The "Retro Game Reviews" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.
This thread has been linked to the game 'Crackdown 2'.
If it isn’t broken then don’t fix it. The old saying is often applied to gaming sequels but it’s not always as simple as that, the same again doesn’t always guarantee the same enjoyment second time round. Very little has changed between Crackdown and Crackdown 2, were the developers right to follow the old saying?
Coming with beta access to the Halo 3 multiplayer, Crackdown sales were no doubt higher than they otherwise would have been. But that’s not to say it wasn’t a game worthy of those sales, making your way across Empire City with great leaps and bounds was great fun.
Players familiar with Crackdown will know exactly what to expect with the sequel and will hit the ground (from a great height) running. For the benefit of those that have never had the pleasure, you play as an Agent of The Agency and are tasked with cleaning up the criminal element in Empire City. You are no average lawman though, the Agent is a modern day bionic man and once fully powered up you will be able to leap great heights and distances and be able to toss cars about like they were toys. Your Agent’s abilities are primarily there to help clean up the city but it would be criminal not to have a little fun with them.
In the first game, Empire City was run by separate gangs each controlling their own turf. With the (limited) assistance of the Peace Keepers, you took out the gang lead members one by one until the gang was crushed. Once all gangs were crushed you could sit back and relax safe in the knowledge that Empire City is now crime free. Fast forward 10 years and you’ll find that the Peace Keepers haven’t done a great job of keeping the peace. A resistance movement called Cell have decided that too much peace is a dull thing and are at war with the Agency and the Peace Keepers. It’s time to clean up the city again.
And the clean up job is much bigger than last time round. When night falls on Empire City, the Freaks come out to play. The Freaks are mutated humans and they litter the streets in their hundreds. It turns Empire City into a scene from [Prototype].
The tutorial does its job brilliantly. It is so dull you can’t wait to hit the streets and get going. The game plays a lot like Grand Theft Auto but from the other side of the legal fence. And with super powers. You run and jump around town, shoot the bad guys, ‘borrow’ a car and generally lark about as you reclaim the city. Grand Theft Auto IV lost a lot of the fun factor that the previous games in the series had but Crackdown 2 easily manages to maintain all of the fun. And the fun intensifies the more you increase the abilities of your Agent. Towards the end of the game you’ll be able to leap off the top of a tall building, blow the bad guys away with the impact of your landing, pick up the nearest car and throw it at the bad guys who think they are safe behind the barricade. A car full of Cell members arrives to provide backup and you can just kick their car into the river before they have a chance to get out of the car. And getting from A to B is more fun via the rooftops than it is on wheels. It’s well worth powering up.
Your Agent’s abilities are enhanced by actions. Every time you bag a bad guy with your weapon your abilities with a gun increase. Mow down a few bad guys in the car and your driving abilities increase. Blow a few bad guys into the afterlife with a well place grenade and your explosive abilities increase. Your agility skills are much more fun though. They come in the shame of green orbs which need to be collected and there are 500 of them scattered about the city. It just sounds like a standard explore and collect task but with all the rooftop leaping antics you soon become consumed in your quest to hunt down all 500. You’ll find yourself on a rooftop scanning the landscape for more orbs.
All of this is identical to the last game so to add a little twist, Ruffian makes you work that little bit harder for some of the orbs. A few of the agility orbs fly away from you and it becomes a game of cat and mouse as you try and catch them. There is also a driving ability orb which you have to chase down in your car to get. As well as the agility orbs, there are 300 hidden orbs which add to all of your abilities. As the name suggests, these are not so easy to spot.
Other fun distractions which increase your abilities are the roof top races and the car races. Both require you to get from checkpoint to checkpoint and complete the event in a set time. The road races are conventional racing, the rooftop races are anything but and the higher your Agent’s agility, the better chance you stand of beating the time. And finally there are some stunt challenges where you will need to power your car up a ramp and pass through each hoop.
All of this is the fun stuff and you can spend hours on all of this. But then you start the actual missions and the fun stops. The original game was repetitive to say the least. Take out gang leader A, take out gang leader B, repeat until gang is no more. It was made more interesting by having a dossier on each gang member and getting an understanding of how the whole gang hung together. And storming a gang stronghold and obliterating them was entertaining, the game got away with the repetitiveness. Crackdown 2, however doesn’t get away with it. Repeating the same dull action over and over quickly becomes a chore.
