

They led to an orb-collecting obsession in some players, back when the first game was released. They still give off a slight hum, letting you know that one is nearby. Agility orbs must be collected by jumping around the city and finding them. Agility is the thing that made the previous games tick, though.

Shooting them earns you firearm skills, driving over them earns you driving skills, and so on. Punching out enemies gives you strength orbs, which level up to make your melee abilities stronger. All the while, you're earning "skills for kills" to make your super-agent more powerful. Chipping away at the lesser bosses opens the path to the lieutenants, and so on. It's structurally very similar to the previous games, with a handful of bosses in a set hierarchy. You can play it alone or with another player via online co-op. Crackdown 3: Campaign gets you the traditional Crackdown experience. Installing Crackdown 3 gives you two executables that launch separately from the Xbox One dashboard or your PC's start menu. way less room for this sort of game on store shelves. Like the sort of game you might have expected to hear about back in 2014. It feels like a gussied-up first-generation Xbox One game. Instead it feels slight, mindless, and dull. But Crackdown 3 shows very little in the way of learning from the past or learning from the other open-world games that have graced consoles over the last nine years. Here in 2019, it feels like open-world games have gone out and into favor at least once or twice since that last Crackdown came out. Microsoft started talking about it in 2014, back when the idea of a sequel to Crackdown-especially one that was significantly better than the underwhelming Crackdown 2-probably seemed like a good idea. It's a wonderful step forward in game development and delivers on tech that was first promised several years ago.Crackdown 3 was probably announced too early. What's most impressive about Crackdown 3, though, is something that gamers won't even notice in their play sessions it's a first-party title from Microsoft Studios (now known as Xbox Game Studios) that harnesses the power of Microsoft's Azure, thereby allowing cloud-based destruction throughout the entire game. (We won't spoil the story or the boss fights.) Instead of spending extra time trying to find the bosses, players can now harness the new Gangs Bite Back system, which has Terra Nova's lieutenants and gang leaders attack you after you've caused enough problems for them. It's every bit what has been promised, and more in some cases.

Related: Joseph Staten Interview: Crackdown 3 & Player FreedomĪside from the gameplay, franchise fans will appreciate Crackdown 3's story, which takes place 10 years after the events of Crackdown 2. Of course, that could depend entirely on the person playing. But since Crackdown 3's campaign only lasts for approximately 15 hours, the antiquated combat system isn't detrimental enough to the gameplay to warrant passing over the sequel completely. Crackdown 3 is an Xbox 360 game pretending to belong in the current console generation.Ĭertain mechanics, though, are unquestionably outdated, namely the lock-on aiming system, and that's what makes the otherwise exciting gameplay feel monotonous after a few hours. It has all the touchstones of previous Crackdown games, like the neon-lit streets, the Skills for Kills leveling system, and an extensive arsenal of weapons, but there's little that sets it apart from those original games. This is evident in Crackdown 3's single-player campaign. That's what many people would want in a game like this, but as a whole, it's also a game that appears to be underdeveloped and a concession for making a triple-A title rather than being one. In fact, it's filled to the brim with destruction and mindless fun, truly. The problem is, it's not the game to do that.
CRACKDOWN 3 PC SERIES
Coming 12 years after the first Crackdown released and nine years after the second, Crackdown 3 aims to revive the series for a new batch of gamers around the world. Sumo Digital's Crackdown 3 was originally announced way back at E3 2014 - a little less than a year after Microsoft's Xbox One hit store shelves - and it's only now releasing just as the current console generation is starting to wind down. Crackdown 3 is finally here, but it wasn't worth the wait.
