Crackdown 2

Sweet - loved the first. Still great fun. My only complaint was that there was never much reason to drive the cars - the vehicles were great for kicking into people, but not for driving. Running and jumping was much more fun. More reasons to drive cars please. Maybe give the gangs cars with weapons and have some twisted metal-style action.

I really dug the first one (it was the first 360 game I played) and will definitely give the sequel a try. I don't know that they needed to go with 'infected' type gameplay but I'll wait until I see it actually in action.

I just think that there are other mechanisms than 'infection' that they could have used to introduce better enemies. Giant robots, dinosaurs, etc. and it would have possibly been better than another sandbox infected game.

I drove a bit but the controls were a not great so I generally enjoyed leaping across the city (and punching/throwing/rocket launching/grenading) cars as I went along.

I'm totally stoked for this. The first game needed a battle against another character with awesome powers. IMHO, that was the only thing that the first lacked. I LOVED that game. It's also the game that had the best achievements of any game... I still think it's the best in that category.

Once you got your driving skill up high enough it was a lot of fun smashing into the bad guys and causing chaos.

Crackdown is still one of my favorate games and I can't wait for this.

I can't wait for this to come out. I bought the original a few months ago for a song because I had heard so much about it (haven't had a 360 for long, either), and I loved it. A lot. It is a game with some minor problems, though, like a lack of narrative, or only one hand-to-hand combat move. But, it was a testament to the quality of the game that you couldn't help but finish it because it was so damn fun.

I think that the ending of the first game provides a cool starting ground for a Verhoeven-style scifi yarn, what with the newly powerful fascist state and all. I could see something working involving different joinable factions. You could stick it out with the agency, join a gang, or a resistance movement, all of which could have different stories...

But I'm getting ahead of myself here. As long as it's as deliriously fun as the first one, there should be no problem.

Didn't the first dabble a bit in mutants? I could have sworn there was a mission for the Asian gang boss that had you bust into a research facility and there was humanoid monsters that would escape.

Driving was a blast in the first. Fully upgraded when you would drive in the super car you would actually drive under other cars and they would flip over top of you. Plus the SUV could actually drive up walls!

Cant wait for this though. As long as they don't alter the core gameplay much it cant fail.

Yeah, the first game had these mutants you'd encounter in the final part of the city.

Damn, I was really hoping this was going multiplatform this time around, if only because I ditched my 360 a year ago. Just a great game to screw around with for 20 minutes or have epic rocket tag matches online. That DLC dune buggy and spear gun were well worth the extra cash.

Always loved the different ways you could approach some of the bosses. Got a kick out of sniping some crazy lady boss on the third island with the rocket launcher from 2 blocks away.

Not scratch, man, not a fuckin' scraaatch...

I'm so glad a second Crackdown is coming out. I was a staunch supporter of the original and have been disappointed when friends of mine don't get any enjoyment out of it. You are a damn superhero cop! What's not to like?

I'd love to see some gameplay involving fighting those big mutants.

Well, it sounds like they're basically annoyed that MS is paying someone to setup a competing development studio near them and is siphoning away some of their talent. Reading between the lines, he thought that if they decided not to develop the sequel that MS would get some other random team they owned to take care of it and it wouldn't affect them at all.

But by Microsoft going with a company that's going to need a lot of new developers for something like this that is located in the same small area as them, it's inevitable (or already happening) that they're losing some of their team to them.

I know this is kind of an issue in my city as well. There are two development studios: Humanhead Studios and Raven Soft and there are always people switching between the two or breaking off and starting their own (Big Rooster Games). In smaller cities, maintaining a couple development houses can be a difficult task.

Well, any game like this though is going to need more than a few guys who left RTW and started up a company to try to get the deal. I'm assuming that they had a small number of people who were with the new break-away company before things had finalized. Now that they'll actually be getting funding and have the money to hire more real employees they're going to need to beef up their team pretty quickly. While relocating others into the area might happen, they are also probably going to be head hunting more than a few guys away from RTW.

I don't know that RTW is so upset about someone making the game, or even guys leaving from their team to head the company that does it. They seem more upset that Ruffian is going to setup shop in the same town and lure even more guys off their APB team because they've already got the connections.

And didn't they originally not start a sequel because Microsoft didn't show any interest?

Soooo... isn't Crackdown with mutants basically prototype?

Hope they're doing something new and different with the sequel. Don't get me wrong, I'd be happy with more over powered super hero carnage, but two recently released sandbox games kinda did that. Really well.

I was just thinking the other day how great it would be if Crackdown 2 had an air dash. Missing a building by that much and falling 400 feet wouldn't be so much of a let down anymore.

The thing Crackdown has over Prototype is how your skills gradually increase. It didn't feel like I had to work for them at all in Prototype and it takes some of the wind out of your sails.

That's not a big enough difference for me to run out and buy the sequel. They need to do more than just "Super Hero sandbox game" or "Super Hero sand box game WITH MUTANTS!!". It's been done. Now do something better. With shinier graphics, please.

I could just never get into the original version of this game. I just don't dig playing a jack, even a superpowered one.

