Crackdown 2

Crackdown 2
Developer(s)	Ruffian Games
Publisher(s)	Microsoft Game Studios
Designer(s)	Billy Thomson (Creative Director) Steve Iannetta (Lead Designer)
Platform(s)	Xbox 360
Genre(s)	Sandbox style action TPS (Third person shooter)
Mode(s)	Single-player, Multiplayer, Cooperative modes

Crackdown 2 is a sandbox-style third-person shooter video game developed by Ruffian Games and published by Microsoft Game Studios, due for release on Xbox 360 on Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 or July 9th, 2010 in the UK . It is a direct sequel to the 2007 video game Crackdown.

Gameplay

The game is modeled similarly to its predecessor Crackdown, a third-person shooter in open world game play. The player character is a super-human officer for the city-funded "Agency", known simply as the "Agent". This time around, increased levels of customization for the character are allowed, unlike the presets offered before. Along with that, the orbs from last time are coming back, but the powers are expanded and enhanced, i.e, the Agility Skill allows the Agent to jump higher than in Crackdown, and provides a 'dash' maneuver, as well as opening up a special helicopter. Driving is also a big portion of Crackdown 2, as in the first game. You’re able to commandeer any number of vehicles in the game, including police vehicles and other futuristic vehicles. The demo also provided a short look at some of the checkpoint races that fans would be able to check out within the city. Like Crackdown, the game will allow for on-line co-operative play in the main game, but will now support up to four players. The game will also feature competitive multiplayer modes for up to sixteen players. While the original Crackdown supported System Link playing for co-op, Crackdown 2 won't be featuring the same option. Microsoft Producer Peter Connelly stated. "It would've taken a half-day of work, for something that only a tiny percentage of gamers will ever use.". The player will fight both gangs of criminals and "freaks"-strange infected mutants. Both can be killed with melee attacks but different shooting strategies will be required for the different foes, normal guns for humans, custom-built uv guns for the non-humans.

Plot

A trailer was unveiled at E3 2009 revealing that the player-controlled Agent roams over Pacific City, which has fallen into anarchy, assisting the Agency in the battle for Pacific City against the Cell. An article from Game Informer magazine stated that Pacific City is infested with mutants from the research facility in the first Crackdown. These mutants have over run most of the former Shai-Gen territory and completely over run the city at night. The remaining civilians, forming a group called The Cell, revolted against the Agency and the mutants. The Agents are tasked with sabotaging key Cell structures and raiding underground mutant tunnels. In addition, a "Webcomic Series" started on May 19th 2010. Since its release, there have been 5 episodes, each showing a different part of the plot in Crackdown 2. From these video's we learn this: Crackdown 2 takes place 10 years after the events of Crackdown 1. After "saving" Pacific City, there was a short time of peace. Then, according to the "Agency" a new med-student by the name of Catalina Thorne, was accepted into the "Agency", as a scientist. However she was found to have been performing her own, "unauthorized" experiments, and was kicked out. Afterwards her life was ruined, with her blaming the agency. Soon after she broke into the Agency labs, and then inside the cloning facility which housed the new Agents, introduced a virus into them, which mutated the already genetically modified Agents, who became, mindless, and enraged, going on a killing spree before dying hours later. Catalina Thorne, then went on to destroy the research labs, sending the project back to square one, single handedly destroying the Agent program.

Not soon after Catalina unleashed the "Freak" virus into the populace of Pacific city, turning the infected into mindless mutated monstrosities that kill anything they find. With no agents to combat them, the Agency and the city were left helpless, as criminals also began to resurface in the absence of the agents, and the weakness of the Agency. While the people were weaker and more desperate then ever, Catalina rallied their support, claiming the Agency has a cure for the virus but is keeping it secret. Desperate for hope, they formed the "Cell", a terrorist group devoted to destroying the Agency and making them give up the cure.

