Introduction:
Three years ago, the company surprised us with Realtime Worlds
Crackdown, exclusively for Microsoft’s console, a fresh proposal within
the action genre in the third person in the style of GTA, where police
encarnar a genetically modified super cop which had been given the task
of grappling with a series of Mafia families who were terrorizing an
entire city.
Thanks to the good acceptance of this game by the public, now comes its
sequel by the Scottish company Ruffian Games that counts among its ranks
some of the members who have already worked in the previous title. The
idea was to make a game that met two key requirements demanded of a
sequel, "more and better", although it seems that has not been fully
achieved.
All those who have already had the chance to play the first title will
not discover anything new that makes them feel they are facing a
full-fledged sequel. Crackdown 2 is a sandbox chaotic action where, as
in the first part, we put ourselves in the shoes of a super police, but
this time, instead of dealing with gangsters, we face a new terrorist
organization called "The Cell" as well as countless hordes of mutant
zombies. However, their scheme is actually similar to the first
Crackdown, which only exceeds what a lot of enemies on screen concerns
but unfortunately, the rest is almost identical.
Basically, our main objective is to go in missions, achieve goals, clean
areas and eventually destroy the enemies of the city once and for all.
For this we have a number of weapons and a multitude of vehicles that
will help us escape most committed to those situations it would be
impossible to go through life without a means of transport faster than
our own legs.
About the Game:
Featuring over-the-top action, a massive living world, stylish graphics and unmatched online capabilities, Crackdown 2 is the most complete action experience on Xbox 360. In the vertical, free-form world of Pacific City, tensions are high and escalating exponentially between the Agency and its opposing factions, the Cell and the Freaks. Returning to Pacific City as an advanced Agent, you are judge, jury and executioner as you reclaim the city and eliminate all threats, either solo or with friends on Xbox LIVE.
Building upon the groundbreaking success of its predecessor, Crackdown 2 elevates the open-world genre to unprecedented levels with the ultimate cooperative and competitive multiplayer experiences. Friends around the world will be able to sweep the streets of crime and lawlessness with the complete freedom to explore, destroy and restore justice to Pacific City—by any means necessary.
The action of Crackdown 2 is still taking place in Pacific City. Ten
years after the events of the first component, the fictional town is
still populated by scoundrels of the worst kind. There are terrorists
who are rampant throughout the day. Yes, because at night the whole city
is overrun by freaks, mutants ferocious hordes coming together like
ordinary zombies. The situation can not continue. You have to operate,
you, the GM agent, able to jump fifty feet without spraining the ankle.
To customize this agent, you do not have one answer. There are four
models of face and four colors of uniforms. In less than two minutes,
the game itself and then start your soldier is dropped in the city,
without further care. It’s easy to see that the script did not have to
burn the brains of developers, both the appearance narrative has been
sidelined. The goal is therefore very simple: follow the instructions of
his radar, complete objectives and listen to comments from her
supervisor in voiceover. A voice indeed quite irritating in the long
run.
Like any game sandbox respectable, Crackdown 2 is full of goals and
priorities secondary to complete. First, we can go set up units of
absorption, a kind of radar, once released, show the location of a tag.
Then you go and snap this tag, in the middle marks Freaks. This
operation is repeated several times tirelessly throughout the game and
ends up being boring logically. It was therefore quick to complete some
quests, such as finding agility orbs or other secret items scattered
throughout the city.
Know that you can also eliminate the Cell (the terrorists) who settled
in some neighborhoods. It is also possible to clean nests Freaks or
participate in races, either in vehicles or on foot, from roof to roof.
Honestly, the various proposed objectives are not the most exciting.
They are also varied enough to excite the single player for hours. In
cooperation, up to four via Xbox Live, there’s more material to play.
But even if he is handling the perfect …
Gameplay:
The comparison about is it more or less than GTA stops there. Starting
the game, you discover that all the authorities have lost all legitimacy
in the city. Your role will be to regain control points to eliminate
any threat. Quarter by quarter, you will need to clean up places where
the enemies are very concentrated to get their hands on generators that
will increase the area in your possession. There are some Saints Row
there, with its war of gangs and neighborhoods. The comparison stops
there too. Saints Row is much more beautiful.
