Your entire purpose is activating Absortion Units across the city to send Sunbeams that destroy the Freaks.  Once you activate a trio of units, you’ll get a beacon location to go to and descend upon.  Once there, you protect the beacon until it’s ready to activate.  Rinse and repeat literally about 9 times before the game is over.  There is nothing else.  You can do a few Freak Breaches if you want but ultimately that’s just like what you just did just a minute ago when you were just doing that just a minute ago.  Make sense?

The combat is still the same, the weapons are pretty much still the same and hunting orbs is still the same.  I loved doing it in the first but if that was all I wanted to do, I would’ve much preferred an expansion pack for $15 and not a full game pretending to be a full game.  It’s still fun hunting down all the orbs and the introduction of the renegade orb (an orb that runs from you as you try to get it) was fun but at the same time it wasn’t.  I’ve done all of this before.  They even managed to somehow make the suspect targeting even more suspect.  It’s manageable but it’s still off.  But like I said, I’ve done all that before and I did it better in the first game.

What they also forgot to include was all the originality and individuality that made the original such a sleeper classic.  One of my biggest complaints about Crackdown 2 came in the form of its most critical aspect…the Agents.  They went from being a central part of your Crackdown experience to being really generic in Crackdown 2.  One of the joys in the original was watching your Agent transform as your skills increased.  You could even pick from a variety of Agents to create a bond and attachment to your character but the “character” is surely missing now.

What you get in Crackdown 2 is a boring space Marine.  You get to choose your Agent from four basic and poorly designed faces along with some pretty uninspiring colors.  The face you choose doesn’t matter because that face is gone within a few minutes after your first skill is advanced.  After you gain your first skill, your Agent gets a helmet and that my friends is the end of your character becoming anything or anyone you can identify with.

Beyond the poor decision behind the Agents, Crackdown 2 does little to pretend it’s not the original Crackdown repackaged.  The city is the same with the exception of the destruction caused over the last ten years.  It has been several years since the original yet the city you’re in doesn’t seem to have several years of improvement in it.  I guess that’s to be expected when you have only an 8 month development cycle.  Beyond the draw distance when standing atop high peaks, you won’t find much to marvel at in the city.

In fact, most of the problems in the first game are still in the sequel.  Did I mention that this was Crackdown repackaged?  Most of the buildings still have the same stupid angles that no one can really navigate.  They still have surfaces that look like you can clinch but really can’t.  An example of how little attention was given to producing a proper sequel is in one of the “Tactical Locations” of the Cell in which you simply can not complete without a friend helping you.  Once you activate this particular Cell location, you have to get inside the building to properly secure it and kill all the bad guys.

The problem is that going the only way into the building causes you to lose control of the location.  No matter how you try, if you attempt to go where you’re supposed to go you’ll lose control of the location.  So you literally can’t finish it without someone joining you for that one mission.

Xbox LIVE Extras

Thankfully Ruffian added a 16-player combat arena that should serve as reason to visit Pacific City repeatedly.  There are three modes in which you can do battle.  Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Rocket Tag (rocker launcher madness).  I don’t think I need to say much as the modes are pretty self explanatory.  They all seem a bit rushed though.

The saving grace for Crackdown 2 comes in the form of its co-op (not splitscreen co-op mind you).  If this game didn’t have co-op, I’m not sure what I would do.  Jumping around the city and causing explosions with my Xbox LIVE friends is just about as much fun as the original was.  But did the friends make it fun or was it just a fun game?  You can set up your game to allow friends to simply jump in or restrict anyone from jumping in your game…whatever your preference is.

Ruffian did a good job with this.  It’s unfortunate that this aspect of the game seems to be the only thing they wanted to do because it’s the only thing that produced the amount of fun I expected.

One thing to note about the co-op is that I would’ve loved the option to kick players out of your world and not simply leaving it to being an option to just have friends only join or be blocked altogether.  As it stands right now if you have someone join that causes a stink, you have to restart the game in order to get rid of them.

Also, only the host of the game gets credit for any missions you do together.  You can still grab orbs and they’ll track but mission completion is all awarded to the host.  So you’ll each have to rinse and repeat there as well changing hosts for credit.  Bummer I know.

Conclusion

What Crackdown 2 appears to be is a sequel that Ruffian Games had to do instead of a sequel that they wanted to do.  There is a huge difference in doing something you have to as opposed to doing something you want to do.  I wanted more of the same and I got it but it was somehow missing everything that made the original so much fun.  A game needs to have its own identity even if it’s a sequel.

Crackdown 2 suffered from being a poor repackaging of a game that debuted over 3 years ago.  Was there no other idea to run with after all this time?

It’s not a good sign when the most memorable thing about Crackdown 2 is the Agency Director and his humor.  If there’s ever a Crackdown 3 developed, I hope that it’s a proper follow up to what was a pretty unique experience.  Crackdown 2 just didn’t deliver enough of the crack that got me addicted to the first.

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