[HEADING=1]Crackdown 2[/HEADING]
[HEADING=2]My opinion of the first game[/HEADING]
I love Crackdown. Its was a new Sandbox experience that blew me away. It was basically this: Were going to set you out in a gang infested city. You need to take out the gangs. We don't care how you do it. We just want it done. Also as you do various things you can level up 5 areas. Agility, Driving, Explosions, Strength, and fire arms. It was fun and I spent many days going around and blowing up anything in sight. I loved it.
[HEADING=2]Enough with the praise for the first game. Time for the second one to be judged.[/HEADING]
[HEADING=2]Story[/HEADING]
Okay so now where back in Pacific city, the same town as be for. Its been ten years since the Pacific city gang wars, and all hell is loose. Your agent in the first game was taking down a gang called Shi Gen. They had a scientist there who worked on their own agent program. Luckily the previous Agent kicked that mad scientist ass, yet at a costly price for Pacific city. While the fire fight in the scientist lab raged, the freaks that were failed experiments were let loose. This was later known as the Freak virus, and now the next gen Agent has to destroy the Virus. Yet this proves to be more difficult then it sounds. In addition with the Freaks there is now a terrorist group called Cell. They have taken over most of Pacific city and now the Agency is shunned away in their tower fortress. They are making new weapons to combat the Cell and the Freaks. Now you must come out after Ten years and reclaim the city, By taking back Tactical locations, capturing solar beacons, then detonating said beacons in Freak lairs. Time to do some work.[HEADING=2]Gameplay[/HEADING]
Now I wanna start off with the hand to hand combat. Mainly because this deserves some praise. It really blends together nicely, it feels like your actually putting moves together in a combo to take out multiple enemies at once. Yet sadly with it one punch from a lv4 agent will instantly kill most Freaks and Cell. There is two freaks that can stand against it but it still isn't really isn't a challenge because even to the HUGE freaks they get knocked down by three hits from a lv 5 agent. Aiming mechanics on the other hand make it to easy for fire fights. You can lock on to a enemy and then a little man comes up beside the cross airs with a body part highlighted in red. Well you can always aim at the head, or the torso. I am only mentioning those two because thats all I ever really aimed at. And it manually locks on to the body part so forget it being hard to kill the person. They also have the arms and legs but if you shoot them there they wont die just be stunned which in my case didn't help because there is a million others shooting so it really doesn't give me joy that he isn't shooting anymore, because I got a million other ass holes around me shooting the shit out of me so I don't see the point in stunning him when I could easily end his pour life with just a shot to the head depending on how close I am. Another thing with aiming is they took away the zooming abilities in the snipper. So there isn't a point to it. My hopes coming into this game was that eventually I could jump on to high buildings then snipe enemy guards at a tactical location from a mile away. Yet the agent can't see that far!! and with no scope it makes me have to go to where I can see the persons eyes to use the sniper so they know I am there. Okay thats becoming more of a rant so lets move on shall we?
[HEADING=2]Vehicles[/HEADING]
Now in the first game you had access to a Suv, Super car, For some reason a Truck, and a agency police car. Now the Truck is gone and there are two new cars and a helicopter. There is a buggy and a tank. Instead of starting you off with all of them you only start of with a peace keeper cruiser. You have to hit a lot of freaks at night, do stunts in mid air, complete races or catch renegade driving orbs to level up driving. Renegade orbs run from you. This is annoying so I never bothered with them because to level up driving I just went through the streets at night hitting every freak I could in the agency super car. When you think about it though there isn't a need for vehicles because you can just "extract" (Aka kill yourself) when ever you want and the agency can make you spawn anywhere in the city which makes it a lot faster than driving. Yet you can have fun with the helicopter but be for any of you who are reading this get your driving skill all the way up for hopes of the helicopter. DON'T. Get your agility to level four and you can jump to a platform at the Agency with 4 of the fucking things there.
