Crackdown 2 or How I Learned to Love Big Booms (and little green orbs)

I seem to be in the mood to post today, and because, for the past couple of years I seem to post only about video game related stuff (today's other post notwithstanding), I'm gonna post about this:


Crackdown 2 (Wikipedia entry.  the Computer and Video Games.com review) 

The last line of the review sums up my feelings: 

"but, if you buy it, don't be surprised to experience a twinge of disappointment as the game unravels."

Okay, what follows contains information that may be considered 'Spoilers," but you'll know most of this anyway after playing for an hour (if you go for the Story goals. I didn't. I spent my first night jumping and climbing to find orbs, because I loved doing it so much in the original game).  If you don't want to know, just don't read.

Also, I'm only talking about the single player here. While I like co-op, I'm just not interested in the other, more competitive or adversarial  multiplayer aspects. Not yet, anyway.

I loved the original Crackdown, and I spent months anticipating Crackdown 2. Mostly, my disappoint lies with the story. There really isn't one. Instead, you only have two tasks:

First, the task of activating sets of three energy-collecting gadgets in order to power up a beacon. Drop beacon into freak lair and defend it against vandalizing freaks while it warms up, At full power, it gets all glowy, burns all the freaks in the lair, and ends their good time.  After that, you go out to rescue the next set of three collectors and repeat, for a total of nine beacons spread throughout the city. The big climax of the game is that you get to activate a tenth beacon located at Agency headquarters that will finish off all remaining freaks in the city. 

The second task it to take control of specific 'tactical' points throughout the city from the local terrorist organization, The Cell.. Each tactical point seems to have a partner point in the same neighborhood that you should capture soon after the first. Otherwise, the Cell, will come back and reclaim their, uh, sidewalks?. The tactical points are mostly on the streets (with a few on the rooftops) so it's more like a place that a bunch of guys with guns like to hang out, like an NRA club meeting in the parking lot of the bowling alley.  Claiming a tactical point gives you a place to resupply, to store newly discovered weapons, or to change your weapon loadout. 

Both tasks feel like they should have been side missions (thus, the reason I call them tasks instead of missions), there only to keep you busy while waiting for the main storyline to progress..  Neither task gives you much of a feeling of making a difference against the game's Biggest Bads... 

Saying 'Biggest Bads' in relation to Crackdown 2 is a little painful. Collecting the "In Story" Audio Files scattered across the city kind of makes you think there really is a Big Bad that you'll have a grand final battle with. But not so much.  More of a hook for events in a Crackdown 3 (which, despite my mild disappointment with the second game, I'm still hoping hoping hoping for a third).


Having said all that, I still like the game. Still like the look and style, still like the gameplay, LOVE the climbing and jumping and blowing everything into tiny little bits. Still love the orbs (even though they were the source of HOURS of frustrated searching in the first Crackdown). Still love picking up cars and throwing them at people. Still love driving fast cars through crowds of squishy people. I even love the Voice of the Agency guy, even when he was calling me names and questioning my manhood.   Most of the fun I had in the original game was in doing all those things, and I still get to do them in the second.

Combat is still wild, especially once you've leveled up your abilities and acquired the better weapons  Big booms, little booms, chains of booms. Toss a car from a rooftop, fire a rocket launcher... flying boom!  There's even a quacky yellow rubber duck boom!  Gun battles even get a little harrowing at times when you're surrounded on the street by rifle-toting thugs and have a few punks with rocket launchers, grenade launchers or gun turrets above you, all shooting at you while you scramble for cover in the one doorway or alcove they can't get a line of sight on, healing up so you can make a dash for the rooftops, only to be blown back to the ground by the guy with the Agent-seeking rocket.

And heck, I still love Pacific City, even if she is all shabby and rundown and blown apart. I always have a difficult time navigating around sandbox and open world game cities without frequently calling up the map. I have some trouble recognizing differing areas of the cities, and absolutely NO sense of direction in-game (there's no real awareness of where the in-game sun is unless I'm looking up at it, so every direction feels the same to me).  I have to play for dozens of hours before I'm able to get myself from one side of a city to the other without calling up the map at every second or third intersection or using a waypoint system (sometimes, I still get lost on Call of Duty maps, even though the entire field of battle is roughly the size of my backyard). 

The new Pacific City really did seem all new.  So, I was thrilled when, a couple of hours into the game, I recognized a particular set of buildings from the first game. No, it wasn't the amusement park, or a Shai-Gen building, or the oil rig.  Just a couple of low buildings near the water, in view of Agency tower. It had been quite a while since I'd played the original Crackdown, and I assumed that the new Pacific City would be completely different except for a few high profile/well loved locations from the first game. Standing there, looking at these innocuous buildings that had no importance in the first game (or the second, for that matter), I realized that it really was my beloved Pacific City, and that I could find my way around after all.

I spent a few hours exploring for anything I could recognize from the first game. Got my low-ability-level self killed several times by bad guys, a couple of falls, and not running away from my own grenades fast enough, but it was worth it to see all the places I loved in the original Crackdown. They'd changed, fallen apart, been destroyed.  But I could still see the places I'd fought those early battles, getting my butt kicked several times, places I returned to later after I was all grow'd up, just so I could throw a few cars at those bullies, toss in some grenades, then pick off the survivors with a harpoon gun.  Ah, memories!


My recommendation for people like me, who aren't into the multiplayer:  buy the original Crackdown if you don't already own it. Play through it for a while until Crackdown 2 has a more reasonable price, then pick up the sequel. I would have been less disappointed if I didn't also have the sting of paying full price for the game.