Crackdown 2? More like Crapdown 2 – Fnaar fnaar fnaar.

That hilarious pun has probably telegraphed how I feel about the joke of a game pretty quickly. As has referring to it as a ‘joke of a game’ in the first line. Now, I’ve been unwell lately and perhaps my sickness is making me crabby but seriously guys, what on earth were you doing during the development cycle?

Yes, the graphics are this bad

I was a fan of Crackdown 1. I enjoyed its rather silly take on Grand Theft Auto genre, but that was back in 2007 when dinosaurs roamed the earth and the bible was yet to be written. Since then Saints Row 2, GTA4 and Red Dead Redemption have come out and it’s left Crackdown 2 looking like a marginally graphically updated Pac-Man. In fact I’d take that further, Crackdown 2 isn’t a sequel to Crackdown it’s a sequel to Pac-Man. You run around a boring grey box collecting orbs while being chased by the undead. Except Pac-Man was better because at least it had half decent characters.

Crackdown 2 is a game with almost no game play. There is no story to speak of, no characters, no humour, no hope, no chance, no return and no diggety. All it is is a sandbox in its most basic form filled with boring identi-kit citizens and boring identi-kit bad guys. This is exacerbated by the fact you play a totally invulnerable moral blank nameless super soldier from the beginning. The only real danger your character is ever in is from the risk that whoever is playing this load of rubbish might try and kill themselves. It honestly feels like a game from 2001.

Crackdown 2 Beta

The narrative of this game follows a system whereby you repeat the same ‘location clearing’ missions over and over again. I mean really, that’s it. You pitch up at the big flashing icon on the map, kill everyone, and move on. I finished the game in about 5 hours on the day it arrived. Also if you’re a sado-masochist like I am and you actually bother to find the ‘audio logs’ (How original) the apparent plot doesn’t even make sense. In fact let me break it down for you.

· Woman scientist creates disease that makes zombies out of ordinary people and releases it

· Woman scientist demands the Agency cure the disease

· The Agency builds big walls to contain the zombies

· Woman scientist isn’t happy with this and starts a terrorist group

· The Agency builds technology that can kill the zombies once and for all

· Woman scientists terrorist group actively try to stop the Agency wiping out the zombies and attack the big containment walls

And the real problems arise when we are sort of meant to sympathize with this woman and feel that the Agency are evil bad fascists. It just doesn’t work on any level at all.

The Agency if you are wondering is the police for whom you are working as a genetically engineered enforcer. Although rather than arresting criminals and bringing justice to the streets your first duty seems to be mass murder of anyone and everyone on an industrial scale. Murder civvies? Not a problem. Murder fellow cops? They might shoot at you for 10 minutes but that all. There are absolutely no rules in place and you just end up with the game feeling futile and pointless, which is handy because futile and pointless is exactly what this game is.

Never before has boxart described a game so well

Another master stroke is the ‘Voice’ that follows you around making snide and unnecessary comments. It’s like playing the game as a schizophrenic with self esteem issues. For example if you get into a helicopter you’ll never fail to hear, ‘’Are you SURE you know how to fly this thing?’’ Mild patronization by the game is bad enough but it’s even worse when it starts being rude to you. Yes, that right the game starts being rude to you. I was playing co-op mode with a friend and we were trying to squeeze some fun out of the game by building a roadblock out of ruined cars when the ‘voice’ actually pipes up saying , ‘’What the FUCK do you think you’re doing? Stop wasting time.’’

I think that’s the real problem I have with this game. It has almost zero sense of humour. Sure it’s got comedy zombies and wacky ‘Battle bus’ vehicles but it’s like a stand up comic with autism repeating jokes he heard a much better comedian perform. We don’t find it funny and neither does he. Games like Saints Row have a permanent tongue in their cheek and are always ready with a wink and a nudge. Crackdown 2 is just a joyless slogfest with the charm and wit of a wheelie bin that’s shat itself.

I admit I didn’t try the ‘competitive’ multiplayer because after two days of this game the thought of booting it up again makes me die a little inside. I’d be willing to bet its rubbish anyway. On the positive side of things the co-op works quite well for what it’s worth. That’s pretty much the only good thing I can think of. The engine of the game itself is years out of date too – it can only handle about twenty cars on screen at a time and shapes outside of cubes seem to be beyond it. The pedestrians have only have a couple of set models in an age when sandbox game characters have been made out of a variation of composite parts for years.

In closing I think the ‘Voice of the Agency’ said it best.

‘’You know, this is getting really tedious.’’