Developer: Ruffian Games Ltd.
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Rating Guide: How I Review Games

Review:

Look, up in the sky!  It’s a bird, it’s a plane.  It’s a super-enhanced Agent jumping from rooftop to rooftop in search of orbs.  Welcome back Agent…welcome back to Pacific City.  I’ve been craving a return to Crackdown ever since the first one took my brain by storm during the Halo 3 beta.  There were plenty of people who missed out on the first Crackdown and I say shame on you because it was a really good game.

My earlier review should speak volumes about it along with the fact that I hammered away for a sequel too.  Ruffian Games must have heard my plea and they delivered a sequel.  Could they do what RealTime Worlds did and create another cult phenom of a game?

Gameplay, Graphics and Sound

Crackdown 2 is pretty basic in its scope.  If you’ve played the first, you’ll be extremely familiar with the second because not much has changed.  In fact, you’re in the same city as before and you’re doing pretty much the same things.  You’re a super Agent and you’re trying to protect the city.  Along with getting rid of the terrorist group,Cell, Ruffian Games decided to ride the zombie wagon and introduce Freaks to the world of Crackdown 2.  Freaks took over Pacific City as it turns out and ten years later, you’re back to clean up the city.  Sounds fun eh?

However, what I didn’t anticipate was that they would deliver what turned out to be the original Crackdown simply dusted off and repackaged.  It feels like they literally took the source code from Crackdown and made it into what could have been DLC.  What little story you had in the first has been replaced with no story at all.  I enjoyed hunting down the three gangs in the original.  It at least gave me a sense of progression and a sense of purpose in the city.  Crackdown 2 does little if any of that at all.  You get an opening sequence to explain the Freaks and then nothing ever again after that beyond the cool Agent Director’s voice and audio logs placed around the city.

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