X10: Crackdown 2 Preview

One of the highlights of X10 was a demo put on by the folks from Ruffian games of everyone's favorite suit-enhanced adrenaline-pumping hero, back again to shake things up in Pacific City in Crackdown 2. Not much has changed for the story of the sequel since the Agency is still trying to keep both the Cell and the Freaks from completely taking over and/or destroying the city in this large open-world action experience that's coming exclusively for the Xbox 360.

In the demo we got to see a wide variety of abilities, vehicles, and actions that you can use in the game. They are using the same leveling system in the game for all of your abilities, but have decided to make it easier to help you get over the initial hurdle to some of the abilities, such as driving. They showed us how you can now run over a whole slew of Freak baddies that come out to play at night to help quickly level your driving. They also showed off some neat vehicles that you can pilot in the game, such as helicopters equipped with rocket launchers and an all-terrain vehicle that can jump while driving at breakneck speeds and hold three of your pals.

Speaking of pals, the sequel boasts a four-player co-op mode along with a 16-player battle system that should have you and your friends duking it out for bragging rights. The co-op play is particularly fun when exploring the dynamic sandbox world of Pacific City. As far as updates, they've paid particular attention to the hand-to-hand combat in the game, which wasn't as good as long range fighting in the original, in order to help make it more fluid and fun. At one point the character was able to get up in the face of a Freak and slap him around some, only then to do a jump-slam technique that exploded the Freak's head into small bits.

The game does take place in a time after the original events of Crackdown and so the player will be able to see many familiar sights in the city while exploring; however, you will note that many things have been destroyed by the two opposing factions while others have been rebuilt or modified. Overall, the demo showed that the team is very much striving to make this sequel live up to the Crackdown name, and is adding many new bells and whistles to the open sandbox that is Pacific City and the Agency that helps try to keep the peace. Still no definite release date on the game, but sometime 2010 is still looking like it is well within reach.