PixlBit

The sequel is a massive improvement on the already excellent original title.

Crackdown 2 has been highly anticipated among many Crackdown fans. It seems that it's finally here and ready to play. My first impression while watching videos and looking at screen shots is that the game should live up to the quality of the original Crackdown. After playing the game, I can happily say that it has both lived up to its potential and surpassed the quality of its proceeder.

Crackdown 2 has it all, from the melee attacking to the cruising around the city. The orbs are back in action as there are new gangs, including zombies or “freaks,” and areas to fight in. From what I know, Crackdown 2 will take place 10 years in the future from the original Crackdown in the free-form world of Pacific City. There are all new missions to be played along with multiplayer action on XBOX live.

Playing Crackdown 2 for the first time I noticed the very smooth feeling in controls. The melee attacks were just as awesome and powerful as we remember from the first one. The zombies were very weak, but there were hundreds of them. Standing in the middle of the zombie crowd and fighting all the zombies is loads of fun. The key to the game stands as the same with being an Agency agent and trying to take over bad areas in the city. There were a few new vehicles to drive with smoother driving controls. Turning has become much easier as the drift function has improved and become much smoother. Some new features I noticed were the Agility and the Jumping categories have become one in their own. They are not combined like they were in the first Crackdown. This was a very cool idea except for the concept of retrieving the agility orbs. These orbs move as you try and retrieve them which makes it hard at times to catch them. This is not a major issue in my opinion, but is the only flaw I can see.

The Demo had its limits in how far you could travel throughout the city but when looking at the map, it indicates that there will be a fairly large city. Many of the guns remain the same from what I could tell, and there were not any new ones located in the area of the demo. I'm sure there will be new weapons as the story unfolds throughout the game. The street racing goals have improved with making obstacles a little more possible. Everything about this game looks right with very few meaningless flaws.

Overall I would recommend picking this game up upon release day due to it's awesomeness, Crackdown 2 has proven to me to be a true sequel and will be available this July for all to enjoy.