Crackdown 2 Demo Impressions

Hardly worthy of a full review, but definitely worth mentioning is the Crackdown 2 demo.  Giving you 30 minutes of play, the demo gives you some pretty good looks at how the world can change and develop, and how your character is going to change with it.

Liked

The World : Pacific City hasn't changed much (architecturally speaking) since the first game, which is cool because it gives a real sense of familiarity right when you boot it up.  It takes a few minutes to get your bearings, but when you do it all comes flooding back to you.  I explored a lot in the first game, and it looks like I'm going to get that and more in the follow up.

Day and Night:  In Crackdown 1, night basically meant that there weren't nearly as many cars on the road, a great time to get some of the driving challenges done.  In 2, there are these infected zombies and monsters that come out at night, giving the world a real sense of busyness. The zombies bugged me at first, (why are there all these zombies in my Crackdown!?) but I think it will create a much better balanced game experience in the end, cause it means that there isn't any down time as night and day cycle.  The cycling did seem a little quick if this is the goal, but it's probably going faster than usual so they can showcase both aspects in the short lived demo time.

The Announcer: He's totally back and already encouraging me to be awesome.  Like the time cycling, I do hope he's toned back a smidge in the real game... he's overloading me with info, and intel, and news, and compliments, and criticisms...  give me a break, guy. At least he's hilarious.

Disliked

New Crosshair - I liked the old one more.  The aiming mechanic is about the same, still frustrating to quick target certain guys, but it works well enough.

Objective Missions - Just a preference, but I liked the way it was done before.  "Hey Agent! There's a boss over there... get him!"  They've included missions where I need to flip a switch to do X activity for _______ purpose.  It all in the name it seems of creating a better narrative with it, but they really don't need to.  I'm playing this game because it's fun to jump over buildings and to use a small sedan as a melee weapon, not for character development.  When they first announced that Crackdown 2 was going to continue the story from the first game, I literally had to think about what the story was, if it was even there to begin with.  The new story does fit in well enough to the first, but it still doesn't matter.

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I'm excited to pick this one up.  I know my brother and I are going to co-oping it up a lot in this, so anyone who wants to hop in and clean up the city (... again!) is more than welcome! Should be a great time with 4 player co-op.