Okay, so I've cleared out a few more Cells (HEY GAME DEVELOPERS? JUST A HEADS UP? NO ONE ON FUCKING EARTH LIKES TERRITORIES THAT GANGS CAN GET BACK AFTER YOU DEFEAT THEM AND TAKE IT OVER. FUCKING. NO ONE.) (Yes, I can avoid this by making sure I take out the adjacent Cell but there have been instances where the one closest to that Cell is part of a totally different Cell...cell and by the time I clear that one out, the one I just cleared is taken over and oh my fucking god no one likes this. Not one person.) and activated two beacons and am around level 3 on all my stats and, oh yes, there it is. There's my Chippy. Crackton is back.
Complaints of an expansion are a little mind boggling. Yes, it's the same city. It's a sequel. There are new weapons, new enemies, new everything. The mission structure absolutely fantastic, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that it's on the same islands. When you fight through an entire oil rig of motherfuckers that in the previous game only led to a boss and now is only one part of a three part mission that will lead you ultimately to the fourth part and a completely different mission requirement, it feels a lot more engaging and active.
The one thing that's overall still off feeling is the climbing. It's certainly not broken by any means, but that intangible perfection of grabbing a ledge in Crackton is just a hair off, tarnished. In the original, you could spot a grabbable ledge from way far away but here I've found myself a few times wondering why I couldn't grab a certain outcropping. Also, and maybe this is just because I'm only a level 3, the old tried and true jump up and around to grab the ledge at the top of an outcropping above you doesn't seem to work.
Also, the aiming needs work. It's always latching onto a car or something when I want to shoot a bastard.
That being said, every (EVERY) addition adds to the core game immensely. Renegade orbs are fantastic, the mission structure is so well done, and the new weapons are fucking glorious. The UV Shotgun, turrets, *MWAH* j'taime.
More proof that the game is fantastically structured is that I've only ventured to two sections of Olde Volk so far and have no interest to see anything else. The game excels at giving you plenty of stuff to do in your immediate surroundings, plenty of orbs, plenty to conquer before you even want to think of moving on.
I played one game of multiplayer arena and had no idea what was going on and why I was getting murdered constantly. Seems kind of like an afterthought.
As fun as the game is now, I think it's going to be something else entirely when playing with some chums this week.
If Crackton is 10/10, Crackton 2 is 8.5/10 WITHOUT including co-op in the score. I have a feeling once that's added, it will be 11/10.