As you progress to, use some of your weapons or fighting in melee or the
discovery of hidden orbs, you will become more efficient. And that’s
what spice up the game in becoming more efficient, you can fight more
enemies simultaneously, the vehicle will be available to you and your
most destructive performances were comparable to those of a small
artisan butcher will soon more related to an industrial slaughterhouse.
That made me want to play many hours as initially, I wondered if the
publisher had not sent the bad game.
First, I find it quite ugly. From the kinematics of departure, we have
the feeling that the developers have not been able to decide on the
graphic, only half of the studio wanted 3D graphics and textures that
the other poor and wanted the Cel-shading (a process similar to the
clear line in BD: every facet of the game object is surrounded by a
black bar examples: XIII, Zelda Wind Walker, among others). Some players
hate the Cel-shading … The tastes, colors as they say. There’s weird
and I do not know who can love. One has the impression that when the
camera is close to the player, it’s Cel-Shading, when it is farther away
is more traditional. One thing is sure: the textures are of extreme
poverty. It’s very shocking when you get out of titles like Red Dead
Redemption , Mafia II , Final Fantasy XIV.
Unfortunately, technically, it is worse than mediocre graphics. After
all, developers must constantly make compromises. And the greatness of
the city is so important that it was impossible to make something as
beautiful as any room Modern Warfare 2 . I even think that AI is the
worst of the year, in any game.
To say that the AI of Crackdown 2 is bad is perhaps a bit exaggerated.
For this, it would have existed. Go a few examples in bulk, which will
take drivers harvesters of Command and Conquer for geniuses: the
opponents do not protect themselves, or very rarely, when the script is
intended to be. That is to say in the first two or three missions. Then
they are Lemmings who swoop down on you, you are equipped with a heavy
machine gun or you run out of ammunition. Sometimes if you’re high, the
more enemies you see, even with a line of fire, so they remain
motionless, doing nothing.
Die Pacific City:
Just start the game it will give us the option to choose between four
faces and four different colored outfits to customize our character,
what we are craving to be a little game of this kind, in which a greater
variety of customization would have given an added freshness. The
weirdest thing is that every time we resume the game will give us the
option to choose the face and clothing, which may cause us doubt that we
have started thinking the game from the outset and prevent any link we
with our character throughout the adventure.
Already on task, we will within a short tutorial explained by the very
voice of Bruce Will … .. forgiveness, a spirited person who continue
to listen over the whole game, giving us advice and even rebuke when
necessary, all with a great clean sound and with a tone that really make
us think you’re talking live and live. Once we have become familiar
with the controls, our interlocutor will give free rein to begin our
mission and to save Pacific City from the nightmare that has become.
The movement of your character is pretty smooth thanks to a smooth
graphics engine that will not give us samples of pulls or slowing down
in closing any time, but only see potential in those moments when your
character is surrounded by hundreds of zombies or flooded the city
fireworks with our helicopter and that, with these exceptions, the
scenarios tend to be fairly empty and lacking in detail to embarrass any
graphics engine of the current generation of consoles with a minimum of
solvency. However, we take our hats off to the viewing distance,
without requiring any kind of tricks will enable us to achieve
spectacular views from really far distances.
With reference to the artistic side, we say that the graphical drink a
lot of comics and has been used for this kind of Cell-shading without
going to some outstanding quality levels, gives a certain personality to
a story like of Crackdown 2, characterized by improbable situations in
which the impossible jumps and falls are the main tone of the game. We
will also see some details that are to be welcomed as the passage from
day to night and the variety of situations caused by the change schedule
or the wide diversity of models of enemies both in regard to civilians
and terrorists and zombies themselves. Finally, we like our character to
be able to travel to swim to access different points across a sea whose
finish is more than remarkable.
Throughout the game, while fulfilling missions go, we have to develop
some skills that will provide more power to our protagonist. To do this
we should collect a series of orbs called "units of light" that are
scattered throughout Pacific City, which will enhance our agility,
strength, firearms, explosives and driving. Among these orbs, you will
find some that will escape when they see that we go for them, so we have
to follow and achieve them if we get them. Thanks to the powers
conferred by these orbs can, among other things, jumping and climbing on
structures more easily, but still, when trying to climb to higher
places, such actions will lead to more of a problem than a virtue for
our character with its limitation and poor fluidity of climbing, will
have to repeat again and again in meeting targets on high. All this,
after seeing the exquisite mechanical lords created by Ubisoft with a
sensational saga Assassin’s Creed, we believe that it is pointless and
more the case of a game whose main challenges are not in the climbing
structures.
