Crackdown 2 melee as "fluid" and "fun" as Arkham Asylum

If you found Crackdown's hand-to-hand combat a little weak, fret not: the sequel has melee action inspired by Rocksteady's Batman: Arkham Asylum.

"I think that's probably a fair comparison," said lead designer Billy Thomson on the subject of melee combat, speaking to VG247 in a phone interview.

"Arkham Asylum is something we aimed at as a benchmark, because that does look and play really well."

Thomson noted, however, that Crackdown 2 won't pack AA's depth thanks to the fact the action sequel has a far broader scope.

"There are a lot of games that do [melee] well, but their entire games are based on that sole mechanic, looking at games like God of War," he said,

"Batman: Arkham Asylum, I thought, was really well done from a hand-to-hand combat point of view. That's probably about as close as I would say our combat system is.

"I mean, it's not as intense as that, it's not as deep... but ours is certainly as fluid as definitely as much fun, but it's not got quite as much depth as it's a very, very small part of the entire game."

You're going to get to test Agent 2.0's fisty moves for yourself: producer James Cope today confirmed a pre-release demo.

There's still no date on the anticipated first-party sequel, although we do know we're going to get it in the first half of this year.