PAX East 2010:Crackdown 2 Hands On

by: Chuck - posted: 3/30/2010 11:24:00 PM

The media got into PAX East an hour earlier than everyone else on Saturday morning which afforded us the chance to play a few games before the lines got really bad.  For me this meant a mad dash to the Crackdown 2 multiplayer pods inside the Microsoft area.  There were a few reasons behind this.  The first is that I really dug the first game and the second was that I wanted to spite play the game for Dan (I did the same thing to John when my girlfriend and I spite played Diablo III at PAX Prime last August).  To answer your next question, yes, I am that much of a jerk.

I had the chance to play a round of the new deathmatch mode and came away intrigued by the game.  I say intrigued rather than impressed or enthused because it wasn't until the end of the round that the game started to click for me.  The culprit?  The new lock on system that you'll have to learn and master before you can be effective in the game.  In order to lock onto someone you have to be in range and once you've centered the lock on dot onto them click the left trigger to lock on.  Once you're locked on you then have to move an aiming reticle on top of them to actually land the shots.  It's a good system but I just didn't have time to master it.

The level was set in a shipping yard and was dotted with plenty of shipping containers to climb and hide behind.  Scattered throughout were weapons, booster pads that vaulted you into the air, and a few vehicles.  The booster pads are important as they allow you to reach the upper reaches of the board where you can use the new "flying squirrel suit" to glide down on enemies or do a massive ground pound to enemies that are underneath you.  It's a solid mechanic but I had a few problems getting it to do what I wanted.  Again this is something that's probably isolated to me and/or the early build of the game.

I think there's a lot of potential in the deadmatch portion of the game.  I do wish I had a chance to check out the rocket tag mode but I had other things to see and I didn't want to stand in line to play it again.  Hopefully E3 will afford more time to check out Crackdown 2 and hopefully pwn a few people who aren't quite used to the lock-on system.