Ok first impressions,
If you've played Crackdown then you know what you're getting. You're a cloned super human agent that can jump ridiculous heights, pick up cars and shoot a fly from 100 yards. But you start small and basically learn by doing "kills for skills, agent", whilst being talked through it all by the same voice in the sky from the first game.
This is set about 10 years after the first game and all hell has broken loose. An ex-employee of the agency has gone nuts and created a virus that turns people into mindless, powerful monsters. This is where it gets very similar to Prototype, if you've played it, at nights the streets are filled with these "freaks" and ploughing through them with your car is always entertaining. By day they go underground and you don't have to worry about being swarmed every time you leave the safety of your car.
As i said, this being based in the future means it is the same world from the last game, just run down. Within half an hour of playing i found several locations i remember from the first game looking the worse for wear. It's a nice touch, but quite lazy when large portions of the city remain unchanged. Hell even some orb locations are the same!
Anyway on the missions, sadly they seem to have gone. Replaced with mini quests which basically boil down to "go here, flip the switch" then followed by taking down a freak nest. Rinse and repeat. There are still the old Rooftop and Car races, except they're not races this time. There's no time limit you just do it as fast as you can and then try to beat your personal best. Car stunts, basically jumps, are still about and still frustrating to get at but a new addition is renegade orbs. These run away from you and you have to chase them down, some you can't get without considerably improved skills/cars.
There are also "Freak Breaches" as well, little areas where the freaks have broken through the surface and will swarm your ass, taking them all out will lessen the population of the buggers in that area but can only be done at night. Dropzones need to be re-established and these amount to the same as the freak breach, enemies swarm, you pick them off until they're all dead leaving a new dropzone free to drop off weapons or vehicles to you.
This is where it seems they decided to cut down, there are less vehicle options from the drop off. Gone is the Agency garage giving you access to all the gangs cars by collection, replaced by just a selection of less than a dozen. The same with weapons, infact it seems they cut down on a lot from the first.
Graphically it's nigh on identical to the first, slightly tweaked and with less pop in but still it seems a bit lazy. Melee is clumsy seeing as you can't lock on and so you swing wildly hoping to hit something, gunfights seem less less dramatic than the first as the close quarter hideouts have been replaced with it all open and on rooftops leading to basically an exercise in shoot until near death then hiding for a bit. And the targetting system is very strange, you can't swap targets when locked on and sometimes it locks onto a barrel in the distance rather than that guy trying to blwo your head off.
Multiplayer is ok, you develop in the same way as the main game with kills for skills. But thanks to the targetting system and some strange level designs it seems a bit thrown together. Sadly i think they spent more time making it this part of it than bulking up the main game.
Jumping about is still fun and there's a shit load of orbs to look out for, but this does feel like a bit of a Crackdown 1.5. If it was a DLC for the first no-one would complain but as an entirely stand alone game it's kinda disappointing. Still fun though, just not anywhere near as good single player as the first.
