Animated miniseries explains Crackdown 2's zombies

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Second episode delves into the history of apparent villain Catalina Thorne

Who is Catalina Thorne? Why are there zombies (or mutants, or whatever they are) roaming Pacific City's streets in Crackdown 2? And since when does anyone actuallycare about the story is in Crackdown? Two of these questions are answered in "Evil Seed," parttwo of an ongoing, five-episode miniseries that explains what's been going on in Pacific since the first Crackdown ended, and why the city's apparently gone to shit. You can watch it right here:

As it turns out, the zombies that plagued early screenshots of Crackdown 2 are the work of a vengeful medical scientist who worked on the city's Agent-cloning program, but then sabotaged it after she was booted off the project, making the agents hyperviolent, mindless and short-lived.

Once the cloning program had been all but destroyed, she took to the streets to share her creations with the general populace, who then turned into raving zombie hoboes that make the city's conquering,out-of-controlgangs look like good citizens by comparison.

Story-wise, that's a pretty big step up for a series whose only previous narrative consisted of, "Here are some bad guys. Go kill them with your superpowers (P.S. we're really the bad guys lol)." Further episodes will show up atYouTube.com/machinima, with the third episode "airing" on June 4, the fourth on June 11, and the fifth on June 21.

Also, if you missed out on the first episode - which sheds a little more light on how Pacific got into such a sorry, poverty-wracked state in the first place - we'llthrow that inas well:

Jun 1, 2010

Mikel Reparaz
Mikel Reparaz
After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.