Crackdown 3 Review: Freedumb

If you haven’t taken the time to look into the Xbox Game Pass, it’s a service that you should have your eye on and could easily be the future of gaming. For $10 a month, you get access to over 100 games, as well as first party Microsoft published games day one (If you suck at math, let me break it down for you: you get 6 months of Game Pass for what you’d spend on a full release game at launch). The only downfall is that since this perk was added to the program, most of the first party releases that hit the service day one have been mediocre at best. Is Crackdown 3 the first exception to this? Not really, but we’ll look at it a little deeper anyway.

The narrative, which is so paper thin you wouldn’t need super powers to punch through it, finds the player taking on the guise of one of the super cops that’s part of The Agency (basically a knock off of Marvel’s SHIELD) as they set off to topple the evil Terranova Corporation. The Agents can run faster, punch harder, jump higher, and use some pretty awesome guns, leaving the player feeling like The Hulk with guns. In most areas of the game this is without issue; it’s everything else that feels unfinished. Completing the associated actions within the sandbox will upgrade your agent in the five main categories – driving, agility, explosives, strength and firearms, with XP orbs offering health replenishment. The only major change to this system is that you can now level your agent beyond the max in each slot, resulting in even crazier abilities we’ve never seen in the series. The problem is the journey to get there is a long, grind heavy one and feels like busy work more often than not.

The game succeeds in offering a decent sized sandbox that is the very definition of freedom – you can take on the seven major targets in any order you wish, even skipping right to the final boss right off the rip if you choose. There is a bit of a dumbed down version of the Shadow of Mordor nemesis system in place. The enemies don’t remember you or anything, but you can choose to systemically wear down the enemy forces from the ground up, making later encounters easier – skipping this allows you to go in guns blazing for more of a challenge. While this all probably sounds good in theory, the end result is a game that feels like an open world filled with nothing but side missions. In your journey to take back the city, you’ll be able to free refugees, take out specific locales that offer strategic advantages by turning them into restock/respawn/quick travel points as well as and weaken the enemy forces. They are varied in terms of the objectives, but never amount to anything beyond blowing something up, climbing ridiculously high structures, or hacking a terminal. There are a few other activities available to you, such as seeking out the 1,000 orbs hidden throughout the city, racing via car, or jumping from building to building.

While the story and mission structure isn’t anything new or innovative, the arsenal you’ll slowly unlock is highly creative and rewards experimentation. You can equip up to three weapons at a time, with no requirement as to what weapon goes to which slot and unlock new ones by leveling your character, finding them in hidden item boxes or picking them up from the cold dead hands of the enemies. While they start off with the token machine guns and shotguns, you’ll eventually be able to throw black holes, acid bombs, and homing rockets all in quick succession with time to stop and enjoy the mayhem as the world burns. Even if your shooting game isn’t up to par, an overly friendly auto aim feature is in place, allowing you to keep moving, jumping, and shooting with ease. The collectible hunt is still a strong suit, with each level of agility opening up more and more traversal options that make each level of progression feel like a game changer, allowing you to revisit past areas to try and get the orbs just out of reach for your previous level.

The pros all end here, as the rest of the game is bogged down by a number of lackluster features. The driving is hands down the worst driving experience I have ever had within a virtual world. All of the vehicles drive as if they are weightless and will fly through the air at random if you hit even the smallest of obstacles, and when running over the enemies is rewarded with XP, this is a huge problem and only becomes worse if you’re aiming for 100% completion. The races are not really races, as much as time trials through narrow tracks, often with not so great secondary vehicles found in the game world that handle like a Limo going through a roundabout covered in ice. The Agency vehicles make a return, albeit with some major changes, none of which are for the better. The vanilla Agency roadster returns with its sideswipe ability and is literally the only car I would even attempt to drive after sampling most of the other options. After a bit of progression, you’ll unlock the Spider, which is advertised as being able to climb walls, but getting this to work is more trouble than it is ever worth usually ending in frustration with the car on its back like a drunk turtle. The final iteration is a Tank, which is weaker than even the lowest tiered rocket launcher in terms of damage output, even at the max level. I’ll just leave it at that and let you draw your own conclusion as to why this is an issue.

This can be played co-op, but with no matchmaking option on the table, you’ll need to trick a friend into buying or renting this if you wish to see the chaos that two superhuman cops can deal out. I don’t recommend this, since the areas the title excels at in single player makes the duo experience nearly unplayable. Constant lag and “poor internet connection” pop ups give me PTSD from the Modern Warfare 2 days of rubber banding, often leaving your agent missing the mark entirely when platforming, or in many cases, glitching into a structure or falling through the floor into nothingness. If you favor huge explosions (who doesn’t?), these cause even more framerate and stuttering issues.

I thought the trend of tacking on multiplayer modes to historically single player games had passed, but here we are talking about it again. The multiplayer mode is questionably added on in a secondary client, which is nice for those who wish to 100% the achievement list for the campaign, but makes switching between the two modes a bit troublesome, even with the option being in place on the main menu that simply pushes your system to reload the game in the alternate mode. There are currently two flavors: Territories and Agent Hunt. These are basically king of the hill and kill confirmed, respectively, and neither are well suited for the style brought over from the main game. With absolutely no progression (everyone starts with max stats on every game), slow matchmaking, and frequent connectivity issues, the multiplayer mode is nothing more than a tacked on mode that leaves a sour taste in your mouth, further marring what could have been an acceptable experience.

I’m not sure if too much of the budget bad been spent on recruiting everyone’s favorite fictitious POTUS Terry Crews (who was a huge part of the marketing campaign and offers his likeness and some one-liners to the main story), but the end result feels like a rehash of what was a memorable title from the Xbox 360 days with a slightly better paint job. Despite enjoying some of the chaos I caused during my solo experiences, I would not recommend purchasing Crackdown 3 at any price point and only embarking on the adventure if you subscribe to the Game Pass.

4 out of 10

Pros

  • EXPLOSIONS!
  • Orb Hunting is Still a Standout Experience

Cons

  • Feels Like An Endless Side Quest
  • Tedious Driving
  • Network Issues Galore
  • Atrocious Multiplayer

Crackdown 3 was developed by Sumo Digital, Reagent Games, Cloudgine, Certain Affinity, Ruffian Games and published by Xbox Game Studios. It launched on X1 on February 15th, 2019, for $59.99 and is included in the Xbox Game Pass subscription. The game was not provided to us for review on X1. If you’d like to see more of Crackdown 3, check out the official site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

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