To eradicate the Cell members you need to reclaim the territory they possess. This is a simple case of going to the icon, calling in a Peace Keeper helicopter and then wiping out all Cell members so that the Peace Keepers can land and claim the area. And you do this exact same thing over and over and over.
As the game progresses it gets tougher to reclaim the Cell areas. The difficulty tends to spike when the guys with rocket launchers come out to play. They fire 3 rockets in a row and you can guarantee if the 1st one hits then all 3 are hitting. And when you get hit by a rocket you lose control of your Agent as he is thrown with the impact. And just before you regain control, the other guy with the rocket launcher hits. You’ll find that within seconds you’ll be running for cover to let your energy and shields regenerate. The guys with the rocket launchers are armoured so you need some close quarters attack but they are always perched up high. As you climb the buildings trying to get to the 1st of them you will be bombarded. It can be incredibly frustrating at times.
Clearing out the Freaks is no less frustrating or repetitive. The Freaks live underground and in order to find each layer you need to activate 3 beacons. Each beacon fires a beam and where the 3 beams meet is the location of the Freak layer. To clear the layer you need to venture inside, call for another beacon which you then need to protect from the Freaks while it charges. Once fully charged the beacon explodes wiping out all Freaks. And you do this over and over and over. The Freaks are endless in numbers, they just keep coming. And later in the game they increase in size and mobility meaning you rarely find a quiet spot to concentrate on the Freaks attacking the beacon. Again, it can be incredibly frustrating.
The game allows for 4 player co-op and you can’t help but feel the game forces you down the co-op route. I have found the final 2 Freak layers to be particularly tough but I did eventually beat them. On the final mission however, I simply don’t think I can do this without some help. The original game allowed for co-op but it wasn’t necessary, this time it does feel necessary.
There are a selection of versus based game modes but I’ve not found any public games to connect to which is a shame as I imagine a bit of deathmatch with super powered agents could be fun.
As the old football saying goes, it’s a game of 2 halves. The fun stuff is still fun but the main game is repetitive and from the outset, isn’t interesting.
6/10
Coming with beta access to the Halo 3 multiplayer, Crackdown sales were no doubt higher than they otherwise would have been. But that’s not to say it wasn’t a game worthy of those sales, making your way across Empire City with great leaps and bounds was great fun.
Players familiar with Crackdown will know exactly what to expect with the sequel and will hit the ground (from a great height) running. For the benefit of those that have never had the pleasure, you play as an Agent of The Agency and are tasked with cleaning up the criminal element in Empire City. You are no average lawman though, the Agent is a modern day bionic man and once fully powered up you will be able to leap great heights and distances and be able to toss cars about like they were toys. Your Agent’s abilities are primarily there to help clean up the city but it would be criminal not to have a little fun with them.
In the first game, Empire City was run by separate gangs each controlling their own turf. With the (limited) assistance of the Peace Keepers, you took out the gang lead members one by one until the gang was crushed. Once all gangs were crushed you could sit back and relax safe in the knowledge that Empire City is now crime free. Fast forward 10 years and you’ll find that the Peace Keepers haven’t done a great job of keeping the peace. A resistance movement called Cell have decided that too much peace is a dull thing and are at war with the Agency and the Peace Keepers. It’s time to clean up the city again.
And the clean up job is much bigger than last time round. When night falls on Empire City, the Freaks come out to play. The Freaks are mutated humans and they litter the streets in their hundreds. It turns Empire City into a scene from [Prototype].
The tutorial does its job brilliantly. It is so dull you can’t wait to hit the streets and get going. The game plays a lot like Grand Theft Auto but from the other side of the legal fence. And with super powers. You run and jump around town, shoot the bad guys, ‘borrow’ a car and generally lark about as you reclaim the city. Grand Theft Auto IV lost a lot of the fun factor that the previous games in the series had but Crackdown 2 easily manages to maintain all of the fun. And the fun intensifies the more you increase the abilities of your Agent. Towards the end of the game you’ll be able to leap off the top of a tall building, blow the bad guys away with the impact of your landing, pick up the nearest car and throw it at the bad guys who think they are safe behind the barricade. A car full of Cell members arrives to provide backup and you can just kick their car into the river before they have a chance to get out of the car. And getting from A to B is more fun via the rooftops than it is on wheels. It’s well worth powering up.
