The original Crackdown 1 was a great game, a good fun action shooter in a sandbox that was ahead of it’s time.
Crackdown 2 didn’t live up to that at all but it was felt that the creators had learnt from those mistakes and set out to make a game that was more in line with the first title and on that promise Crackdown 3 really delivers.
The sad news is, while Crackdown 1 felt ahead of its time in 2007, Crackdown 3 (12 years later) feels a bit behind the times. As a game it’s a good fun title that doesn’t involve too much thinking. You can pick it up at anytime and have a good grasp of where you are up to and what you need to be doing. However it is far from the AAA title we were hoping for from a Microsoft exclusive.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Terry Crews is featured in the game and I remember when it was announced that he was going to add his talents to the new Crackdown game the internet was buzzing with excitement.
The disappointing part is that he is so underused that apart from an opening cut scene and a few grunts here and there you hardly hear from him. You do get him as the main skin to play in but considering you spend most of the time looking at the back of his head it’s just a case of “what could’ve been”. I mean if you are going to use Terry Crews.. then USE TERRY CREWS!!!
The graphics are bright and smooth across the board, even though they are in what seems like “partial cell shaded”. Like its going for the aesthetic of a comic book but not fully committed to it. I played this on Xbox One and on an Asus Tuff Gaming laptop and it always looked ok but never as mind-blowing as the provided screenshots.
The vehicles seem like they are unfinished with very little detail and I found myself ignoring them all together very quickly as my skills became more powerful there was simply no need to drive.
I’d say the game is very similar to the way it makes me feel, incredibly conflicted. On one hand it’s good enough fun on the other it’s just a bit “meh”.
It’s a good game, but it’s far from a great game. Not good, not bad, just “meh”.
I’d really recommend getting the Xbox Game pass to play Crackdown 3, It’s not worth the $60 price tag, but it totally is worth the $10 a month model where you have a lot of other options of titles to play with it as well.
For more on Crackdown listen to my chat on Australian National Radio show “The Random 30 Countdown” with Mikey here:
