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Seems we're getting a Crackdown 2 demo later today, which has accelerated levelling, 4-player co-op and even achievements. More »

Agent, you ready to get more skills for kills? Return to Pacific City with the Crackdown 2 demo next Monday, June 21. The "generous demo" will apparently be huge, according to our recent interview with Ruffian's James Cope.

You can likely increase your chances of getting the demo early by following Ruffian Games' Twitter account. The company appears to be giving out passes early to those with a quick enough Twitter finger. We also have 10 codes to give out, five on Twitter and five on Facebook this Saturday, June 18.

Game has passed certification.

At first glance, the Achievements in Crackdown 2 appear to encourage nothing but hours of grinding. Complete every blah blah, find every yadda yadda; that kind of thing. Scroll further down, however, and you'll remember why you love the Achievements from the first Crackdown. Rather than list them all, we'll give you just this one:

• Yippee-Kai-Yay: Drive an Agency SUV into an airborne helicopter.

Find the rest at MyGamerCard.net.

Ever since we found out that the mean streets of Pacific City had been ravaged by even meaner mutants in Crackdown 2, we've been curious about from whence said mutants sprung. Our curiosity was satisfied by the second episode in the animated "Pacific City Archives" prequel series, which tells of the exploits of twisted ex-Agency medical researcher Catalina Thorne.

Check out the episode after the jump to see Thorne's fall from grace and how she introduced the mutant virus into the helpless population of Pacific City. If that's not grounds for reaching archvillain status in Crackdown 2, we're not sure what is.

Though the Crackdown franchise has a new development team in Ruffian Games, the upcoming sequel hopes to retain the best qualities found in the original Xbox hit. You'd think the task is made easier when former Realtime Worlds employees form part of the developer, but creative director Billy Tomson and producer James Cope believe there is still room for improvement.

In an interview with Joystiq, the pair discussed Crackdown 2's vision and its attempt to perfect the open-world formula. Read on to learn more about the limitations of the original engine, memory complications, the omission of female playable characters, and plans for future content.

If the recent animated prequel didn't convince you that Pacific City, the setting for the Crackdown series, has gone to hell in a handbasket since the franchise's first installment, then perhaps this will do the trick. BitMob recently posted a panoramic comparison of the city as it looked in Crackdown to how it looks in Crackdown 2. In short, it looks like a really, really terrible place to live now.

Watch as some of the notable landmarks from the first game crumble, decay or simply become derelict due to the influx of violent mutants that plague Crackdown 2. It looks like Pacfici City has become a generally more dangerous place to take up residence -- though, as a concern, we imagine that ranks second behind what this gruesome makeover has done to the city's property values.

So many orbs, so little time.

In the beginning of Crackdown 2, the objective is simple: The Agency has developed a weapon called the "Sunburst Defense System," designed to quickly rid Pacific City of its mutated inhabitants, or "freaks," by melting them vampire-style with artificial sunlight. In order to locate the freak hot zones (various underground breeding areas for the infected humans), Agents must activate a series of beacons to triangulate the precise positions onto which the Sunburst weapon should be deployed. Unfortunately, a terrorist group known as "The Cell" are protecting the last beacons, so it's up to you -- a new generation clone soldier -- to reclaim the beacons and activate the Sunburst Defense System.

Although it starts slow, Crackdown 2 shows promise for fans of the original sandbox adventure. The introductory plot is razor thin and is in place simply to encourage Agents to explore the open landscape of Pacific City, which has been devastated by the mysterious infection.

We should warn you right off the bat that the ViDoc for Crackdown 2 embedded above does at one point feature a Ruffian Games employee using the word "awesomeness," though he thankfully catches himself quickly before the madness spreads too far. While his excitement for this summer's Xbox 360 release is appreciable, we're not so sure that devolving into Valley Girl-isms is the way to play up the game's comically destructive sandbox gameplay.

As senior designer Dean Smith puts it, "For some reason, there's a lot of explosive things lying around Pacific City as well, so there's always a new prop to grab or a new explodable of some type." Now that's what gets us excited for more Crackdown: stuff exploding! Lots of stuff exploding! Hooray explosions!

This is your lucky day, agent. Today you get to participate in viral marketing, easily the best kind of marketing in Pacific City. This marketing, as you may have guessed, is for Crackdown 2. You might be wondering why you'd participate in such a thing. After all, you loved the first Crackdown, you've read the hands-on coverage for the sequel, your pre-order money has been set aside and you're just coasting your way to July. The answer is simple: early demo access.

To get started, pick up Microsoft's Tag Reader app for your mobile phone (find it at gettag.mobi). Then, watch this video. At the end you'll see a hidden orb, which you can scan with Tag Reader. If you'd rather not watch the video (again), you can just scan the image to the right. Once scanned, you can register for a contest account, which will provide you with text message clues about the locations of the remaining "orbs." Find them, scan them and you're in.

Orbs for demos, agent. Orbs for demos. Unless you don't have a texting plan, of course.

You know what violent video gaming franchise we always thought would make an excellent Saturday morning cartoon? Crackdown. We're thinking of a modern day GI Joe series, with rugged super soldiers, death-defying acrobatic feats, the occasional car chase and a helpful PSA at the end of each episode. However, Machinima.com recently posted the first episode in a real cartoon series based on Crackdown 2, and ... well, let's just say they went in a much different direction with it. A much bloodier direction.

