Crackdown 2 Demo

The Crackdown 2 demo is available now on Xbox Live. While it stops short of being soul crushing, it is extremely disappointing. I loved the original from Realtime Worlds. Crackdown was initially talked about since you had to pick it up for the Halo 3 beta and then gained traction on its own merits and word of mouth really pushed sales long after release. I don’t have every orb, sure, but the growth of your Agent from pansy-with-a-gun to unstoppable god was thrilling. The collectibles serving the purpose of providing immediate benefits to your character was brilliant and added incentive to finding creative ways to scale buildings and master rooftop races. You could also get around by driving, sure, but walking was much more fun! Heck, if you see the original hanging around for cheap, go for it. It’s a little odd off the top as you get used to the controls but, a few orbs and bad guys with their heads kicked in later, you’ll find your happy place. It’s like what a Hulk game should be. Only you also get guns and rockets and grenades.

Now, the demo. I went in knowing that it was a new team with Ruffian Games (which is about half composed half RTW people) and that it was the same engine and that they were still jerks for still keeping female agents out of the fun. Then I saw the four male faces in the demo and decided it was for the best that my gender was spared this treatment. When you level up you get the helmet right away but, seriously, fugly.

I know this is a slightly obscure reference these days but the Time To Crate here is basically zero. You can’t blow these up or throw them — there are a ton of orbs on top and they probably didn’t want us cheating and building our own ladders as opposed to following their paths — but it’s a weird choice for the first thing that people see in the game. “Look! We have crates!!” Give us the top of a building to show off Hope Springs. Put us in the middle of a pile of freaks as a warm welcome. Start off staring at a pretty orb. Heck, start us off on top of the crates… next to an orb. Anything else would have been a better first impression.

The great voice of The Agency from the first game greets you and does not stop talking from that point on. It’s a demo, of course, so this can be forgiven. You run headlong into helping your fellow officers take on some Cell people and proceed to take over their strongholds. Well, no you don’t. If you played the first game you probably ignored the baddies and went straight for orbs, if only to make running around less painfully slow. My first weapons were an SMG and the shotgun and the shotgun was infuriatingly useless. The SMG did damage farther and faster and the shotty wasn’t even that helpful against freaks. I actually punched and kicked my way through the demo the first time. Thanks to the accelerated leveling in the demo I was smacking people around Pacific City even more than I did in the original. This isn’t to say that melee combat is perfect. It’s still just button mashing, only now there’s more than two animations for it.

With all this time with the original engine, as well as some of the people that worked on it, there’s no excuse for the game looking this way. Digital Foundry did their usual fantastic tech analysis with perfect accompanying screenshots. Go, read.

Character customization? The full game will reveal the rest of it but at least there were more colours for your hideous people to hide in. The freaks look better than the Agency. I know I’m harping on that considering how rarely we’ll be looking at his face but it just feels like a lack of effort and polish.

Lock-on. No, I don’t want to attempt to blow up that car a million metres in the distance with my puny pellet gun. Let’s stick with the army of cell in front of me, please. GAF claims that there will be a day one patch to allow players to adjust their aim without having to let go of the trigger and try again. I suspect the devs have something against cars. Barrels in a freak lair, however, were hard to lock on to and I ended up shooting freestyle, just to make sure I hit what I wanted when I wasn’t kicking and smashing. I like smashing.

Driving wasn’t great in the first one until you really focused on running over people and winning races for obs. It felt worse here but, really, it’s the best way to take out mobs of Freaks on the street.

Music. Just as bad as the original. I always turn it off. The car radios in the sequel are especially guilty of being awful. For such a great idea, it’s too bad. It certainly does add to the world that each car has the driver’s previous music playing since it’s a good touch of character.

Audio Logs can be found throughout the demo and some were rather entertaining. They feel a touch overused in games these days as plot devices but they do give open-world players a choice to learn more about the story or just ignore them in lieu of making stuff ‘splode.

No more local co-op through system link. It’s unfair of me to judge their programming priority scheduling but they really weren’t spending it on the appearance or controls instead. The city is supposed to be larger this time around so we will have to wait until launch to see what the world is really like. I wanted truly local co-op on one system, same as I did in the first, but I can concede how crowded the screen would be and how difficult it would be to work out camera focus issues.

Roof Races (Agility Orbs) seem easier to find and follow. The launch pads are nifty additions.

Multiplayer now up to 4, woo.

Pathfinding was done well here and I hope this is for the main game as well. Glowing trails guide you to your destination.

Now you aren’t just taking out humans with different accents. The Freaks rampaging through the city at night add some needed variation.

And there’s a facebook game. Chuck’s Ducks 2 (that link goes straight to the game wanting to add itself to your facebook). “Build and protect your ducks in this fun adaptation of classic carnival games! Completed ducks are sent to Pacific City where they help agents in Crackdown 2.” What do these ducks do? They explode! While that could be interesting to see, I’ll never understand why granting it access will let it see your profile , photos, your friends ‘and other content that it requires to work’. Orly. Like what? Why? I know why. Gamers buying Crackdown 2 at the store and not registring means that they get our money and nothing else. This way they get to really see who is buying the game and what else we are into. I have every game on facebook blocked on my account. I will not be changing my stance for this one. One day, perhaps, I will break down and make a secondary and totally fake account with three friends and play games there as to not annoy everyone else. Today is not that day. If you are playing it, do let me know what it’s like and what info you have to share in order for the ducks to crossover into the real game. Playing the facebook game will also let you unlock the last difficulty in the demo and give you the retail multiplayer weapon that uses the ducks.

There are 100 achievement points up for grab in the demo, to be awarded once you play the full game. Thankfully I am past my need moar achievements… days or this would be an extra perk for me.

Verdict

Glad I didn’t pre-order (exclusive armor be damned). I’ll probably rent it, at least, if some friends want to team up through it but this does not remotely feel like something I will spend endless hours on like the first one. With the launch in July I do not expect a lot of polish between now and then. The demo in 30 minute chunks feels like all I can take with the game in this state. I’ve played through the demo four or five times now, going after different areas, and I just can’t get excited about it. There are so many great games out there right now that I know this one would just sit in a pile, ignored. All it did was remind me that I should get my original back from my brother and do it up right :)

One Last Thing

Jeremy Parish says he didn’t say this. He almost said it. It’s still not the same, Ruffian Games.

PSSST. Here’s the infinite time glitch video:

Tagged as: 360, demo, rant