SAN FRANCISCO – I am a recovering Crackdown addict.
I know this because when the team from Ruffian Games cranked up the demo of Crackdown 2 at X10 on Thursday, the first thing that went through my mind was that I wanted to grab the controllers out of their hands and start collecting agility orbs. Watching somebody else run and leap and frolic around the city collecting orbs is like forcing a starving man to watch the Food Network. It's cruel and unusual punishment. I'm counting down the days to E3, where I will grab a controller and snarl at anyone who comes near me.
The original Crackdown was a potent, addictive blend of Grand Theft Auto and Cirque du Soleil in which you controlled a super-powered police agent who could shoot people but also leap up tall buildings and collect items that let him leap up even taller buildings, a perfect virtuous cycle of exploration and rewards. Crackdown 2, to be released this year, looks to recapture that magic, but with more mutants.
In the great tradition of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Crackdown 2 spices things up by adding the shambling walking dead, or mutated, or whatever they are. The developer calls them the "Freaks," and true to form they come out at night. This game has some awesome graphics, particularly during the beautiful sunsets, but if you spend too long staring at them, why, it'll be nighttime and a Freak and his two hundred buddies will start eating your face.
In Crackdown, you're rewarded for doing what you love. Enjoy shooting people? You'll level up your gunplay abilities. Like jumping on buildings? Have some more agility orbs, which let you jump higher and farther. Crackdown 2 developer John Noonan said during the demo that one of the issues in the first game was that it wasn't so much fun to level up the vehicle-driving ability. Now, the streets are literally filled with Freaks, and you can hop in your car and mow them down to level up.
Crackdown 2 will also feature "renegade orbs" that don't just sit still – they move around the city, and you've got to chase them, Noonan said.
You'll also be able to take to the skies more effectively – later in the game, you'll get a gliding ability that lets you soar through the levels, though not indefinitely. And there's an Agency helicopter that you'll earn towards the very end of the game, making the entire city your oyster.
The mission structure of the first game, in which you were largely tracking down crime bosses and then assassinating them in their secret lairs, is getting tweaked for the sequel. Now, there's a wider variety of missions. You might have to recover parts of a super weapon that the Agency is building to destroy the Freak invasion, you might have to go into the Freak Lairs underground and wipe them out, etc.
What Ruffian is hoping to retain is the sense that anything is possible, the fun that comes from "breaking" the game. One of my favorite parts of the first game was walking around the backs and sides of buildings, skipping the entire level and killing the boss enemies with a few well-placed melee attacks before they knew what had hit them. Noonan says that embracing that spirit of exploitation is still a priority; there will be lots of "golden paths" through the missions that give thoughtful players an advantage.
Crackdown 2 will be released later this year for Xbox 360.
Images courtesy Microsoft
