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Just about everyone brought the first Crackdown just for the Halo 3 Beta that came with specially marked packages. However while most people attribute the game’s success to the Halo 3 beta, Crackdown had the ability to stand on its own as both a engaging and entertaining experience. The first Crackdown practically revolutionized the sandbox experience with its unique blend of superhuman abilities and go anywhere co-op game play.

Players of the original Crackdown will find that Pacific City, the setting from the first Crackdown, has changed significantly. While the Developers over at Ruffian Games are keeping the exact same layout of Pacific City, which will reward the players who took the time to memorize the layout of the city, we will notice that the city has changed considerably. With the pristine buildings now either bombed out or severely lacking any kind of maintenance.

Pacific City has changed considerably with the pristine becoming bombed out

In the first Crackdown you were a genetically engineered agent with superhuman powers working for The Agency, who helped to clean up the streets by ridding them of three gangs. However in the sequel The Agency is no longer the big boy on the block, in fact they’re barely a blip on the radar.

Pacific City has become overrun with mutants that were apparently stored in a research facility in the first game’s Shai-Gen area. Naturally they’ve become a serious problem to the city and the few civilians that are left. Those surviving taxpayers have formed The Cell, an attempt to survive with the now defunct Agent program.

The Mutants who have completely decimated the city, only come out at night. That doesn’t mean that the players wont have their hands full during the day, since The Cell aren’t exactly fond of you either. As the Player you’ll be tasked with conducting raids on Cell strongholds and the underground mutant lairs in an attempt to return justice to the city.

Crackdown 2 will pick up just as the Agent program is coming back into full swing, so thankfully we’ll get to still jump over and across rooftops. The Agency itself has been pushed back from the entire Pacific City to just Agency Island and it’s your job to take the City back

Thankfully we’ll still get to jump over and across the rooftops of Pacific City

Ruffian, the developers behind Crackdown 2, aren’t blind to one of the major things that made the first Crackdown so much fun. This key feature was its addictive two player co-op. Ruffian Games have taken the old fashioned 2 player and boosted it up to four players. “But Adrian, I used to play Crackdown for the sheer joy of making people have a aneurysm by joining peoples games just to blow them up!” Fear not my friends since Ruffian is packing a 16 player competitive mode to fulfill your need to blow up your fellow agents.

While we spent our hard earned cash on the first Crackdown for the Halo 3 Beta we ended up with a game that was surprisingly addictive and the way Ruffian Games is handling the follow up has us quivering in our giant steroid packed boots. This is a game we’re going to be keeping a close eye on and we can assure you that when more details come out we’ll hit you with them faster than you can say “Hey look an agility orb!”