Crackdown 2 review embargo goes up – Edge and EG give 8/10

GiantBomb, 3/5:

http://www.giantbomb.com/crackdown-2/61-26790/reviews/

Realidad 2.0, 9/10: http://www.realidad20.es/index.php/analisis/leer/crackdown_2/

Tested the demo and it was shit…no other word for it.

tested your mom and she was even shitter

TheGamingLiberty

7 outta 10

http://thegamingliberty.com/index.php/2010/07/05/crackdown-2-review/

@54 LOL!

71 metarating owch

its funny how xbox mags give it 8 and 9 overall its just the same

Lol. Well i guess the battle between Infamous2 vs crackdown2 is over.

Considering one of those games has only just been anounced, I’d say there never was a rivalry to speak of.

Edge score added there.

Quite surprised by that Edge score. Looks like they were Crackdown fanboys after all, I concede defeat!

Still puzzled, everybody is down on the game, including the reviews, but then the scores at the end are pretty good. 0_o

Depends on what you mean by “good”. Lets be honnest, a game has to be broken and/or unfinshed to get under a 7 from most sites these days.

it seems like the game was indeed rushed.

@Blerk In fairness, it could have gone either way. I still maintain that Crackdown and its sequels are brilliant playgrounds rather than brilliant games.

Ars Technica have really put the boot in, deeming it unpolished, unfinished and unloved. Needless to say, they’ve given it their skip rating. http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/07/crackdown-2-review-1.ars

Very surprised at Edge’s score. Pleased for the folks at Ruffian but given the middling reviews and numerous flaws pointed out by other reviews, it seems very generous.

Well, again I’d say that Edge review reads more like a sleep inducing art critique than an entertainment review.

If there’s a red thread in those reviews it’s that Crackdown 2 doesn’t really know where it wants to go, so it simply doesn’t go anywhere.

Shame though, the first one had major promise.

Will it sell though? I think it should do 1m pretty easy.

@ 68 thats Edge in general imo

Well, I’ll be buying it. Although not this week, ‘cos I’m skint.

to each their own, i for one can’t read destructoid’s article.

“Well, again I’d say that Edge review reads more like a sleep inducing art critique than an entertainment review.”

Really? They’ve been known to dole out the purple prose, but this is quite a clean (and insightful) read. No mention of the issues with lock-on and awkward building geometry though.

“I still maintain that Crackdown and its sequels are brilliant playgrounds rather than brilliant games.”

Aye, that’s the rub…

“I still maintain that Crackdown and its sequels are brilliant playgrounds rather than brilliant games.”

“Aye, that’s the rub…”

Luckily, the words used to describe the game have no bearing on how much fun it is to play…

The first Crackdown still stands out as a high point in console gaming even if critics largely meh’d it. No difference here.

^ Still in denial

@73
The awkward lock on has been addressed since the demo – if that is what you are referring to. It was very off-putting in the demo to try and lock on a couple of guys just in front of you and have it pick out an innocuous car 200 yards away.

The 15 minute gameplay vid on EG looks much improved in that respect.

http://www.eurogamer.net/videos/crackdown-2-taking-it-to-the-freaks

I may get it later on, when it inevitably goes down in price.

@75

Boring ‘joke’ is still boring.

“The awkward lock on has been addressed…”

A bit, yes, but it’s still noticeably off-key at points. You’re more likely to hit stuff later on simply because the explosions are bigger.

“Luckily, the words used to describe the game have no bearing on how much fun it is to play…”

It’s fun, but a decent campaign arc and more nuanced objectives would have made it funner.

@74 – the original got a Metacritic average of 83 and was widely regarded as a very pleasant surprise. Only a small handful didn’t really take to it.

@79

“It’s fun, but a decent campaign arc and more nuanced objectives would have made it funner.”

In a lot of cases I’d agree, but Crackdown worked because of the freeform nature of the game. Of course that doesnt gel with everyone, hence the scores.

Basically the worth of the game is dependant on how imaginative you are with the toolbox given to you. I spent a good 50-60 hours playing through Crackdown 1, and probably no more than 10 of those hours doing the boss missions, because there was always some fun distraction I wanted to play with, or some location I wanted to get to and explore.

There was a soft limit on what you could do in Crackdown 1 anyway, as for example the Shai Gen controlled area had better armed NPC’s and buildings that needed a near to fully upgraded agent to scale.

Not every game needs to lead the player by the hand at every step, there are plenty of other games that satisfy that criteria.

wow! I was not a fan of crackdown in general anyway but damn i didnt expect to see such piddling scores =/

to me this all just affirms 7 as the new average score *grumbles*

“to me this all just affirms 7 as the new average score”

It’s not.

The 7′s, 8′s and 9′s it’s been getting indicate it’s rated well above average. The most important bit of the reviews, the text, has been generally glowing.

The reason it won’t score 10′s is because it’s a freeform sandbox game, and thus not universally appealing.

Xboxygen – 4/10
http://www.xboxygen.com/Tests/Tests-Xbox-360/Crackdown-2-5580