Yeah, I'd say you have rose-colored glasses. Crackdown was a great engine demo, but there was very little game there. Even sandboxes require some interesting goals and if we're lucky, something resembling a story.

I'll definitely rent Crackdown2, as the first was great fun for the few days it lasted, but they'll need to add an actual -game- this time around for me to have any thought of buying it.

Agreed, it was nice to just be told "you a cop go clean up the city". The beauty of the game was even with just that brief it is still a entertaining game.

Despite the lack of narrative, I think that Crackdown has a pretty engaging world. The scope and the feel of everything just really sells it. I mean, it's basically Paul Verhoeven meets Jack Kirby, and that's a glorious thing.

That said, a bit of narrative wouldn't hurt anything a bit, even if it were paper thin. I think some little narrative touches that could flesh out the enemies and the agency a bit would go a long way. Another benefit to adding some scripted stuff would be the chance for some really insane missions in this universe. Playing the first one, I couldn't help but think how cool it would be if that green monster from the cover of Fantastic Four #1 popped out of the street and needed its ass kicked.

But, I loved the first game so much that the lack of narrative or some scripted missions ala GTA would really get me down much.

EDIT: That is, it would NOT get me down much. Bad error there.

Yeah, Red Faction: Guerrilla has close to no story (what is it, maybe 4-5 cut-scenes in the entire game?) but when you get to them it's laughable that they expect you to care. I'm playing this game because I enjoy destroying things and your plot just gets in the way.

I kept playing through Crackdown because I enjoyed jumping from rooftop to rooftop and raining explosive destruction on unsuspecting people below. And the criminal leaders got tougher as the game went on. The freedom and openness of it though meant that you could approach the situation however you want.

One of the most frustrating things about RF:G is when you have an approach you want to take in a situation and you run into an invisible wall telling you that you're not allowed to do it that way. Crackdown never does that (if there's a wall, it's real and not some invisible barrier you can't pass) and that freedom really makes it feel like you're in control.

It's not just a lack of story that I'm talking about... there's just not much to -do- in the game. Collecting orbs, stamping a handful of near-identical criminal hideouts, some tedious races, and... ? The game barely responds to what you're doing, so playing around in the sandbox wore thin quickly for me. I felt I had seen everything the game had to offer in a few days (since I haven't bothered with boring collection objectives in years). It's never a good sign when you have to think about whether the game had enough playtime in it to justify a -rental-.

Zombie mutants? That was so Winter 2008-June 2009.

Wow, the animations look nearly identical at the moment. The way he hangs from ledges and flails while flying through the air. Ruffian must have had access to the original source/data.

I will say that I've got no desire to play any sort of competitive multiplayer in the game. I hope they solved some of the glitchiness of co-op multipayer as well. I played through all the missions with a friend and half the time bosses and all the enemies would just disappear. It was really frustrating.

Ruffian are essentially made up of ex-Real Time Worlds staff members so it's going to be probably quite similar.

Yeah, but the animations looked *identical* so they either kept referencing everything an remade it from scratch (which seems like a huge waste of time) or they had the original and started from there and have been making changes.

I'm just curious which it is since some of the basic things looksso similar right now.

The hearsay is that the people who left Real Time Worlds took all of their previous work with them. The studios are apparently about five minutes walk away from each other and the ex-employees just gutted what they could find and moved across to Ruffian. Hence they have the original code.

There's a 30 minute, co-op enabled, Demo on the Marketplace. Right Now.

I fully expect Overlord to burst in here and declare that because of this he'll never need to buy the game. I then expect him to say this AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN.

If I wasn't tied up with the tale of John Marsden I would be all over this, I might download it for when I have finished though.

Added to the DL queue. It's kinda neat that you can earn achievements in the demo that will unlock when you play the full game.

Wait. Really? That's all kinds of awesome.

I'm definitely downloading this as soon as I get home after work tonight.

Any progress you make towards 10 achievements will be recorded and if you earn them, they'll pop up when you play the full game.

Up for giving a spin tonight?

Just remembered I have RDR installed on my HD ... not sure if I have room for this.

Definitely. I'll be turning on my box as soon as I get home so the demo can download while I'm making dinner. I'll be sure to look for you as soon as it's done.

The achievement thing has been done in just about every Arcade game as a selling tool (ie. you would have gotten an achievement just now if you owned the full version). I think doing something similar with retail game demos is a great idea, especially for "collect X number of items" and "kill X number of enemies in a specific way" types of achievements. Though, I wonder if it is possible to get halfway towards an achievement in the demo and finish it off once you get the full game.

From what I understand, these are honest-to-goodness achievements (and progress towards them) that show up when you fire up the game disc for the first time.

Also given how fucking chaotic and poorly explained everything it is it feels like it's a little aimless. I'm sure the beacons, and drop points will all make sense in the full game, but with only thirty minutes it feels like a confusing mess. Especially compared to the original where it was conceptually quite simple (there are nine motherfuckers on each island, go get 'em).

Co-Op is hilarious though and it's where the game will shine.