Your Agent’s abilities are enhanced by actions. Every time you bag a bad guy with your weapon your abilities with a gun increase. Mow down a few bad guys in the car and your driving abilities increase. Blow a few bad guys into the afterlife with a well place grenade and your explosive abilities increase. Your agility skills are much more fun though. They come in the shame of green orbs which need to be collected and there are 500 of them scattered about the city. It just sounds like a standard explore and collect task but with all the rooftop leaping antics you soon become consumed in your quest to hunt down all 500. You’ll find yourself on a rooftop scanning the landscape for more orbs.
All of this is identical to the last game so to add a little twist, Ruffian makes you work that little bit harder for some of the orbs. A few of the agility orbs fly away from you and it becomes a game of cat and mouse as you try and catch them. There is also a driving ability orb which you have to chase down in your car to get. As well as the agility orbs, there are 300 hidden orbs which add to all of your abilities. As the name suggests, these are not so easy to spot.
Other fun distractions which increase your abilities are the roof top races and the car races. Both require you to get from checkpoint to checkpoint and complete the event in a set time. The road races are conventional racing, the rooftop races are anything but and the higher your Agent’s agility, the better chance you stand of beating the time. And finally there are some stunt challenges where you will need to power your car up a ramp and pass through each hoop.
All of this is the fun stuff and you can spend hours on all of this. But then you start the actual missions and the fun stops. The original game was repetitive to say the least. Take out gang leader A, take out gang leader B, repeat until gang is no more. It was made more interesting by having a dossier on each gang member and getting an understanding of how the whole gang hung together. And storming a gang stronghold and obliterating them was entertaining, the game got away with the repetitiveness. Crackdown 2, however doesn’t get away with it. Repeating the same dull action over and over quickly becomes a chore.
To eradicate the Cell members you need to reclaim the territory they possess. This is a simple case of going to the icon, calling in a Peace Keeper helicopter and then wiping out all Cell members so that the Peace Keepers can land and claim the area. And you do this exact same thing over and over and over.
As the game progresses it gets tougher to reclaim the Cell areas. The difficulty tends to spike when the guys with rocket launchers come out to play. They fire 3 rockets in a row and you can guarantee if the 1st one hits then all 3 are hitting. And when you get hit by a rocket you lose control of your Agent as he is thrown with the impact. And just before you regain control, the other guy with the rocket launcher hits. You’ll find that within seconds you’ll be running for cover to let your energy and shields regenerate. The guys with the rocket launchers are armoured so you need some close quarters attack but they are always perched up high. As you climb the buildings trying to get to the 1st of them you will be bombarded. It can be incredibly frustrating at times.
Clearing out the Freaks is no less frustrating or repetitive. The Freaks live underground and in order to find each layer you need to activate 3 beacons. Each beacon fires a beam and where the 3 beams meet is the location of the Freak layer. To clear the layer you need to venture inside, call for another beacon which you then need to protect from the Freaks while it charges. Once fully charged the beacon explodes wiping out all Freaks. And you do this over and over and over. The Freaks are endless in numbers, they just keep coming. And later in the game they increase in size and mobility meaning you rarely find a quiet spot to concentrate on the Freaks attacking the beacon. Again, it can be incredibly frustrating.
The game allows for 4 player co-op and you can’t help but feel the game forces you down the co-op route. I have found the final 2 Freak layers to be particularly tough but I did eventually beat them. On the final mission however, I simply don’t think I can do this without some help. The original game allowed for co-op but it wasn’t necessary, this time it does feel necessary.
There are a selection of versus based game modes but I’ve not found any public games to connect to which is a shame as I imagine a bit of deathmatch with super powered agents could be fun.
As the old football saying goes, it’s a game of 2 halves. The fun stuff is still fun but the main game is repetitive and from the outset, isn’t interesting.