Appointment not to miss the classic events of this kind of games like
acrobatic jumps, finding hidden objects or racing driving among others,
driving a fancy to us a little arcade and others to follow the laws
gravity that, combined with an artificial collision engine, makes every
time we see running over zombies come to mind us the continuing feeling
of playing the controversial 1997 game "Carmageddon."
The musical section is composed of tracks by famous artists such as
Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan among other great musicians, along with other,
less media attention but certainly interesting to make a soundtrack
really cared and great vitality that accompany us during the game
perfectly .
Our character has a life bar and a shield that once they have been
damaged, we will regenerate if time indoors. You can choose from five
difficulty levels that are differentiated by the number of enemies on
screen or the vulnerability of our character, but nowhere have we found
that our enemy AI will improve in the more advanced levels of
difficulty, so that both zombies as members of "The Cell" only put us in
trouble because of their high number and not by their intelligence. To
stop them we have an arsenal of weapons that will allow us to select
targets to be eliminated, the problem is that the game does not
distinguish between those objectives that are dangerous and which are
not, so in more than one occasion we will shooting an inert element
while being killed by a terrorist group, something really alarming
today.
We note that Crackdown 2 has been programmed thinking particularly in
multiplayer mode, where we show its best face, especially in what could
be considered the way star, online cooperative multiplayer for up to
four players. However, if our idea is to start the solo adventure, it’s
not as fun as it should be. Curiously, the story is the same play it
alone or accompanied, but that alone can become tedious and monotonous,
to play with a group of friends is transformed into a moment of emotion
in which we will coordinate to devise stratagems when to carry out the
proposed missions for the game.
Finally, Crackdown 2 also has a competitive multiplayer mode where they
can join a maximum of 16 players in three different game modes, Game
Rocket, Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch, in which we can make goat across
the extensive mapping of Pacific City and vent with 15 other opponents
from around the world.
Major technical
deficiencies:
Examples of this kind are incredibly numerous. In fact, every battle, it
sees it. This obviously would not have been a problem with zombies,
creatures of the stupidest movies and video games make heading straight
to the first nearby healthy brain. For terrorists, we would have liked a
little more ambition on the part of developers. There are extenuating
circumstances: it is hyper-paced game, everything is designed to go
fast, without much reflection. And therein lies the problem: the lack of
subtlety is such that we no longer see it.
We must also add regular bugs, it leaves in all directions, it’s
painful. Widgets disappearing, things that explode for no reason, others
do not. Again, for each sequence of play, there a.
Against all odds, and that is the big paradox, we finally found the game
quite enjoyable. Not necessarily by taking over neighborhoods, or by
following the objectives imposed by the game, but deviating from it,
precisely. And opportunities abound. I doubt that the pleasure lasts for
months, but this is one example. Imagine a road rather broad, full of
zombies. Hundreds, perhaps even a thousand. Driving a fast car, you will
understand that it is tempting. And you go for a sequence of crushing,
which lasted ten minutes, and maybe more. The oldest of you so quickly
forget everything I said above this paragraph and ask if it’s the same
as Carmageddon. Yes, just like it slaps these sequences with the same
euphoria. It’s just super fun. More fun than the game itself. We follow
the plot, of course, then you come out a bit by anything, come back. It
is the map and that freedom is finally welcome. But it does not catch
everything.
Conclusions:
Crackdown 2 is a game in multiplayer mode that will make us spend a few
hours glued to the television as we meet objectives with a group of
friends, however, if the aim is to enjoy the solo mode is more than
advisable not to rush and pull the car before you decide to purchase,
especially considering that in this genus are found in the games market
more freshness and originality as Infamous or Prototype at prices more
attractive, further developments with respect to its first part is
almost nonexistent.
With minor exceptions, there is nothing new apart from the competitive
multiplayer that can possibly and for a time, raise the level.
Otherwise, we find the same city in less pretty, ultra repetitive
missions, a constant bourrinage amuses few hours and a scenario that
fits on a Post It . Rest of the rise of the character, the collection of
trophies and objects around the city in large numbers. It’s already
seen, there are too few and there are already new titles in the genre
that are all significantly better than Crackdown 2 . One thinks of Just
Cause 2 . There is little more than the simple co-op Crackdown 2, which
saves the comparison but not for very long.
