As the always astute Chris Hecker once pointed out, the thing video games do best are power fantasies. While we're literally trying to rescue our family or kill the evil guy, the metaphorical (and arguably more important) journey is in watching our character grow from weakling to demigod, whether that's through the collection of the most powerful weapons or the fastest cars. The balance then is in making the literal journey just present enough that the metaphorical one means something.

For all its strengths, Crackdown's major failing was in not nailing this balance. Punching, jumping and exploding your way to superherodom was amazing, but the story and missions were so threadbare that there was nothing really pulling you through, there was no momentum. Though narrative was never going to be its strong suit, it needed just a few more breadcrumbs to get you from point A to point B.

Disappointingly, Crackdown 2 does not fix the balance between literal and metaphorical journey. In fact, it seems much more content to pretend it doesn't exist.