6/10
There have been no replies to this thread yet.
If it isn’t broken then don’t fix it. The old saying is often applied to gaming sequels but it’s not always as simple as that, the same again doesn’t always guarantee the same enjoyment second time round. Very little has changed between Crackdown and Crackdown 2, were the developers right to follow the old saying?
Coming with beta access to the Halo 3 multiplayer, Crackdown sales were no doubt higher than they otherwise would have been. But that’s not to say it wasn’t a game worthy of those sales, making your way across Empire City with great leaps and bounds was great fun.
Players familiar with Crackdown will know exactly what to expect with the sequel and will hit the ground (from a great height) running. For the benefit of those that have never had the pleasure, you play as an Agent of The Agency and are tasked with cleaning up the criminal element in Empire City. You are no average lawman though, the Agent is a modern day bionic man and once fully powered up you will be able to leap great heights and distances and be able to toss cars about like they were toys. Your Agent’s abilities are primarily there to help clean up the city but it would be criminal not to have a little fun with them.
In the first game, Empire City was run by separate gangs each controlling their own turf. With the (limited) assistance of the Peace Keepers, you took out the gang lead members one by one until the gang was crushed. Once all gangs were crushed you could sit back and relax safe in the knowledge that Empire City is now crime free. Fast forward 10 years and you’ll find that the Peace Keepers haven’t done a great job of keeping the peace. A resistance movement called Cell have decided that too much peace is a dull thing and are at war with the Agency and the Peace Keepers. It’s time to clean up the city again.
And the clean up job is much bigger than last time round. When night falls on Empire City, the Freaks come out to play. The Freaks are mutated humans and they litter the streets in their hundreds. It turns Empire City into a scene from [Prototype].
The tutorial does its job brilliantly. It is so dull you can’t wait to hit the streets and get going. The game plays a lot like Grand Theft Auto but from the other side of the legal fence. And with super powers. You run and jump around town, shoot the bad guys, ‘borrow’ a car and generally lark about as you reclaim the city. Grand Theft Auto IV lost a lot of the fun factor that the previous games in the series had but Crackdown 2 easily manages to maintain all of the fun. And the fun intensifies the more you increase the abilities of your Agent. Towards the end of the game you’ll be able to leap off the top of a tall building, blow the bad guys away with the impact of your landing, pick up the nearest car and throw it at the bad guys who think they are safe behind the barricade. A car full of Cell members arrives to provide backup and you can just kick their car into the river before they have a chance to get out of the car. And getting from A to B is more fun via the rooftops than it is on wheels. It’s well worth powering up.
Your Agent’s abilities are enhanced by actions. Every time you bag a bad guy with your weapon your abilities with a gun increase. Mow down a few bad guys in the car and your driving abilities increase. Blow a few bad guys into the afterlife with a well place grenade and your explosive abilities increase. Your agility skills are much more fun though. They come in the shame of green orbs which need to be collected and there are 500 of them scattered about the city. It just sounds like a standard explore and collect task but with all the rooftop leaping antics you soon become consumed in your quest to hunt down all 500. You’ll find yourself on a rooftop scanning the landscape for more orbs.
All of this is identical to the last game so to add a little twist, Ruffian makes you work that little bit harder for some of the orbs. A few of the agility orbs fly away from you and it becomes a game of cat and mouse as you try and catch them. There is also a driving ability orb which you have to chase down in your car to get. As well as the agility orbs, there are 300 hidden orbs which add to all of your abilities. As the name suggests, these are not so easy to spot.
Other fun distractions which increase your abilities are the roof top races and the car races. Both require you to get from checkpoint to checkpoint and complete the event in a set time. The road races are conventional racing, the rooftop races are anything but and the higher your Agent’s agility, the better chance you stand of beating the time. And finally there are some stunt challenges where you will need to power your car up a ramp and pass through each hoop.
All of this is the fun stuff and you can spend hours on all of this. But then you start the actual missions and the fun stops. The original game was repetitive to say the least. Take out gang leader A, take out gang leader B, repeat until gang is no more. It was made more interesting by having a dossier on each gang member and getting an understanding of how the whole gang hung together. And storming a gang stronghold and obliterating them was entertaining, the game got away with the repetitiveness. Crackdown 2, however doesn’t get away with it. Repeating the same dull action over and over quickly becomes a chore.
