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When it was announced that Ruffian Games were working on a sequel to Crackdown, Realtime World’s 2007 hit, pretty much every 360 gamer who played the first let out a cry of unmitigated joy. There’s just something forever appealing about playing as a super-powered hero in an open-world environment, and with new additions to the already solid formula and many of the bugs ironed out, Crackdown 2 simply couldn’t fail to impress…right?

Well..that depends on just how much you liked the original, because Crackdown 2 is basically the exact same thing. Imagine handing your home to a group of interior designers and leaving for 6 months while they went to work, only to return and find the exact same layout with a slightly darker colour scheme and a chair switched with a sofa. That’s what you’ve got here.

There’s a select group of gamers out there under the impression that Crackdown’s success was only thanks to it being bundled with access to the Halo 3 beta, but that simply isn’t so. The new franchise garnered a hell of a lot of praise and love from the many who enjoyed it, making a sequel all but an inevitability. It’s a real shame, then, that Crackdown 2 feels like more of a rework than an improvement, heavily relying on the appeal of the original concept and a lick of paint to see gamers through a second instalment.
Don’t get it twisted – Crackdown 2 IS a hell of a lot of fun, providing many more hours of insane jumps, building-to-building parkour, explosive action and fast-paced driving. It just feels a bit..empty, for a sequel anyway, and will leave the majority of fans feeling ripped-off by the lack of progression and love invested into one of their favourite IP’s.

If you’ve played the original Crackdown you’ll know what the crack is here (lame pun, but had to be done). Crackdown 2 returns you to Pacific City with a decade gone by, now in total disarray thanks to an outbreak of mutated bastards causing all kinds of havoc at night, and terrorist outfit Cell ruling the streets by day.

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