There are certain brands which, due to a number of factors such as quality of product and level of marketing, which step beyond their genres, they begin to define those genres. Take for example Coca Cola. Even if you don’t like Coke, I’ll bet when you order a Cola based mixer drink you say “Rum and Coke”. There are other brands too – Liquid Paper, Hoover, Google, iPod. It’s the same with videogames too. Certain games have come to define genres. Pacman, Puzzle Quest, Mario Cart, Doom, God Of War, Resident Evil and Grand Theft Auto, for example.

Whilst the quality of those games could be argued until the end of time, saying “it’s like Mario Cart” instantly gives you a frame of reference to talk about another game. One of the best examples of this in recent times is XBW Shane’s review of Red Dead Redemption. In many ways it is superior to GTA, but in defining it as “GTA Deadwood” he nailed it in a simple and concise manner. You might have a different opinion to Shane about GTA and Deadwood, but even so your knowledge of those products will influence how you react to his review, and the game itself.

Crackdown could have been one of these genre defining games. It differed enough from GTA to make it stand out from any other GTA Clone you’ve played. Yes, it was a free roaming open world set in a city with cars and pedestrians you could kill, and the missions involved driving to places and destroying all the enemies in a given area, but the skill progression and the collection minigame were so distinctive they could have began to alter gaming landscape with gamers describing other games as “Crackdown Clones”, providing they made good use of what made Crackdown so good in the sequel.

Unfortunately, they’ve dropped the ball, and given us the first game only with less to do and less to see. Pacific City, itself quite a defining quality of the first game with its neon filled streets and high-rises, has undergone what I like to refer to as “next-gen browning”. The city has fallen into decay, and as such the art has lost the distinctive edge of a super city and in order to give the look of the city a “gritty edge” the art team simply made everything an uninspired rusty brown colour, something featured in every next-gen game since the PS3 and Xbox360 appeared on the market.

Moreover, the layout of the city is exactly the same. There’s nothing new to see or explore. There are new underground areas, but these are just big arena areas. Although other games have done similar in using the city over – GTA’s mini episodes spring to mind – there is still enough new stuff to see and do to make it worthwhile. They also have incredible stories which drive you play the game.

The story in Crackdown 2, what there is of one, is since you’ve visited in the first game, the place has become a mess. Although you brought down 5 gangs to bring peace to the city previously, that was all for naught as a new terrorist organisation has risen from the ashes to threaten the city’s Peacekeepers. On top of that the city is overrun by zombie mutant freaks at night time. The only way to stop it is to re-introduce the Agency’s most effective weapon against crime – the Agent.

Like the first Crackdown, your agent starts with middling powers and work your way up by using your skills to gain orbs. Shooting the enemy with guns builds up your weapons skills, unlocking more powerful weapons and making your firing more accurate. Doing hand break turns and J-Turns, drifting, and running down enemies in vehicles increases your driving skill, unlocking more vehicles and giving more control when driving. Using explosives like grenades unlocks better grenades and rocket launchers, and increases the impact of explosions. Punching and fighting makes you tougher, and unlocks ramming and ground punch abilities.

The most fun of the game is from agility orbs. Like the first game, these are dotted around the city, enticing you to explore by jumping from building to building, gaining the ability to jump higher and further as you gather more orbs. Unlike the first game though, their position isn’t as logical as before, and there’s a little bit more of hide and seek going on. To give this aspect of the game a bit of a twist, there are “rogue” orbs, orbs which have an avoidance field and are difficult to catch. At first, these orbs are great fun to chase either on foot or in a car, and you can spend a good half an hour running around trying to grab one. But eventually it gives way to frustration, because no matter how high your driving or agility score, they’re designed to move away from you, so if you had difficulty catching one at the start of the game, you’re going to have the same amount towards the end of the game.

They also haven’t fixed up some of the biggest frustrations of the first game. Some buildings look like they have ledges you can grab onto, so you’ll leap onto them and end up sliding all the way to the bottom. Or they have overhangs you can’t get past, so you jump and hit your head and fall. And this entire jumping agility thing means there’s almost no point to driving. There’s an amazing list of songs on the car radio which you’ll never hear because you’re rarely in the car for more than a few seconds. You’ll hit other cars, flip over or otherwise crash. Or you’ll be shot at by other vehicle, get out (as you can’t shoot from vehicles) and have your car destroyed.

The lack of multiple gangs means no bosses, and that was part of the fun of the last game. In the first crackdown, as you took down bosses, the enemy became less effective at fighting you. Now all you have to do is capture base points by killing all the enemies which appear on the map when you stand in a certain zone and press the back button. They’re also pretty stupid AI wise, and will mill around in groups just waiting for you to kill them. They’re only a problem if they’re armed with rockets or grenades, in which case they’ll just spam you. Otherwise, it’s simply a matter of jumping around and shooting them.

The Freaks are even more tedious. Every night, the streets become flooded with zombies. Like Dead Rising, there are so many on the screen you’re amazed at first. But they’re so dumb they pose hardly any challenge later in the game. Simply get in a car and drive though them. And if you stick to the rooftops you can pretty much avoid them altogether.

There are two basic scenarios you need to do to proceed the story and subsequently the game – capture a base which shoots a laser beam into the sky, and when you have 3 beam together you jump into the subterranean part of the city and kill all the zombies which attack a bomb device. That’s it.

Part of the reason the game is so simple is it’s designed for four players in mind. Obviously you can’t have too much of a complex GTA scenario like drive here, blow up this, drive to a next check point, and kill that, if the game is designed for more than one person. Although having said that Red Dead Redemption seems to do a pretty good job of doing precisely in its Multiplayer. So they’ve made the game as mindless as possible so you can have as much fun with other players.

And yes, it is fun with other players. It’s only a little more fun doing the missions still, as they don’t get any harder, but still the added fun of simply having another real live person with you makes it marginally more enjoyable. And doing things the designers probably had in mind, but didn’t make any use of. Like picking up a car when your friend is in it, and throwing it off a bridge. Like dropping a cluster grenade near an orb your friend is after. Like chasing each other around in choppers.

But what I can’t understand is why didn’t the designers utilise this more effectively? Surely in play testing they would have noticed people playing the game in this manner, so why not design co-operative missions around this – design chopper races; design timed missions where you’ve got to knock down as many freaks as possible, make the game co-operative in the mission design. I don’t want to call the designers lazy as it’s very hard to make a good game, but it’s clear the design is precisely that. Rather than identifying how players generate their own fun in a game and directing their design towards that, they’ve designed a game where it’s as open as possible but with so little to do, so players have to create their own fun.

Conclusion
Maybe I’m being a little hard on the game. The original Crackdown was flawed genius. It came out of practically nowhere, and was bought by the truckloads because of the Halo3 Multiplayer Beta offer. However, the game was unexpectedly compelling and fun, even if it felt a little rough and unfinished.

Crackdown 2 still feels rough and unfinished. In fact, it feels even more so than the first, especially when viewed as a single player experience. Multiplayer improves the game, but it still feels vacant and simple, and doesn’t develop a good story or good mission structure to encourage you to play the game, just a little incentive to tool around in the city for a few hours blowing shit up.

Pros:
Keeps the addictive agility orb collection game and spices the orb collection with “rogue orbs”
Heaps of things to blow up and kill.
Fun Multiplayer
Fantastic soundtrack

Cons:
You won’t hear the soundtrack because you’ll never be in the car long enough
Unconvincing story
Boring, repetitive missions
Stupid AI
Many of the problems of the first game not addressed

68/100