Crackdown 2

Superheroic sci-fi sequel struggles to get off the ground

The history of videogaming is littered with officially licensed titles that promised to give players the chance to feel like a comic book superhero, but ultimately failed to deliver the goods. Only Spider-Man 2's web-swinging action and Batman: Arkham Asylum have got anywhere close to making gamers feel like they are in control of a real superhero.

Surprisingly enough, the one game that came closest to making players feel like a real superhero (as good as Arkham Asylum is, it's really just a brilliantly-realised stealth game with some wacky villains at the end of the day) wasn't even licensed from a comic book. Released back in 2007, Crackdown was a sci-fi sandbox title from Grand Theft Auto creative mastermind Dave Jones that gave you control of a futuristic cop on the gang war-ravaged streets of the fictional Pacific City. Like GTA you inhabited an open world and could travel anywhere on foot or wheels, picking and choosing which missions to take or just running around creating absolute chaos.

Up, up and away
But what really made the game feel like no other GTA-wannabe was its love affair with vertical space. As your character ran around the city collecting glowing Orbs his powers increased, allowing you to run faster and jump higher. Before long the full height of this towering cityscape was yours to enjoy - a truly three-dimensional playground of delights that had you leaping from rooftop to rooftop and scaling the sides of skyscrapers. Here at last was a game that finally allowed you to feel like a true Superman, watching humanity from on high before leaping down to dispense justice to those who break the law (only unlike your traditional superhero, here you do it with massive guns and high explosives, leaving dead bodies in your wake).

Which brings us to Crackdown's long-awaited sequel, which recently made a bow on the Xbox 360. Set several years after the events of the first game things in Pacific City have become worse than ever. Rather than epic gang wars the tooled-up police now find themselves battling a terrorist organisation called The Cell during daylight hours and hordes of mutated zombie-like creatures filling the city's streets after dark.

Lack of depth
In terms of actual gameplay, Crackdown 2 is almost identical to its predecessor. Either follow the prompts to a find a mission to tackle or simply kill some time running around town collecting as many Orbs as you can get your hands on to boost your powers (as well as blowing stuff up with guns and mowing down bad guys with cars in order to improve those stats as well). The latter is advisable as soon as possible as your character feels remarkably unresponsive to begin with, but once you've got a few Orbs under your belt the control feels much more satisfying quickly offering you all of the freedom of the original game.

Less exciting though is the limited variety of missions in the single-player campaign. In terms of advancing the story forward (rather than stat-boosting road- and rooftop race side-missions) everything in the game boils down to either finding a Cell stronghold and wiping out every bad guy on your radar, or heading underground to activate Sunburst bombs in mutant nests and wiping out every zombie on your radar. The creators try to add a little depth to the so-called story with hidden audio files dotted around Pacific City, but it can still feel like an endlessly repetitive grind at times.

It's a real shame too. The freedom of control and abilities your character is given, coupled with the mammoth environment you explore, hint at a truly astonishing gaming experience. But somehow, the sequel has delivered something in story terms that feels like more of a regression from the original rather than progression. Like Crackdown then, your focus will quickly shift instead to collecting items and leaving the missions to fester. Thankfully, this aspect of the game is still a lot of fun due to your continually evolving powers. And with all of the Orbs, races, audio files and other bits and pieces on offer, there are around 1,000 items to track down, which should keep those seeking a perfect 100 per cent completion score going for quite some time.

Better with friends
Help also comes in the form of co-operative play (which also has its own dedicated Orbs to add to the collectible fun), which gives groups of between two-and-four gamers the chance to take to the streets and the rooftops with a group of likeminded friends. It can be a little tricky at times to keep track of everyone, simply because there's no way of telling who's who on your radar. But there's so much fun to be had blowing stuff up and racing after Orbs with friends that this feels more like a minor niggle than a major issue.

If that isn't enough there's also an online arena mode for good old deathmatch fun. Here, up to sixteen players can compete in blowing each other into tiny pieces. However, while it's kind of fun, unlike the co-op mode this multiplayer aspect of the title does feel a little like simply ticking a box on the features list due to the game's unbalanced weapon set and the unfair advantages provided by certain vehicles.

Wonderful playground
At the end of the day, Crackdown 2 is really just more of the same. While it does boast some fun new online modes, it simply doesn't feel as fresh as the original and certainly doesn't hint at the developers having any idea what to do with the wonderful playground and power-set they created. There's still the basis of a fantastic game in there, but its repetitive nature means that Crackdown 2 is merely rather good. And when a game goes to the trouble of making you feel like a genuine superhero being 'rather good' feels like a bit of a letdown.

Xbox 360, Microsoft Game Studios, £50 approx, On sale now