Crackdown 2 is finally out and gamers have greeted it with a well-deserved cry of "meh." The first Crackdown had more going for it: it included the Halo 3 beta.
Players resume the role of the ever-so-slightly customizable agent named Agent, who is an agent of the agency named The Agency, which is trying to simultaneously eliminate a terrorist cell named Cell and hoards of zombie-like freaks named Freaks. Seriously? It's like creativity suddenly went out of style.
All this is accompanied by a narrator who is apparently suffering from OCD. He feels he must announce each and every little detail of the game, and the only way to shut him up is to turn the volume down. He's like an updated version of Navi the fairy, and his little bulletins can be pretty distracting when you're trying to stick a landing.
For a platforming game, the jumping and climbing controls in Crackdown 2 are pretty fickle. One minute, you're an unstoppable superhero bounding between rooftops; the next, you're practically tripping over your own shadow and suddenly you have to climb back up to the roof.
Shooting isn't this game's strong suit, either. For most of the guns to be accurate, players have to fire from close range, and the melee attack is usually more effective from that range anyway. A good compromise is to throw a grenade and watch the pretty fire.
The lazily named Pacific City swarms with Cell during the day and Freaks at night. Freaks are supposed to be hulking, unstoppable monsters - even Navi-guy warns you about them. Unfortunately, they're actually huge pushovers. On normal difficulty, you can actually stand in a crowd of them and press B to kick the hell out of the whole lot. There was so much wasted potential with the Freaks. Now all they're good for is leveling up Agent's strength.
Multiplayer is also available, but unfortunately only through Xbox Live. If two friend one to play, they would each have to own the game, which wouldn't be advisable for either of them.
The game is mission-based, and the missions all boil down to, "go here, shot this, don't die." Their repetitive nature is offset by Pacific City's appeal as a sandbox, where players are only limited by the equipment they've unlocked and their creativity.
There are guns that can kill a ton of Freaks, grenades that pull objects together, and even a rubber ducky bomb. It's up to the players to make their own fun in this game - it's the only way they'll have any.
[This article was originally written for and published with Tiger Weekly magazine in Baton Rouge, LA]
Players resume the role of the ever-so-slightly customizable agent named Agent, who is an agent of the agency named The Agency, which is trying to simultaneously eliminate a terrorist cell named Cell and hoards of zombie-like freaks named Freaks. Seriously? It's like creativity suddenly went out of style.
For a platforming game, the jumping and climbing controls in Crackdown 2 are pretty fickle. One minute, you're an unstoppable superhero bounding between rooftops; the next, you're practically tripping over your own shadow and suddenly you have to climb back up to the roof.
Shooting isn't this game's strong suit, either. For most of the guns to be accurate, players have to fire from close range, and the melee attack is usually more effective from that range anyway. A good compromise is to throw a grenade and watch the pretty fire.
The lazily named Pacific City swarms with Cell during the day and Freaks at night. Freaks are supposed to be hulking, unstoppable monsters - even Navi-guy warns you about them. Unfortunately, they're actually huge pushovers. On normal difficulty, you can actually stand in a crowd of them and press B to kick the hell out of the whole lot. There was so much wasted potential with the Freaks. Now all they're good for is leveling up Agent's strength.
Multiplayer is also available, but unfortunately only through Xbox Live. If two friend one to play, they would each have to own the game, which wouldn't be advisable for either of them.
The game is mission-based, and the missions all boil down to, "go here, shot this, don't die." Their repetitive nature is offset by Pacific City's appeal as a sandbox, where players are only limited by the equipment they've unlocked and their creativity.
There are guns that can kill a ton of Freaks, grenades that pull objects together, and even a rubber ducky bomb. It's up to the players to make their own fun in this game - it's the only way they'll have any.
[This article was originally written for and published with Tiger Weekly magazine in Baton Rouge, LA]
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