To eradicate the Cell members you need to reclaim the territory they possess. This is a simple case of going to the icon, calling in a Peace Keeper helicopter and then wiping out all Cell members so that the Peace Keepers can land and claim the area. And you do this exact same thing over and over and over.
As the game progresses it gets tougher to reclaim the Cell areas. The difficulty tends to spike when the guys with rocket launchers come out to play. They fire 3 rockets in a row and you can guarantee if the 1st one hits then all 3 are hitting. And when you get hit by a rocket you lose control of your Agent as he is thrown with the impact. And just before you regain control, the other guy with the rocket launcher hits. You’ll find that within seconds you’ll be running for cover to let your energy and shields regenerate. The guys with the rocket launchers are armoured so you need some close quarters attack but they are always perched up high. As you climb the buildings trying to get to the 1st of them you will be bombarded. It can be incredibly frustrating at times.
Clearing out the Freaks is no less frustrating or repetitive. The Freaks live underground and in order to find each layer you need to activate 3 beacons. Each beacon fires a beam and where the 3 beams meet is the location of the Freak layer. To clear the layer you need to venture inside, call for another beacon which you then need to protect from the Freaks while it charges. Once fully charged the beacon explodes wiping out all Freaks. And you do this over and over and over. The Freaks are endless in numbers, they just keep coming. And later in the game they increase in size and mobility meaning you rarely find a quiet spot to concentrate on the Freaks attacking the beacon. Again, it can be incredibly frustrating.
The game allows for 4 player co-op and you can’t help but feel the game forces you down the co-op route. I have found the final 2 Freak layers to be particularly tough but I did eventually beat them. On the final mission however, I simply don’t think I can do this without some help. The original game allowed for co-op but it wasn’t necessary, this time it does feel necessary.
There are a selection of versus based game modes but I’ve not found any public games to connect to which is a shame as I imagine a bit of deathmatch with super powered agents could be fun.
As the old football saying goes, it’s a game of 2 halves. The fun stuff is still fun but the main game is repetitive and from the outset, isn’t interesting.
6/10
Coming with beta access to the Halo 3 multiplayer, Crackdown sales were no doubt higher than they otherwise would have been. But that’s not to say it wasn’t a game worthy of those sales, making your way across Empire City with great leaps and bounds was great fun.
Players familiar with Crackdown will know exactly what to expect with the sequel and will hit the ground (from a great height) running. For the benefit of those that have never had the pleasure, you play as an Agent of The Agency and are tasked with cleaning up the criminal element in Empire City. You are no average lawman though, the Agent is a modern day bionic man and once fully powered up you will be able to leap great heights and distances and be able to toss cars about like they were toys. Your Agent’s abilities are primarily there to help clean up the city but it would be criminal not to have a little fun with them.
In the first game, Empire City was run by separate gangs each controlling their own turf. With the (limited) assistance of the Peace Keepers, you took out the gang lead members one by one until the gang was crushed. Once all gangs were crushed you could sit back and relax safe in the knowledge that Empire City is now crime free. Fast forward 10 years and you’ll find that the Peace Keepers haven’t done a great job of keeping the peace. A resistance movement called Cell have decided that too much peace is a dull thing and are at war with the Agency and the Peace Keepers. It’s time to clean up the city again.
And the clean up job is much bigger than last time round. When night falls on Empire City, the Freaks come out to play. The Freaks are mutated humans and they litter the streets in their hundreds. It turns Empire City into a scene from [Prototype].
The tutorial does its job brilliantly. It is so dull you can’t wait to hit the streets and get going. The game plays a lot like Grand Theft Auto but from the other side of the legal fence. And with super powers. You run and jump around town, shoot the bad guys, ‘borrow’ a car and generally lark about as you reclaim the city. Grand Theft Auto IV lost a lot of the fun factor that the previous games in the series had but Crackdown 2 easily manages to maintain all of the fun. And the fun intensifies the more you increase the abilities of your Agent. Towards the end of the game you’ll be able to leap off the top of a tall building, blow the bad guys away with the impact of your landing, pick up the nearest car and throw it at the bad guys who think they are safe behind the barricade. A car full of Cell members arrives to provide backup and you can just kick their car into the river before they have a chance to get out of the car. And getting from A to B is more fun via the rooftops than it is on wheels. It’s well worth powering up.
