During last year’s E3, Microsoft released a teaser trailer for Crackdown 2, the sequel to 2007’s hit open world superhero game. With original developers Realtime Worlds hard at work on APB and another secret project, it fell to newcomer Ruffian Games to create a bigger and better sequel that showed the franchise was in good hands. As it turns out, those hands are a little shaky.

Since saving Pacific City from the gangs at the end of Crackdown 1, things have gotten worse. Mutants have been attacking the city at night, a terrorist group called the Cell is trying and failing to control it, and the Agency has been out of action since their Agent clones were destroyed. As one of the newest Agents in a decade, it’s up to you to put an end to the Cell and the Freaks with the help of Project Sunburst. Story, however, isn’t a part of the Crackdown 2 experience; most of the exposition comes from audio logs scattered around the city and the two cutscenes at the beginning and end of the game. If you’re looking for a crime drama like Grand Theft Auto or redemption story like Red Dead Redemption, you’re out of luck.

Ten years after the gang war, Pacific City is still one-half jungle gym and one-half slaughterhouse. The five skills from the first game (Agility, Firearms, Strength, Driving, and Explosives are back in full swing and upgradeable via orbs and rings (the latter being for the Driving and later on Agility skills). Upgrading each skill lands you a new ability to enhance your badassitude and help you kill in bigger and better ways. Max out your firearms skills and you unlock homing launchers and harpoon guns; fill up your driving gauge and you’ll get access to tanks and helicopters. By the time you’re done, you’ll have run the streets of Pacific City with blood.

Your main job this time around is Project Sunburst, a weapons system designed to to wipe out the Freaks for good. What this consists of is going to a trio of absorption units, standing on a specific spot for a few seconds to activate each one, going down to a Freak tunnel and guarding a beacon for a while, then repeat it another eight times. The mission structure is Crackdown 2’s weakest moment, and it quickly turns into a giant grind fest with none of the redeeming qualities of grind fests. In addition to those missions, you can participate in Freak Breaches, where you have to take out all the Freaks in the area; Stronghold missions that have you wiping out Cell for a piece of territory; vehicle and Wingsuit stunt rings, rooftop races, and vehicle races. With the exception of the Breaches and Stronghold missions, Crackdown 2 is more or less sticking to what worked for it in the first game. If you didn’t know any better, you’d say that you were playing the original with an added bonus of four times the chaos.

Up to four Agents can roam Pacific City at any time with no trouble at all. Everyone can go around the city as they please and even gain their own achievements (though the campaign progress goes to the host). Co-op is the game’s biggest saving grace and you’ll be spending hours on end helping each other gather orbs, level up, and gain achievements. The only niggling issue is that with four Agents, things can get a little hectic (I can’t tell you how many times I ended up on the business end of a ground strike). The other multiplayer is three 16-player competitive modes. There’s deathmatch, a team variant, and Rocket Tag, where you have to hold onto an orb for as long as possible to win. Those of you foaming at the mouth at the prospect of blowing up 15 other Agents should be warned: competitive multiplayer is a waste of time. You’ll spend more time being blown up and dying cheap deaths than you will actually killing others (the Agency helicopter is incredibly overbalanced) and the maps always feel like it’s mean for more players. Unless you like playing Red Faction or Unreal, you should skip it.

There are a lot more problems other than the multiplayer and control issues. The rocket launcher spammers are back, enemy AI can be incredibly cheap, rooftop races don’t let you know how much time you have to get to a waypoint, vehicles can’t take two hits before explode (and still control terribly), Freak Breaches sometimes don’t activate, even at night, and the Agency Director has ended up being more annoying than funny. His crowning moment is after you’ve beaten the story mode and he yells at you constantly to redo the last mission you’ve already done. His main job to relay information to you, but that’s replaced by him constantly putting you down every chance he gets; it’s like having a high school bully follow you around for a day, offering dry one-liners and profanity-laden putdowns every five minutes (and yet, I still didn’t want to turn him off).

Crackdown 2 is a game that can be fun, especially with friends. But it tends to mess around too much; for every time you gain a new power or gain achievement, there’s a moment where you’ll end up inside a rock, not be able to find out what you can climb, or be down on the ground for 2 minutes due to rocket launcher fire. This series still has the potential to run with the Halos and Gears of Wars of today, but one of three things needs to happen at this point: either Ruffian learns from its mistake, Realtime handles Crackdown 3, or both developers work together to bring the third installment to heights it’s never been before. It’s still fun to suit up and fly around a war torn city, just be prepared for some moments that’ll kill your buzz.