Have you ever seen a game that’s ridiculously cheap but it’s not a game you ever planned to buy, but still buy it anyway because it’s at a price too good to miss? This is what happened with me and Crackdown 2 after finding the metal tin edition in Cash Converters for £6.99. Knowing it usually sells for double that I snapped it up, even though it wasn’t on my imaginary ‘to buy’ list.
My initial impressions were mixed – the visuals lack pizazz and there are only a handful of different mission types. I stuck with it though, and eventually a friend invited me to a game of co-op. With a friend in tow to take out mutants with it grew on me incredibly. So much so that we finished it twice – the first time took 5 hours while the second time took only around 2 hours with our (almost) fully powered-up agents.
There are no pointless cut-scenes or loading times: it’s just one huge city with missions to pick and choose at will. You can even leave missions half way through if you spot some ability orbs in the distance and fancy adding them to your collection. The achievements are fun too, like trying to harpoon five enemies to a single vehicle.
Although I brought it pre-owned the developers managed to get a bit of cash out of me via the DLC. Deluge is an arcade-like experience with enemies that attack in waves and have to be wiped out before the clock ticks down. It’s fast paced and rather frantic – there’s always a scramble for the best weapons when the weapon stashes appear – and it managed to provided a couple of extra evenings worth of play. The Toy Box DLC on the other hand is ideal for people who’ve finished the game and want rinse everything out of it. The extra toys include jet boots which make the rooftop races and orb hunting easier plus there’s also a God mode with infinite ammo and such.
I’ve also gone out and brought the original Crackdown (£3 in CeX, if you’re wondering) but I’m not enjoying it as much. I put this down to the fact that Crackdown 2 has instant respawning whereas in Crackdown you have to capture respawn points first. Crackdown 2 also has mutants to kill as well as rowdy gangs, which adds a nice touch of variety. In short: Crackdown 2 is better, although some websites would have you believe otherwise.