Crackdown 2

The newest entry from the Dundee gaming veterans Ruffian, Crackdown 2 will easily split gamers into their constituent components: those who like story and strategy, and those who like to smash everything in their path. Frankly, the game rewards the latter, but the more clever your smashing, the more fun you’ll have.

Returning to Pacific City a few years on from where the first game ended, players once again become a genetically-jacked-up super agent faced with hordes of terrorists by day and mutant freaks by night. It’s hard to remember you’re supposed to be saving the city and protecting the innocent when there are just so many of them, and so many ways to take them out. To be honest, the physics are the real hero here, with crazy magnetic gravity guns setting up absurd stunts with the surrounding environment. Almost anything can be jumped over, blown up or chucked at the baddies, and the plot really takes a back seat once you send a propane tank screaming into a Freak’s face.

The city is a massivce sandbox to explore, and the powerup orbs hidden over the landscape insist that you do so. While you’re guided by your mysterious Agent contact, the order you choose to complete your missions is up to you. And that all comes to a head in the multiplayer, where all pretense is dispensed with and the contest to get the most creative kill comes in. A solid game, this, though without creativity on the player’s part, it’ll get repetitive quickly.