Crackdown 2

Let me preface this by saying that 2007's Crackdown remains one of my favourite games of all time. Great mechanics, simple plot – super-cop brings down crime bosses with gradually enhanced abilities and weaponry – and a neatly subversive ending all made for a game that knew its (genetically-enhanced) strengths and played to them. It was a grower too: rumours of a sequel were rife shortly after release, but sluggish initial sales meant that by the time the great reviews and strong word of mouth saw sales increase and Microsoft call for a follow up, developers Realtime Worlds were already on to new projects and it seemed that The Agent would never again leap around the Pacific City skyline.

Then suddenly, Crackdown 2 was happening at a new studio – Ruffian Games, made up of former Realtime Worlds staff (and really pissing Realtime off in the process, according to rumour), and now we're back in Pacific City ten years after the first game. Things have changed dramatically: the city is in ruins, the populace live in poverty and fear and the genetic freaks you unwittingly let out in the first game are now super-developed and terrorising the place. Privatised para-military police force The Agency needs you to stop the freaks by unleashing a series of freak-killing UV beacons around the city as well as suppress the activities of CELL, a quasi-terrorist group formed by desperate citizens sick of begging the Agency for an antidote to the freak virus and determined to take it by force. So your new agent is back doing what does best: collecting agility orbs, ranking skills to their maximum level and blowing a hell of a lot of things up.

Positives first: man, it's good to be back, although Pacific City looks like a warzone. It's the same map as the first game and it's fascinating to see landmarks like the Shai-Gen headquarters given over to ruin, or shantytowns braced up around Green Bay. The game's cel-shaded look is identical to the first one, and the physics and gameplay are pretty much the same with a few extra touches (like the annoyingly-difficult-to-use glidesuit and the rather more fun helicopter). And the new elements, by and large, work – especially the audio logs hidden around the city which add more intrigue to the storyline. But there's no joy like leaping around the city again, and collecting those orbs gets very, very addictive.

On the downside, despite attempts to break up the go-location-fuck-shit-up process, the game does get annoyingly repetitive before too long. You're sent to your location, you capture the three arrays from CELL, then you go into a freak hotspot and defend the beacon from wave after wave after wave of freaks for several minutes while it gets up to speed. You can break things up by reclaiming territory from cell and closing "freak breaches", both of which give you ample opportunity to blow shit up, but the missions are the same thing over and over, just with harder-to-kill freaks each time. There are other side missions like races and stunt driving courses, but – as in the first game – they're very easy to ignore. And while the first game allowed the Agent to zap between safe houses and stockpile new weapons with relative ease, there's no shortcuts this time around and new weapons can only be saved once you've cleared out the entire neighbourhood.

The online elements are a bonus, but the single-player replay value is diminished as you can't revisit missions as in the first game's time trial challenges. Once you've finished the single player campaign, your choices are go online or go orb hunting.

If you've never played Crackdown, you should stop reading this and go play Crackdown, though that's also true if you have played it. Once you've done so you'll probably like Crackdown 2 a lot more (and, as is made clear by the ending, this is now a franchise with more entries to come). Just be aware that you'll be gazing at skylines looking for climbing points and hearing the high-frequency thrum of agility orbs in your peripheral hearing for weeks to come.

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