Thats when the Agency unveiled Project Sunburst. Large Bomb of direct sunlight planted and detonated inside "Freak" lairs at night. The light is perfectly harmless to normal people, but the sunlight burns and destroys the Freaks. These bombs where dependant on generators to gather sunlight. Upon hearing of these generators and Project Sunburst, the Cell took over and stole the generators. A main part in the plot is for the Agent to find and restart the generators, and then defend the Sunburst bomb until it goes off. Many Sunburst bombs need to be detonated in each district, that means many generators. Along with that the Agents are tasked with capturing vital "Cell" locations for the Agency. It is also rumored that Agents will have to kill Cell crime bosses "Crackdown 1" style, ending with Catalina Thorne.

Multi-Player/Co-op

Multi Player game modes/playlists include game modes such as Rocket tag, and Team Death-match. The game modes are still in the original map known as pacific city but there will be limitations as to how far you can run when in a game mode.

Co-op also allows you to party up with up to 3 more friends (Including you're self).

Development

Phil Wilson and Billy Thomson, respectively Producer and Lead Design of "Crackdown" had previously confirmed that the game was designed from the outset to be a long running series, stating that sequels for the game are very likely to be produced, especially if Crackdown performed well commercially. However, during the Industry All Stars event in September 2007, Wilson confirmed that Realtime Worlds was not working on a sequel to the game, saying "Microsoft [was] a little late in stepping up to the plate to ask for Crackdown 2, and by then we had already started working on bigger, better things". However, Shane Kim, a corporate vice-president for Microsoft, stated that Microsoft still holds the intellectual property rights for Crackdown and that a Crackdown sequel was still a possibility.

Realtime's Studio Manager Colin MacDonald clarified that if they have the resources after completion of APB, they could approach Microsoft to discuss a sequel. Prior to its announcement, industry rumors stated that the new start-up company, Ruffian Games, a Scottish studio formed from members from the Realtime Worlds team, may be involved in the development of a Crackdown sequel. This was confirmed when the game was announced during the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo Conference. The rumors of Ruffian's involvement with the sequel were initially dismissed by McDonald, saying he doubted "Microsoft would harm an otherwise fruitful existing development relationship by gambling on funding Crackdown 2 with a startup on RTW's doorstep, for obvious reasons." Following the announcement, David Jones, founder of Realtime Worlds, stated he was "a bit miffed" with Microsoft's decision, believing that Microsoft may have been looking at an internal development studio instead of the new start-up located in the same geographical area as his company and formed of many of his team's former members. Ruffian's executive producer, Peter Connelly, agreed that the situation that caused Realtime Worlds to move onto APB was unfortunate, but hold no animosity towards the company. Ruffian's Thomson noted that about half of their team formerly worked on Crackdown across all areas of game development, and felt their studio was the best choice to make the game's sequel.

The team chose to keep the sequel located in Pacific City as they considered that setting had a character of its own in the first game and wanted to preserve that for the sequel to keep up its familiarity with players, while still making it "bigger and better". The team also sought to preserve the same free-form gaming experience from Crackdown and opted to avoid any significant dialog-driven cutscenes, while improving on parts of the gameplay from the first game that were seen as weaker aspects. There are no significant mechanical changes to the game, though Ruffian continues to improve on the rendering engine to allow the display of the large vista of Pacific City.

Demo

A downloadable demo was released on 21st June 2010 to Xbox LIVE Gold Members, The demo will be available to Xbox LIVE Silver members from 28th June 2010. The demo allows for 30 minutes of Free Roam gameplay with an increased rate of experience gain similar to the original Crackdown demo. The demo also allows the player to receive achievements which are awarded to the player when they play the full game. July 1st and 2nd - July 6th (Release date) the difficulties Ruthless and Sadistic were put into the demo. The demo does not allow you to exit the Green bay area AKA the old Crackdown Volk controlled city. For awhile there was a demo glitch that allowed you to have unlimited time, this was achieved by unplugging you're internet before you started it then plugging it back in canceling then starting the game. Please no that the demo glitch does not work because of an update.