Crackdown 2

[Oscar Wilde]

Bought this game back in January, promptly forgot about it, remembered a couple days ago (reminder on my phone) "Oh yeah I bought that!" Picked it up yesterday, and began playing it.

My verdict? Pretty much the first game with polish. There's one gang of humans called Cell who are assholes (and not very bright, but 20 humans with rocket launchers don't need brains to juggle you) and a gang of mutants called Freaks who have one form that's basically the Hunters from Prototype (i.e. stupidly fast and strong and annoying) and a bunch of fodder. During the night, the Freaks mill about in the streets to be massacred by the hundreds (Easiest way to grind up skills, especially driving. I love me the tank), while Cell takes over during the day. Largely the gameplay is the same, go to place, kill dudes, take over place, but this time around it just seems to be more fun.

Played a bit of co-op and that's still good.

Haven't done PVP yet.

By the way, is "THAT'S AN ACHIEVEMENT!" the new SKILLS FOR KILLS?

[Stark]

It's fun but incredibly disappointing. It's Crackdown 1.1. It's barely a mission pack.

The good include a much better engine and far more guys onscreen at once. 4P coops. The air-deploying is a neat change to the old supply points. Ummm...

Think of a modern feature you wanted to see in Crackdown.

It's not there.

Think of an annoying thing in Crackdown 1 that you expected to be fixed.

It's still there.

Levelling is so much faster you can get to 80% in one sitting in everything, the game is even easier than the first one, 80% of the guns are useless again, all the vehicles are useless again. The city is EXACTLY THE SAME with absolutely nothing new but some orange textures. There are no 'kingpin hunts', just trivially easy points to activate and bombs to drop. The head-hitting ledges to stop you climbing are still there. It's still harder to fall turn and grab a ledge than it is in any other game for the last ten years. They let you choose a face that is covered by a helmet after 10 minutes of play. The zombies are just a way to farm levels and pose no threat.

That said, it's still fun because it's superhero coop. I doubt I'll keep it past 7 days, however; it's just too easy and short.

[SylasGaunt]

I dabbled in the PVP stuff today and thought rocket tag was a diverting bit of insanity with rockets with whoever has the orb at present fleeing like a crazy person while every other player in the game flings copious numbers of rockets at them.

[Losonti Tokash]

Looks like I lucked out by being too broke to afford this one right away.

[Dave]

Ars Technica gave it a pass, which was about all I needed to know anyway.
I enjoyed the original, but I don't own an Xbox 360 and it would take a lot to get me to buy a game these days, since I'm (1) broke, (2) currently infatuated with Bad Company 2, and (3) have a steam gaming backlog anyway.

[Stark]

I dabbled in the PVP stuff today and thought rocket tag was a diverting bit of insanity with rockets with whoever has the orb at present fleeing like a crazy person while every other player in the game flings copious numbers of rockets at them.

A game based on the terrible infinte ragdoll problem Crackdown has always had sounds like an exercise in frustration. You're hit! No, you can't control your guy until he rolls down the road helplessly being pounded by more rockets!

[SylasGaunt]

Pretty much the only time I've had ragdolling come up as an issue in rocket tag was, oddly enough, as a one of the taggers where I'd get clipped by the blast from the rocket. As the guy with the orb I've usually died immediately rather than being juggled.