Crackdown 3 (Xbox One, Windows) Review + Significance

Almost five years after its announcement at E3 2014, Crackdown 3 finally released on February 15, 2019. The game is a continuation of the story of 2010’s Crackdown 2. This review will judge the game on its own merits.

The gameplay of Crackdown 3 is broken up into two parts (and actual games on the Xbox One family of consoles at least), Campaign and Wrecking Zone. Campaign is a single-player or co-op open-world action third-person shooter with a story and Wrecking Zone is a multiplayer third-person shooter that is separate from the story. Both “games” control essentially the exact same. The playable character’s basic moveset is running, jumping, rolling, using melee attacks, shooting, locking-on, and using a third action button that can have a variety of different outcomes. All of these control well, with the exception of the lock-on is some situations due to the developers choice of not prioritizing closer targets over targets that are further away. Because of the lock-on feature the majority of the time aiming is not what distinguishes skilled players from less skilled players. Instead, players need to be skilled in how they consider which weapons they are using, how they are moving, and what type of attacks they use on the locked on enemy. Unfortunately, these elements aren’t sufficient to make the game not feel overly easy and casual in most cases.

The campaign seems to be the main focus of the game, despite the impression that many early promotional materials gave suggesting the opposite. The entire game takes place in one basically seamless open-world that is essentially fully accessible after an extremely brief tutorial at the start of the game. Throughout the campaign, the player will take on a handful of mission types, fight bosses after doing those missions enough, and unlock even more bosses after enough bosses are defeated until the player reaches the final boss. These mission types are all a bit too similar. They all involve going to a location marked on the ingame map, fighting and or avoiding the enemies present at that location, and destroying marked objects or enemies. These missions are among the most repetitive in the game due to their use of mostly the same enemies. The enemy designs are surprisingly well made but they are held back by some poor AI in most cases. The bosses provide a some more unique and engaging experiences than the normal missions, though there are some bosses that are lacking in mechanical depth or challenge. The game is not particularly challenging as whole. As long as the player takes on the challenges in the way the game expects them to surviving is rather easy. There are also some balancing issues, with some of the guns being obvious choices for basically the entire game and cars being far too effective and easy to use against enemies. Harder difficulties don’t remedy this problem much because they just change damage balancing rather than increasing the difficulty in terms of mechanics. There are also many optional objectives that benefit the player in some way but are not required to make the credits roll. Arguably the best of these optional objectives are the ones that involve platforming challenges which sometimes result in the player collecting the orbs that increase one of or many of their various upgradable qualities. Objectives like these have some of the best of the already generally good level design in the game. These qualities are also upgradable through using abilities related to them and when leveled up the qualities will give the playable character additional, and often more powerful, abilities. This system is probably the best part of the game and gives it some replay value if the player is interested in trying the game again while using different abilities more often. The different playable agents with their minor bonuses in different stats also help add to this replay value. One surprisingly good aspect is driving the cars, which feel surprisingly good to drive for a game that is not a dedicated racing game. Overall the campaign provides a rather average experience with some good and bad ideas that as a whole at least doesn’t overstay its welcome like some other open-world games do.

The multiplayer “game”, Wrecking Zone, probably the most anticipated part of this game, doesn’t fare as well. Players battle in randomly selected teams in one of two game modes using mostly the same mechanics as those in the Campaign. The lock on feature makes this entire mode feel rather skill-less and uninteresting as all fights basically break down to who attacked first and if the player who shot first is moving well enough to keep the other player in their line of sight. This mode adds destructibility to the game, with basically every surface being destroyable to reveal a hollow interior. This feature basically isn’t used meaningfully at all and leaves the entire mode feeling like a tech demo that is not ready for a full release. Overall the mode is rather bare bones and shallow even compared to many free alternatives, making it not exactly even worth downloading in the first place.

Crackdown 3 disappoints compared to early promotional materials in its technical aspects too. The destructible environments in Wrecking Zone are less impressive than those of some last generation games and feel tacked on as if the developer felt obligated to include it because of early game footage released years prior. The geometry, textures, and animations all feel like a game that could have released on an Xbox 360. Only the graphical effects and performance of the Campaign make it feel like a game that belongs to the current console generation. The presentation is somewhat saved by the rather appealing art style, though. At least the only real issue the reviewer experienced technically was the sound cutting out for a couple of seconds multiple times throughout the game. The Wrecking Zone “game” is much worse, with constant frame dips and an even less impressive presentation. This feels particularly bad with games like Apex Legends and Fortnite that cost nothing to play and both feel and look much better. Another problem is that the font, size, and colors for the subtitles feel rather poorly chosen. One positive aspect of the game is that the online features of the game seem to generally work well. The cutscenes are also all rather well made, even the ones that don’t use pre-rendered CG graphics. Overall Crackdown 3 isn’t all that great technically and certainly doesn’t feel like a game that took a whole five years to make.

The sound in Crackdown 3 doesn’t particularly impress either. The music all feels rather generic and no song sticks out in particular for its quality. At least the music never really becomes annoying. The voice acting is at least done rather well, with a good performance from the obviously expensive actor Terry Crews. Some voice lines can get played a bit too often, though. Overall the sound in Crackdown 3 doesn’t impress much but the voice acting is rather well done.

The plot of Crackdown 3 isn’t all that great. The plot is mostly straightforward with one awkwardly placed and minor twist that is more confusing than anything. The characters are also lacking and develop strangely with the player feeling like they are being left out of a lot of important moments. The writing is also not that great and quite awkward in a lot of places, which results in some awkward deliveries from the voice actors.  One interesting thing to note is how many obvious references to recent events in the real world can give the player an idea of when this story was actually written and when the game was being developed during the five years after its announcement. At least you can skip cutscenes.

Overall Crackdown 3 feels a bit lacking in content for a 60 dollar game. People who want the game should probably wait for a sale or get a subscription to Xbox Game Pass (which includes Crackdown 3) instead. The game is a bit of a hard sell in 2019 with so many other much better games available for purchase too.

Overall the reviewer would give the game a 6.5 out of 10… But just giving a review of Crackdown 3 doesn’t quite do the whole situation of the game justice.

Along with 2018’s Sea of Thieves and State of Decay 2, Crackdown 3 is the last of the games announced early in the Xbox One’s lifespan that actually released (unlike cancelled games like Fable Legends, Scalebound, and presumably the Phantom Dust reboot) after many years to disappointing reception. Besides the problems with the actual games, the way that Microsoft chose to announce them so many years before they would actually release hurt these games greatly. A game like Crackdown 3 is obviously not worth five years of waiting and the five years of development time really do not show in the final product. All of those years only build up anticipation and expectations that become increasingly hard to meet over time.

Capcom is a good recent example of how to announce games properly. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Monster Hunter: World, and many other recent lower budget games were all announced and released within a year. This quick release after announcement gives potential buyers little time to create their own ideas of how the game will turn out and will leave them just excited at how soon the game will release.

Games like Crackdown 3 being Microsoft’s big selling points for Xbox Game Pass also won’t help the public perception of the service. People will begin to get the impression that Xbox Game Pass is used as an excuse for Microsoft to release poor quality games at low prices rather than create something truly great that is deserving of a full price tag. Crackdown 3 also isn’t helping Microsoft’s case for cloud powered gaming, as it was heavily advertised as a sort of tech demo for cloud gaming but upon release was much less impressive than many games that relied entirely on local hardware.

Hopefully Microsoft learned their lesson and doesn’t make people wait for games like Halo Infinite for half a decade with a lackluster final product or associate their big experiments in gaming with poor quality games in the future.

If you decide to purchase this game through one of the links below this blog will receive a commission.