Ruffian’s confidence in their game stems at least partially from the fact that the underlying tech is rock solid. Thousands of characters appear onscreen at any given time, and the game engine is up to the task. There was no obvious weirdness with frame rates, clipping or draw distances; everything seemed to just look pretty and work properly. Which makes trying to break something all the more inviting. It was a refreshing change of pace from the typically over-controlled demo environment we see games in, where PR reps panic at the slightest deviation from the pre-rehearsed presentation and fall over themselves to reassure you that bug X or glitch Y will not be in the final build so please don’t write about it. The devs from Ruffian, by contrast, were having a great time encouraging us to break the rules and test the game’s limits. In our second clip, watch as we instigate a massive riot among the Freaks (mutated zombie-like monsters that come out at night, mostly) and put the UV shotgun through its paces.
Thus far, we’re more than pleased with what we’ve seen of Crackdown 2, and expect we’ll be spending many late nights trashing Pacific City with our friends.
