 5 and then they are at their max. A fun little feature that Crackdown 2 adds is you get cool rewards for each rank you move up in. Most of them are minor (Jumping higher and running faster for Agility, Lifting up more weight with Strength) but there are the Level 5 perks which add new things to the game. Getting to Agility 5 gives you the Wingsuit, which allows you to fly around the air like you're Alex Mercer, but you must descend a slight bit and then move up again constantly to keep in the air. This leads to a pretty fast way to travel around the city, but you get it so late into the game (unless you decide to go for the orbs first) that it doesn't really serve any purpose other than post end-game entertainment. Strength 5 gives you a ground strike that becomes very useful to clear out hordes of enemies. Lastly, Driving 5 gets you the Helicopter to use to your pleasure. You could find helicopters to fly around in the game before getting to the 5th rank, but this allows you to spawn one from any supply point, which becomes helpful for the inevitable orb hunt. Speaking of the orb hunt and helicopters, you now have the ability to use a radar on your mini map to locate any orbs around you for a short time. Using this radar while in a helicopter makes the orb hunt alot faster and less annoying. 
 
Now to finish off the gameplay section of this review, I come to the multiplayer. There is the standard Co-op play and the Competitive type. Co-op play allows you and friends to go through the campaign of the game together. Boosting up from Crackdown's two player limit, you can now have four Agents running around Pacific City wreaking havoc. The only problem is that, like the original, only the host of the game gets credit for the story progress, a thing that I personally dislike about co-op. Now for the Online side of Crackdown 2, I am not very experienced. I have only played 3 matches of it that consisted of Rocket Tag and Team Deathmatch. This side of multiplayer is not really Crackdown 2's strong point. The Team Deathmatch was somewhat laggy and just a bland playlist for Crackdown. Rocket Tag however, was very enjoyable. This mode is best described as a much crazier Oddball. Each Agent is given a rocket launcher with the objective to capture a orb and hold it for as long as possible while every other player try to kill you, which is very easy considering dodging dozens of rockets isn't a piece of cake. 
 
Now to the technical side of the review. The graphics of the game are very much improved from those of the previous game. It still holds the same cell shaded feel that the first game was praised for and looks much better. That being said, it may hold up better than the first game, but it still doesn't look as good as much of the major games available today. The character design is also both a good and bad thing. At first, I looked at the four Agents available and decided that none of their faces looked good. Luckly, as soon as you rank up one of your skills, a mask is put on your character forever. The armor's enhancement as you go through the ranks is also pretty cool as well, but not as good as the Agent's transformation in the original. The soundtrack is still pretty much nothing but techno remixs of songs, which I despise with a passion. The voice acting is one of the features that got an improvement as the audio logs allow for more unique voices to be heard than just standard peacekeepers, civilizens, and enemies. Also, Michael McConnohie  returning as the Agency Director is also welcome, even though you may want to drill a hole in your head after playing for one too many hours and hearing repeated dialouge from him. Another bright star on this game is the achievements. I was already happy about the prehievements that came from the demo, which I thought was a fantastic idea, but the quality and variety of them is good as well, making you do unique and fun things like finding 25 ways to kill yourself and taking a battle bus filled with four people and driving through a stunt ring. 
  
Overall, Crackdown 2 is a very enjoyable game, but suffers from many setbacks. It could also be considered more or less the same experience from the first game, repackaged with new features, but hey, that's what most sequels are these days... 
 
Crackdown 2 gets a 3.5 out of 5.