Be Excellent To Each Other

Good Eurogonks preview of this. Salient points!


ORBS!


Co-op!


A long way off!

All good then.

I'll be upset if they ruin the graphical style of the original and make it "gritty" and "more real". It certainly seems to have lost a part of its cel-shaded nature in the pics.

it better still have that chap doing the voiceover.

Skills for kills agent

Whoa whoa whoa there Nelly, I ain't played me nummer wun yet!

Impressive ascent Markh.

check out the 3rd video.

http://www.vg247.com/2009/09/25/crackdown-2-first-videos/

My word. You poor man.

*while in a tunnel*
I can see my house from here!

Whoa whoa whoa there Nelly, I ain't checked me out videos nummer wun and two yet!

Velly interesting Mr Bahnd. He used the phrase "emergent gameplay" though, so I wish to punch him.

'Haps they can get blokey from 'Come Dine With Me' for the sequel....

Listening to video one confirms Man With Voice is still there. Also cel-shaded goodness. Agent looks like boring Space Marine in boring suit of boringness.

"Tortoise head action"

I'm slightly concerned that it's no longer a near-future beautifully shaded cartoon city, but instead a gritty half-destroyed I Am Leg End plague city with psycho citizens and Mad Max gangs.

See what I've posted above. Still cel-shaded in the vids, the screenshots don't show it off proper.

So it's the same city but just knackered? Was hoping for a whole new area to explore really.

I have to admit, Crackdown is up there with Bioshock as one of the Games That Don't Need A Sequel As It Can Only Dilute The Goodness.

EG preview says it has a day/night cycle. Ordinary An Men during the day, then Mutant Monsters during the night.

Really? How so? Seems to me that unless it patches the first game, or maybe makes all copies of Crackdown 1 self-destruct, it does in fact leave the first game totally unchanged. So maybe it doesn't really matter if Crackdown 2 stinks, and as there's a chance it'll be excellent I'm all in favour.

In all likelihood you'll play the demo and decide you hate it anyway.

As I seem to be the only bugger who doesn't think much of Crackdown, I shall gave it another try tonight and see if it clicks with me. Currently, in the 'Top 2 of games I've played called Crackdown', it's second behind the Mega Drive game.

Whilst I think it's a great game I think at least part of the reason it gets bummed so hard is that it was a bit of a sleeper hit and so people felt like they had just discovered it for themselves without someone telling them how fucking awesome it was going to be for a whole year. So if you've only just got round to it lately then you'll have had that from us lot and therefore might be expecting some life-changing experience and feeling a bit let down.

Well, yes. Mutants by night, leather-clad raiders by day, undoubtedly driving cars covered in spikes and swinging chains.



But unless you can offer a genuine, tangible improvement on the original, why bother with a sequel? It could well be that this will offer some amazing revelations in gameplay that will make it just incredible, but FROM WHAT WE'VE SEEN SO FAR it looks TO ME like it will just be awfully similar to the first game, only with some minor changes to the scenery and enemies (which, frankly, seems to make them more annoying, turning them into super-zombies) rather than something cooler like a new, bigger city; more ways to fight the gangs; better co-op options; a more robust single player campaign. Here's some suggestions on what I'd add to Crackdown:
-more interaction with the Peacekeepers. Instead of just hoping they drive past and join the fun, why not be able to call them in to set up roadblocks or arrive en masse to help you assault a tough target?
-every other game is doing this, how about being able to rescue a down-but-not-out partner in co-op?
-a few more missions in buildings. The Wang mission as well as the big hacienda and the conference centre show there was real potential for indoor combat as well as outdoor.
-bosses fleeing your attempts to catch them. You go in to catch a baddie, and he tries to escape. With the Peacekeepers and possibly a co-op buddy waiting outside, you could have them caught between a rock and a hard place. Unless they break through the cordon outside, then you'd have an exciting chase outside.
-vehicle to vehicle combat. Buddy riding shotgun as you chase a boss (or indeed, any gang vehicle) around the streets.
-infiltration. You had a whole garage of civilian cars, why not pretend to be a delivery or something to gain access to a boss compound? Cool though just smashing through the gates or leaping over the fence was, you did sometimes wish you could skip past the combat outside.



Better to play a free demo and hate it than pay full whack for it, play it for five hours and then claim I 'lost interest', eh?

That sounds about right. Just been playing it and it's at least getting better. Now I've upped my agility a couple of notches, it's at least easier to clamber about the place.

When I first played it, it seemed a very stuttery game in terms of loading but now that appears that it's down to the scratches on the disc I've got. I switched the soundtrack to my own music and that helped.

Still plenty of annoyances though, like the Peacekeepers being more of a hindrance than a help and the driving being no fun at all. I might stick with it a bit longer though.

Yeah, its pretty average.

Probably. I'm attempting to buy less games on a whim that I know I'm probably not going to play properly (MC:LA, Prototype, loads of others) but I'm an optimist and I find enthusiasm infectious. Plus, y'know, I'm enjoying have unfettered access to spare cash for the first time in years.

Where's that M5 Estate you were gonna buy?

It was never an M5 -- it was a 540 I was considering, and still am. I need to stop spending money on trips to London and drumkits and new tellies if I'm going to pull it off though.

Man, I loved Crackdown. I hope this is ace.

Warming to the original a bit more now. Can't be arsed with the guns now that I can kick cars all over the place

Yeah, if you're playing it like GTA and driving around the whole city, you're officially doing it wrong. Think of it as a 3D platformer with knobs on.

Hardly using the cars to be honest as everyone just gets in the sodding way. At the moment I'm just looking for the orbs and when those orbs happen to be near a boss, I steam in, kick the boss to death and resume my search.

The cars were SHIT. I really don't think I bothered with them much at all. I had a go co-op with a friend that had the driving skill upgraded to get the super-car functions (one had a gun, one could go up walls, the other could go faster or something) but even then they weren't all that.

Yeah I didn't bother much with the cars. If you are wanting to max out all your skills though I found that getting in the agency truck and just driving laps round the Shai-Gen (sp?) map smashing into gang cars soon got it to the top.

The cars were decent fun, once you got used to the exaggerated physics.

DrG can vouch for their fun potential in the 'jeeps with no tires' and 'police cars with no tires' activities I showed him.

I'm not sure I could ever associate Gaywood with fun enough to trust his opinions on it...

Just hurry up and buy Crackdown, you berk.

You know who associates me with fun? Yo momma.

Playa

I am buying Crackdown soon. I am also likely to buy Mirrors Edge and a Guitar Hero game.

I'd tell you to shout at me until I've done it but that didn't work with Guitar Hero Metallica so I won't bother... I shall carry this burden alone.

CALLING DIMRILL!

Apparently Ruffian Games want people to draw stuff to be used as graffiti in Crackdown 2.

I always wondered why more games don't do this, charge for it even. I'd love to know that on some wall somewhere in a GTA city or something there was a bit of scrawl I'd done.

Can someone (Zardoz?) turn the BETEO banner into a 1024*1024 PNG? Would be awesome to get our name in the game.

BeeX. Hates advertising in games, unless it's advertising us.

"BETEO" would make very good L4D graffiti, if scrawled with a stick using what looks like blood.

On it.

There was a little room left over at the top and bottom.

Awesome, new desktop!

You should really use your powers for good instead of evil.

I'm aligned Chaos, obv

Trying not to watch too much of Yerpgonks video lest I start jisming diamonds.