[HEADING=2]Objectives[/HEADING]
Now there is only really three things you do in this whole game. Assault Cell strongholds and tactical locations, Re take solar units that link up to form a solar detonation of a beacon. Then protect Beacons as the detonate in freak lairs. Now that is a lot more that what you did in the previous game. Yet it doesn't blend to well. The freaks get a lot of attention. Way more than the Cell. So it feels like this "take out all freak lairs and breaches to clean Pacific city. Also there is some gang that will have some locations we would like. Yet you don't need to get them." The only major role that the Cell play is they have the solar units. SO like 3 guys guard them. Thats it. That means there is 27 solar units, 3 guys per each, (more or less) 3x27=81. So you only need to kill a total of 81 cell to complete the Campaign. Which when playing this game doesn't seem to bad considering retaking a tactical location is like pulling teeth. Well on your own.
[HEADING=2]Multiplayer[/HEADING]
Okay the first thing I wanna talk about in this is there is VS multiplayer. There is only three types. One is death match. Then team death match. Then rocket king. I haven't played the Rocket king yet. So I don't really know what it must be like. Honestly.. this game doesn't shine to well here. For some reason if you get a head shot with a shotgun thats 45 points. With a regular gun? 15 points. WTF? its harder in this game (because of the online aiming system since its still lock on yet its manual so you can't aim a a specific body part) to get a head shot with a regular gun. Also why the hell is it that if some one melees you then you instantly die?? I mean your agent is already super fast so its easy to run and kill some one with a roundhouse kick. These guys are super men!! How is it they can't with stand one of their own blows? Another thing that disappointed me is the fact that if you get a helicopter in the online games your team has won. They have rockets and are a ***** to kill. Even if you do kill the helicopter you only get 15 points for your team. Yet if I can remember right you get 25 points for a kill in the helicopter. Eh it did give me a lot of fun though so even though it has a lot of flaws I still love it.Now for co-op in Campaign. I really did love this. It was fun to play with others and use a strategy to take down Cell strongholds on harder difficulty levels. There is also a lot of fun you can have with grenades on multiplayer. I haven't taken time to mention this but there is a grenade in Crackdown called a mag. If you deploy a mag to a wall. Then throw another one on your friends helicopter as it shoots at you because he is a dick. Then the two mags make a magnetic rope. and it instantly (if no one is in said vehicle or holding said object...so my plan didn't work with my friend) makes the object go flying at the wall. This was very fun because me and my friend found ourselves using this to kill the swarms of freaks that were on a street by making big sling shots out of them with cars attached. So the co-op makes it much funner but there is the problem. This game was more meant for co-op. Well thats my problem with it. What about the people who don't have Xbox live? They surly can't beat the game on harder difficulties by themselves and there is no local co-op or splits scree. This is being the problem in most games today. Sadly. Yet Yahtzee has told us this countless times so no need to further elaboration.
[HEADING=2]Leveling[/HEADING]
It is the same in the first one. If you kill some one with your fist then you get strength orbs that will help you level up your strength skills. Well same goes for fire arms, explosions and driving. Agility is still the same old scale the heights for the Orbs that will help you level that up. I wouldn't want it any other way. Yet now there is a new type of orb. They are called renegade orbs. They will run away from you. There are car renegade orbs and agility renegade orbs. Like I said I could care less about the driving ones yet I have caught all the agility ones because I find it fun to try and cut them off. Driving.. well I don't really know why but you can't do that with them....its more chase them around sharp turns and speed up to catch them.[HEADING=2]Final words[/HEADING]
Regardless of its flaws I loved playing this game and had A lot of fun looking for orbs, Hidden orbs the most, and if your looking for a fun sandbox to play this is definitely it. You can create massive explosions and test yourself to see how fast you can take out a cell stronghold. If you do play co-op with your friends making strategy's to take tactical locations are fun and executing them are even better. Maybe you just wanna dick around, there is a lot of stuff to do in that area as well. There is DLC coming out soon where you can spawn enemies and make very hard situations. That looks like it will be a blast. So my final words are this. I enjoyed the game, This was a bit harsh of a review to the game. Yet it is easily over looked. Also if you haven't found the quaker explosives maybe this will help. Where can you shoot ducks, not real mind you, freely and not against the law?