Some of the other guns that are fun to use, like the force-blasting vortex gun, are simply sub optimal, lacking area-of-effect capabilities and, well, raw power. Explosive weapons, however, just seem to be by far the best option in almost every situation. The thing is, the approach to combat is pretty much the same regardless of who you fight, despite some weapons gain advantages when attacking robots, for example, while others are better against vehicles. Targeting can be frustrating at times and, larger objects can actually get stuck on the floor when you attempt to throw them, but they're minor problems that Microsoft's partners could probably address quite easily.Ĭrackdown 3 follows a typical open world model where you defeat enemy lieutenants, each with unique armies and different abilities. Picking up tanks and throwing them across the map, vacuuming up enemies into a singularity grenade, and punching enemies off buildings is endlessly amusing. When you disregard the bad stuff, though, Crackdown 3 is good mindless fun. There are time trials and stunts you can do if you're a completionist, though, and it'll reward you with various vehicular upgrades, including a battle tank, if you suffer through it. Vehicle handling is also dissatisfying poor, to the point where I just opted to run around and use fast travel points most of the time. They lack versatility, and well, fun, since they don't create gigantic explosions, and a lot of the more powerful units you meet towards the end of the game are practically immune to them. By the end of the game, I had forgotten about firearms entirely, even though I had spent a significant amount of time levelling them up. For example, regular firearms such as assault rifles are too weak to bother with, when rocket launchers and ammunition are in such huge abundance. I don't think a lot of work went in to testing some of the gameplay features on offer in Crackdown 3, though. Eventually, your agility skill will be high enough to allow you to leap over large buildings, double jumping and aerial dashing across the map. Utilizing lots of explosives will increase the power of your rocket-powered weapons, and so on. If you favour beating enemies down, it'll increase your strength rating. Like previous Crackdown games, Crackdown 3 features incremental progression mechanics that rewards players with increasing strength, gun control, vehicle handling, and other powers. Once you've taken down your first outpost, you basically do the same thing over and over, with little to break things up.

The primary gameplay loop barely changes throughout, however. The campaign offers around seven hours of gameplay depending on how many of the side activities you want to partake in. Crackdown 3 Campaign GameplayĬrackdown 3 is split across two separate clients, one granting access to the 2-player co-op campaign and the other granting access to the Wrecking Zone multiplayer.

Crackdown is pretty upfront about revolving around explosive action, and in that, the game delivers fairly well. You might get some fleeting joy at Crackdown 3's one-liners as you tear up the city, but the truth is that you're probably not here for the story, though. However, beyond that, the narrative as bare bones as it comes, split across brief comic-book style vignettes, Xbox 360-era facial animations, and just a couple of high-quality pre-rendered scenes that appear only at the start and at the end of the campaign. The game offers brief audio dialogue as the game's villains chatter and bicker over your explosive infiltration of the island, and there are some audio dialogue files to uncover for further context. Perhaps this is down to the game's marketing being out of sync with the game, but the fact Terry Crews' Jaxon feels more prevalent in the game's trailers than Crackdown 3 itself, seems like a poor allocation of resources. Perhaps the most egregious aspect of Crackdown 3's story delivery is that Terry Crews' bombastic portrayal of Commander Jaxon is barely present.

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