I'm generally liking the demo, but I think the devs completely missed some of what made Crackdown so special.
Transforming Cars | I have no idea why they took this out, but that was one of the coolest parts of the first game. Crackdown 2 needed more, not none.
Player Impact | Am I missing something, or do our actions no longer shape the game world? One of the best things about the open structure of the first game is that you could not only take out the kingpins in any order, but doing so had various affects on the rest of the game. From what I can tell, none of the tasks in Crackdown 2 have his affect - they're all compartmentalized tasks.
Obs | More is not necessarily better. Hidden Orbs and Agility Orbs encouraged what was so great about Crackdown: climbing and exploration. Now apparently there are agility orbs, hidden orbs, Live orbs (WTF?) and those moving ones. Any others? Just tossing in more orbs does not make them better.
None of these things are fatal. I don't think they improved any of the core mechanics beyond mêlée, and aside from the (hopefully fixed) targeting, I don't think they made any worse. It feels like a sideways move. And the return of the same city, tweaked, only heightens the sense of deja vu.
I've seen the ".5" tag applied to a lot of games, but it really does apply to Crackdown 2. It's the same gameplay as Crackdown, in the same city, with new missions, enemies and weapons & gadgets. I'm not convinced any of it is better than Crackdown 1, and in some ways is a step back (see above), but the core is still good enough that I'm looking forward to the final game.