Crackdown 2 is one of the most brutal punishments one can inflict on a critic. There is nothing to say about Crackdown 2. At best, you can spin a handful of disappointments into a competent, but bland review. Once the review is over, that same critic will then place Crackdown 2 on a shelf, where it will sit for months. Later, he will realize it’s utter worthlessness, and eventually trade it in to some form of used game service. Its worth will be approximately seven dollars, and that man will look at himself and wonder, “Did this game really deserve this kind of time and effort?”

No. No it did not, metaphorical critic. It is not worth any human beings precious time or energy. This homogenized, joyless product is completely unworthy of the sixty dollar price tag attached to it, not even if some mega site like IGN or GameSpot had given it an acquittal for being no more then mindless fun. Is that what people really want? Mindless fun?

In Crackdown, you played as a genetically engineered police officer, created by the massive police force named The Agency. Through the power of jumping really high and shooting, the Agent was able metaphorically dismantle racism through the destruction of four innately racist gangs by assassinating their internal power structure. But the Agency was clearly unprepared for a force of goons even dumber then the gangs before: zombies. Unleashed by some generic terrorist cell called, you guessed it, “The Cell”, the horde of violent ghouls killed the last of the agents.

So the agency returns to its bread and butter and re-clones the original agent. But he’s different! He’s got a mask! And for some reason he’s been rebooted to level one. That goofy agency must have placed the good genes in a bag of spilling. The agency jettisons out the inferior clone back into the very familiar world of Pacific city, which has somehow remained exactly the same within the ten year time span, except for the occasional run down building. But that is not important. What’s really important is the agent’s epic to destroy the evil freaks through a series of exciting, cinematic set pieces; standing on a platform for a minute and a half. Nine times. And then the game is over. No joke.

Who’s really to blame for this hunk of garbage? Probably Microsoft Game Studios, who completely disregarded the poor folks at Ruffian, and gave them eight months to create a sequel to a massive sandbox title. Maybe you could have entrusted them with an actual budget to flesh out the original Crackdown. Just imagine if Microsoft had put some real money, time, and effort behind the Crackdown franchise. It could have been success. I mean, does no one think the concept of playing a badass super cop in an organic, interesting city is utterly incapable of success?

Look at inFamous, a critical and financial success for Sony, that retained many elements of Crackdown. If Microsoft had nurtured this IP properly as Sony had, Crackdown could have risen above its B minus position and blossomed into a Triple-A franchise. The game’s use of zombies is almost an ironic parody of the game itself; reborn into a hideous undead ghoul, not hungry for brains, but the money sitting in your wallet. It’s embarrassing for a publisher to not only release such an inferior product, but to kill a gold status IP in its infancy. So please, if you’re actually reading this, for god sakes, don’t feed this corpse, and let Crackdown die with any dignity it still has.

Tags: Crackdown, Crackdown 2, microsoft, Open World, open world games, Ruffian, sandbox game, Xbox 360

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 21st, 2010 at 5:00 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.