Crackdown 2 Review: Taking the Crack Out of Crackdown

Before I begin, notice that at the time of writing this review, I had finished the entire campaign mode Co-op with two other players. I then ran through a bulk of the game again with new game plus with my super powered agent. Had I not run through the game a second time in full 4Player Co-op with three other friends, I would not be as positive about the game as I am now. With that said, here is my review of Crackdown 2.

Crackdown 2 (XBOX 360)
Developer: Ruffian Games
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Released: July 6, 2010

Crackdown 2 is not a better game than the original and I would have a hard time listening to someone who wanted to argue otherwise. The first important piece of information you should know is that this game was developed by Ruffian Games, not Real Time Worlds, the developers of the original Crackdown. Could a new studio recreate the experience while improving on what made the first game so magical and addictive?

The short answer is no. There were changes made. The impression I took from the game is that Ruffian was familiar with Crackdown but weren’t necessarily fans of it. What I mean to say is that although they heard people’s complaints about the original, they themselves did not have enough personal experience with the game, leading to a lack of understanding when trying to recreate the formula. Others may argue that they are not a talented studio and that’s why they messed things up, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to a misunderstanding.

So what are these problems that came about? To explain the minor problems first, I will start with the melee combat. Every one complained about the hand to hand attacks from the original. It looked awkward and the range seemed off but it was powerful and felt satisfying to connect with. In Crackdown 2, the melee combat was changed into a quasi chain link combo system. You now have a variety of punches, kicks, hop kicks, and ground stomps. Each of which give you some sort of forward movement. I can only presume this was added to solve the range problems. The problem with this is that now, a certain amount of control over character movement has been sacrificed and the agent ends up in complete control and not the player.

I had far more problems controlling my character, especially in regards to jumping, than I ever did with the original game. I still don’t understand how that occurred seeing as there is much less climbing and verticality in the sequel. My biggest gripe with original Crackdown is that the camera was way too close. If you were going to scale a building, you would want to see where you could jump to above and around you, not just 3 feet in front. In the sequel these sequences are mostly removed but they are replaced with inconsistent and confusing platforming sequences. For some reason, grabbing a ledge is almost like rolling a set of dice. Will it catch? Won’t it catch? It is incredibly frustrating and the incredibly sluggish camera movement only compounds it. It sometimes takes forever to get the camera where you need it and other times, it feels fine. Then at times it’s just the vertical movement. But when the camera is slow, it makes me want to turn the game off.

So that’s it with the minor complaints, if you’re interested enough to still be with me here’s the deal breaker. They changed the world. Yes, yes, I know it’s the same map. But that doesn’t mean the world is the same. Gone is the sense of exploration. The sense of scale and the sense of purpose are as well. The game seems to have taken a step backward from everything that made it the surprise hit that it was. That is the most disappointing part about Crackdown 2; Pacific City is not alive like it once was, now filled with mindless zombies that seem to exist for no other reason than to fill up space.

To give you a little background, I played Crackdown just a couple months before the release of Crackdown 2. I had heard good things and had tried it a few times before, never taking a liking to it. As a single player story-line experience, it’s horrendous. It can hardly be called thought provoking at all. The loose mission based structure and checklist progression was a chore but what it lacked in those areas, it more than made up in level and world design. The original Crackdown has one of the most unique, creatively designed, and well thought out worlds I have ever seen. The structure to exploration and vertical progression of that world was just as meticulously thought out. As an Agent in Crackdown, your job was to clean up the city, ridding it of all criminal behavior. There were three gangs each with their own territory within Pacific City. From the outset of the game, you could wander into any territory you wanted; the catch being that each section was tougher than the previous and the buildings were designed in a way that discourages those with less agility or strength from entering. As a new player, if you wandered into a bad part of town, you had this feeling of “I’m not ready for the big boys.” It was the perfect emotion for a player to feel in a game involving crime and gang warfare.

The next piece of the original Crackdown formula that made it so fantastic was how you were led to find out more about your objectives and the world. You were in the city, clueless of direction but by exploring, you would eventually wander into a gang member’s territory. Upon entering, you were given a dossier about that gang’s territorial leader and the various mini-bosses sprinkled throughout. You’d hunt them down taking out members as you got closer and closer to finding the actually Gang’s Leader. However, the game also gave you the choice of taking out the leader right then and there. Of course, it was a lot easier if you took the time to weaken the gang small members one at a time before eventually coming face to face with the Boss.

While accomplishing all of this, safe houses sprinkled throughout the world would provide ammo, checkpoints, and the ever-needed re-spawn points. Without reaching a safe house, you had to start again from Agency Tower, covering previous ground until returning to the area you had been exploring. But having these checkpoints activated meant skipping all of that which made the exploration very enjoyable.

The joy of Crackdown came from traversing the world, visiting different locales, leveling up, finding new bosses and opening up new checkpoints. You’d venture out into the unknown, thousands of gang members firing trying to find the next safe house. Sometimes it required some creative thinking to scale a building a little too tall for your agility level. But there were always things to do to increase your skill level. The more you leveled up, the further you could venture out. It was an amazingly satisfying formula which had a player just wanting to find another checkpoint or grab a few more power ups only to find that another few hours had gone by.

This is not to say that Crackdown 2 has nothing to offer but it is definitely a step back. They’ve taken away the exploration and started the player off with spawn points littered throughout the entire world for no apparent reason. They serve no purpose other than for fast travel via re-spawn after a death. They took the original map and destroyed some of the coolest buildings and locales, rendering them useless. They also removed the dozen or so buildings that you could enter while hunting down the gang members. In the original, players could explore a sporting arena, medical building, work out gym, theater, observatory, seaside amusement park, off shore oil refinery, power plant, city hall, corporate stronghold, high rising construction site, rock quarry, industrial factory, and a large scale shipping dock. These were all landmarks and points of reference for use in exploration. These were not only used for navigation purposes but also used for some pretty memorable lone hero set-piece moments. There were multiple ways to get in and you were never limited to the front door approach. They were a big part of what made the Crackdown such an interesting and well-designed world.

I hate that I spent nearly this entire review pointing out why Crackdown 2 isn’t the first one. It is possible that had I not played the predecessor, I would have given Crackdown 2 higher marks. But in the same token, had I not played the predecessor, I definitely wouldn’t have been interested in the sequel. Ruffian Games is a new studio with only limited help from members of the original team. To expect much out of them is maybe a little unfair, but I feel they completely missed the mark on why the first game was a success. Instead of being asked to reinvent the formula, they were asked just to recreate it. They ended up spending their time on things that ended up not being improvements at all and sometimes even created new hindrances.

The one shining light out of all this was the Co-op experience. I’ve always enjoyed Co-op experience, especially ones with four players. Screwing around with some friends, acting silly, was the highlight of my experience. It’s just a pity that neither Ruffian nor Crackdown 2 can take credit for inventing or refining that kind of experience.

Score: 72 out of 100

David