There is that multiplayer mode, of course-a showcase for Microsoft’s cloud-based destruction tech. But I don’t understand what the goal was here, or why Crackdown 3 was allowed to see the light of day while so many other Xbox One projects were killed off before release this generation.
It’s clearly been a hellish process getting this game out the door.
I don’t want to make light of the work that’s gone into Crackdown 3. Microsoft could’ve just remastered the original Crackdown, put it on the PC and the Xbox One, and it would’ve fulfilled the exact same purpose without taking seven years to develop.Īnd then Crackdown 3 has the audacity to tease a sequel at the end! IDG / Hayden Dingman It doesn’t break new ground, nor does it seem like it even wants to. Regardless, it passes in a blur and then it’s gone. Terry frickin’ Crews is in it, even if he only speaks for about three minutes in the opening cutscene and then never, ever again. The art direction for the city of New Providence can be stunning, at times. Like, was it the backend cloud technology-now limited to the tacked-on multiplayer modes-that drove Crackdown 3’s development? Does someone high up at Microsoft just really love Crackdown? Because what we have here isn’t terrible, not in a product sense. More interesting is pinning down a developer’s goals, an idealized version of the experience, and then discussing where execution didn’t match ambition.Īs Crackdown 3’s credits rolled though, I realized I still didn’t know what those ambitions were. Anyone can point out whether a game is bad. Honestly I think of that as part of my job, writing reviews. They didn’t, and that’s always sad, that unrealized potential-but you know why a game got made, what spark of an idea led to its creation. Generally, even the terrible games, you can see what the developers hoped to achieve.
I’ve played and reviewed a lot of games in my life. Crackdown 3 just exists, which is worse in a way. Here’s the thing: Crackdown 3’s not even bad! Bad implies you hate something, or have a strong emotional response to it. The final boss is the most visually interesting, but that one was undermined by the fact I found a platform where I could literally stand in place and shoot rockets at it until it died its inglorious death. Hell, at least three out of the nine boss battles are mechs, literally indistinguishable from each other except for the weapons they use. That’s the other 10 percent of the game, and it’s just as generic. Other games have thumbed their nose at the self-serious side of the industry, have done the ultimate-power-fantasy shebang and done it well.ĭo these activities enough (each repeats about a dozen times), and you’ll open up a boss battle. Saints Row IV is just Crackdown without the cops, and with a more memorable story. In part it’s because others have done what Crackdown did in the years since, but better. I’d never go so far as to say the original Crackdown is an all-time great game, not even for the 360’s oeuvre, but it’s a game for which I have a lot of fond memories, and one I could’ve been excited about an Xbox One-era sequel. Context is important though, not least the context that Crackdown started out as an endearing and scrappy little experiment. I know, it’s been a lot of words to get to this point.
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Hell, even a “realistic” series like Far Cry has dipped into the Crackdown well at times, with Blood Dragon and this week’s Far Cry New Dawn. Saints Row probably capitalized best on those “The game is broken on purpose” ideas, but Just Causeisn’t far removed either, nor is Darksiders. Just as punk eventually spawned pop punk though, Crackdown’s impertinence became a genre of its own.
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