Your Agent’s abilities are enhanced by actions. Every time you bag a bad guy with your weapon your abilities with a gun increase. Mow down a few bad guys in the car and your driving abilities increase. Blow a few bad guys into the afterlife with a well place grenade and your explosive abilities increase. Your agility skills are much more fun though. They come in the shame of green orbs which need to be collected and there are 500 of them scattered about the city. It just sounds like a standard explore and collect task but with all the rooftop leaping antics you soon become consumed in your quest to hunt down all 500. You’ll find yourself on a rooftop scanning the landscape for more orbs.
All of this is identical to the last game so to add a little twist, Ruffian makes you work that little bit harder for some of the orbs. A few of the agility orbs fly away from you and it becomes a game of cat and mouse as you try and catch them. There is also a driving ability orb which you have to chase down in your car to get. As well as the agility orbs, there are 300 hidden orbs which add to all of your abilities. As the name suggests, these are not so easy to spot.
Other fun distractions which increase your abilities are the roof top races and the car races. Both require you to get from checkpoint to checkpoint and complete the event in a set time. The road races are conventional racing, the rooftop races are anything but and the higher your Agent’s agility, the better chance you stand of beating the time. And finally there are some stunt challenges where you will need to power your car up a ramp and pass through each hoop.
All of this is the fun stuff and you can spend hours on all of this. But then you start the actual missions and the fun stops. The original game was repetitive to say the least. Take out gang leader A, take out gang leader B, repeat until gang is no more. It was made more interesting by having a dossier on each gang member and getting an understanding of how the whole gang hung together. And storming a gang stronghold and obliterating them was entertaining, the game got away with the repetitiveness. Crackdown 2, however doesn’t get away with it. Repeating the same dull action over and over quickly becomes a chore.
To eradicate the Cell members you need to reclaim the territory they possess. This is a simple case of going to the icon, calling in a Peace Keeper helicopter and then wiping out all Cell members so that the Peace Keepers can land and claim the area. And you do this exact same thing over and over and over.
As the game progresses it gets tougher to reclaim the Cell areas. The difficulty tends to spike when the guys with rocket launchers come out to play. They fire 3 rockets in a row and you can guarantee if the 1st one hits then all 3 are hitting. And when you get hit by a rocket you lose control of your Agent as he is thrown with the impact. And just before you regain control, the other guy with the rocket launcher hits. You’ll find that within seconds you’ll be running for cover to let your energy and shields regenerate. The guys with the rocket launchers are armoured so you need some close quarters attack but they are always perched up high. As you climb the buildings trying to get to the 1st of them you will be bombarded. It can be incredibly frustrating at times.
Clearing out the Freaks is no less frustrating or repetitive. The Freaks live underground and in order to find each layer you need to activate 3 beacons. Each beacon fires a beam and where the 3 beams meet is the location of the Freak layer. To clear the layer you need to venture inside, call for another beacon which you then need to protect from the Freaks while it charges. Once fully charged the beacon explodes wiping out all Freaks. And you do this over and over and over. The Freaks are endless in numbers, they just keep coming. And later in the game they increase in size and mobility meaning you rarely find a quiet spot to concentrate on the Freaks attacking the beacon. Again, it can be incredibly frustrating.
The game allows for 4 player co-op and you can’t help but feel the game forces you down the co-op route. I have found the final 2 Freak layers to be particularly tough but I did eventually beat them. On the final mission however, I simply don’t think I can do this without some help. The original game allowed for co-op but it wasn’t necessary, this time it does feel necessary.
There are a selection of versus based game modes but I’ve not found any public games to connect to which is a shame as I imagine a bit of deathmatch with super powered agents could be fun.
As the old football saying goes, it’s a game of 2 halves. The fun stuff is still fun but the main game is repetitive and from the outset, isn’t interesting.
6/10