PAX East 10: Crackdown 2 Multiplayer Hands-on
Rocket Tag is about as awesome as it sounds.
March 26, 2010 - Most people loved the original Crackdown, but I think we can all admit that it needed a 16-player multiplayer mode where you could target the one object everyone was trying to get and just spam the hell out of the area with rockets for an awesome kill streak.
Thank goodness Crackdown 2 fixes the original's omission.
Set to be released in July, Crackdown 2 boasts a co-op campaign for up to four people, but it's also packing two competitive multiplayer modes known as Team Deathmatch and Rocket Tag. Because you've been playing games for awhile now, I'm sure that "Team Deathmatch" is pretty self-explanatory. That's good because Team Deathmatch is cool and all, but Rocket Tag is where it's at.
Rocket Tag is, well, tag with rockets. One person runs into the orb and becomes "it." The longer that person is it, the more points her or she earns. Everyone else is trying to kill that person so that the orb is up for grabs again. The only gun everyone has is the rocket launcher. Toss in the Crackdown leaping and launch pads everyone knows and loves, and you have one of the most solid recipes for a multiplayer match you'll find on Xbox Live.
If you only watched my body language while I played Team Deathmatch and then Rocket Tag, I'd assume it would look like I was playing two completely different games. In Team Deathmatch, I was a patient hunter – calm, quiet, and steady. In Rocket Tag, I was running for my life – shouting curse words, grimacing, and smacking my controller.
My round of TDM was set in a shipyard of sorts with cargo containers stacked as high as skyscrapers, I'd leap and climb to high spots and survey the four-on-four battle I was a part of. When I saw the streaks of the evil red team converging in one place, I'd begin moving my blue team soldier toward the pack for the chance at a multi-kill. Still, the real fun came when I discovered this jump pad that shot me straight into the air. It was at a central choke point of the map, so people were coming by all the time. The plan I milked for kills went like this: I'd launch myself in the air, watch the ground as unsuspecting red team members ran in, and then hurl grenades their way.
Calling Crackdown 2's grenades "grenades" is a bit of an insult – these are the most powerful handheld explosives I think I've ever used in a videogame. The first few times I used them, I was killing myself on every throw. I'd toss them and think that I was far enough away, but then this massive orange and black explosion would engulf me and toss my body back like the ragdoll it is. They beep after being tossed, and if you can hear them, you're screwed.
They are all kinds of awesome.
Anyway, I'm up in the air just spamming grenades out and watching as "+30" after "+30" popped up on my screen. It was rad. On the ground, I found myself playing like rubbish with the machine gun. There was no auto-lock or forgiving hit box that I could find, so if my crosshairs weren't right on top of a bad guy or they weren't standing completely still, I wasn't getting the kill. I'd like to see that accuracy ease up a bit in the final product.
Accuracy wasn't even a remote concern in Rocket Tag. If I saw someone – anyone – I'd fire off as many rockets as I could and watch the corpse spiral through the air. Set in a city, Rocket Tag is a hectic chase where I was leaping between rooftops and running through the streets. Wherever the orb was, there was a yellow icon on the screen pointing me towards it. Let me tell you, there's something magical about rounding a corner and watching the yellow icon go from an arrow to being on top of an opponent.
Still, that awesome blast radius I was talking about for the grenades is lessened but still here in Rocket Tag. When I'd round that corner and see an opponent, I was welcome to blast him with my rockets, but the knock back would either kill me or knock me off my feet. There were more than a few times I rounded that corner all excited like, spammed my rockets, and had to watch someone else swoop in and pick up the orb while I tried to get back on my feet.
When I did get my hands on the orb – and trust me, that didn't happen all that often – it was insanity. I'd get the thing and start trying to climb a building, and in one second, there'd be rockets all around me. I'd bob, weave, and dodge, but eventually the residual blast radii would take me down.
Perhaps I'm just out of practice, but I actually found moving around the Rocket Tag map a bit of a chore. There were buildings with window ledges and overhangs that I was expecting to be able to swiftly move up but couldn't for the life of me. There was one in particular where I'd jump up and expect my guy to grab the overhang, but instead he'd just ram his head into it and fall back to earth. This happened a bit in TDM as well with ledges I thought I'd be able to grab. Railings, multilevel areas and more were all a bit cumbersome to move quickly through when I'd see the orb-carrier.
I had fun with Crackdown 2's multiplayer modes this afternoon. Chucking grenades from the sky above all these brightly colored containers and being part of a four-person party chasing down one orb-carrier is a blast. I'd like the aiming to be a bit more forgiving and I felt like I couldn't get a good movement rhythm going in Rocket Tag, but those are both complaints that could be tweaked by the time the game launches and also would get better as I got better at playing the game.