Check past the jump to see the first installment in "The Pacific City Archives," and think about how happy you are that whatever city you may be living in is relatively killer-mutant-free.

[Via Kotaku]

#clips Crackdown looks like a cartoon. I guess. With the cel-shading and everything. Not sure it needed an animated prequel series, though. What is this, 2008? More »

Don't call it The Crackening.

Hunt some orbs and you could get into the demo early.

It's fair to say Crackdown was a surprise -- even if you didn't buy it for the Halo 3 beta key, odds are that you downloaded the demo and found a pretty impressive pre-GTA IV open-world shooter. That seems like a blessing and a curse for Audio Director Kristofor Mellroth and the rest of the dev team at Ruffian Games working on the sequel: on the one hand, we have fond memories of the original game, but on the other, there are more great open-world games out there now. Will we go back to Pacific City now that we've got a choice?

Mellroth is doing everything on his end to make sure that we do. From the music of the game (which features remixes of Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and Creedence Clearwater Revival, as well as electronic beats by artists like Tokyo Black Star and Adam Freeland) to gunshots, explosions, and the ever-present tones of Michael McConnohie, he's put a lot of thought into what Crackdown 2 should sound like and why. Read on for an exclusive interview with the game's audio director.

#xbox360 Players will be able to climb high and dive deep in this summer's open-world big-city Xbox 360 exclusive Crackdown 2. The tallest building? Over 500 meters. But that's barely the half of it. [UPDATE: The developers shared a little more.] More »

#podcast With Crackdown 2 just months away, now might be a good time to get up to speed on everything about the upcoming open-world, building-leaping, mass destruction game. Good thing the team behind the title is on our podcast right now to take your calls. More »

Kotaku Talk Radio will be recording live from CBS Radio on Wednesday. 11am Kotaku Time. 1pm ET. 10am PT. Hosts: Crecente and me. Guests: Top guys making Crackdown 2. Call-in and live-streaming details will be on Kotaku at showtime. More »

#podcast In just a few months you will be able to play Crackdown 2. In just two days, you will be able to call in to Kotaku Talk Radio and ask the creators all about it (or just listen in). More »

#clips Apparently no one told Crackdown 2 senior designer Dean Smith that you aren't supposed to make up your own cover blurbs, but then this video is titled "Nothing Is Sacred," so at least he's keeping in theme. More »

Despite its title, the latest Crackdown 2 vidoc, "Nothing is Sacred," reveals at least one sacred thing in Ruffian's upcoming game: humor. The amusing action becomes apparent when you knock someone upside the head with a sign post, or attach a satchel charge to their face.

The first game certainly had its share of guffaw-inducing moments and, come July 6, we'll know if -- on top of skills for kills -- agents will get lulz for kills.

#xbox360 Good news, Crackdown fans: The signature voice of the 2007 Xbox 360 game is back for this summer's sequel. Better news: He's not sick this time. More »

For some, the original Crackdown was little more than an entry ticket into the Halo 3 beta. Others, however, discovered a fun open-world game filled with some of the finest explosions in gaming. Crackdown 2 doesn't have the luxury of enticing gamers with free access to a big-name beta. Instead, it must rest on its own merits: the promise of improving upon every aspect of the original game.

The single-player story begins with a recap of the events of the first game. Critics noted narrative as one of the weakest aspects of the original Crackdown, and the second game attempts to address that by offering a more fleshed out story. That's not to say players' progression will be restricted in any way; you can still run and gun your way to the "final stage," if you're feeling particularly brave.

Restricting player freedom would go against what fans found so endearing about the first Crackdown. It's clear that the franchise's new developer, Ruffian Games, doesn't want to stray too far from what made the first game a success. Once again, players will be tasked with cleaning up the streets of Pacific City; this time ridding the world of a terrorist organization known as "The Cell," bent on destroying The Agency and its new hero: you.

#preview My morning Crackdown 2 appointment started awkwardly last week. Double-booked. Game not running properly due to a technical mix-up. And then, those things rectified, I cheerfully mentioned one my favorite Crackdown features: Oh, the sequel's creators said. We cut that. More »

#xbox360 Ruffian Games' sequel to Xbox 360 hit Crackdown will feature scores of mutants and highly customizable playable agents, but one thing it won't feature is the option to play as a female. More »

Admitting that the ability to create and play as a female agent in the first Crackdown was originally intended (but eventually cut), Billy Thomson, Ruffian Games creative director and former lead designer of Crackdown at Realtime Worlds, explained to 1UP that the functionality won't be making an appearance in the sequel either. According to Thomson, it was excluded from the first game due to memory constraints that would've required a "massive reduction" to other parts of the game.

Similar limitations will keep playable female characters out of Crackdown 2 at launch, Thomson claimed. "You've got four players (in cooperative play), and that means every single player can be a different character, and that has to be in memory all the time ... we had to save memory all over the place because we've got so much more content in this game than we had in the first game ... we don't stream." While the studio isn't making any promises about a female agent DLC update, "we never know what happens in the future," teased producer James Cope.

#crackdown Crackdown's Pacific City sure ain't what it used to be. The buildings got crummier, and the cop's armour got better. Those delicious green orbs, however, look unchanged. Guess you can't improve on perfection. More »

#paxeast It's hard to get an accurate feel for the Rocket Tag online multiplayer mode for Crackdown 2 when every time I try to get a word in edgewise - oh dammit I'm dead. More »

Rocket Tag is about as awesome as it sounds.