Crackdown 3 - By whatever means necessary

I’m confused why they spent dev time on other characters when you can play as Terry Crews. Enjoying it well enough so far but I completely understand why the review scores are poor.

I haven’t actually played as another character. Is there a reason to? I see they seem to have minor experience bonuses that differ, but beyond that?

That’s a good question, never occurred to me to not choose Terry Crews. I figured I’d swap out at some point but I figured you’d choose your agent each time you start the game like the earlier Crackdowns and that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Quack quack, motherduckers!

In the map screen, I think you can tab over to “DNA” and choose your agent.

That’s only theoretical. I haven’t switched away from Terry Crews either.

Agent Gigglemoo reporting in.

Campaign first impressions, solid. Several zones clear.

No bosses yet, but I really enjoyed the three or four hours i’ve played. Tried on the hardest difficulty for awhile, and… that’s rough with a starting agent. One step below was perfect for me. It’s neat we can take our agents and restart the game world at any time while keeping all our collectibles.

The spider buggy-thing is hilarious. I thought I’d be jumping around everywhere, but instead I’m laughing playing Goat Simulator in New Providence. Crashing is SO MUCH FUN. It reminded me of when I was playing State of Decay 2 as a disembodied head… my car was turning into tornados flying around crashing into everything. “Stop killing civilians agent!”.

I expect that to be fixed in a patch, but it’s seriously worth trying before they do.

Took awhile to find a video. Like this, but less gravity:

Wish there was more variety in the open world activities. Hoping there’s more I haven’t seen yet. I’d compare it to a flightless “Saints Row 4: Gat out of Hell” with a lot more polish & replayability. Definitely an awesome game for Microsoft to have in their library, and one I’ll be keeping installed for whenever I’m subscribed to gamepass.

@above:
I’ve tried ~ten, none were anything special. Doesn’t look like we miss anything playing as Terry or someone else. He only has a few extra voice lines doing normal actions. The propoganda things turn into giant Terry Crews in the skyline with any character.

I may be wrong though - did you guys get any special cutscenes/etc?

The driving seems there just to do the races and stunts. With the orb collection the players are going to be on foot most of the time between fights.

I’ll add to play one up from default even if you normally play at that level to make it mildly challenging at times.

Damnnnnn:

I’m playing on the highest difficulty since that’s what I did on the original Crackdown.

Similar to the original, this does feel like pounding your head against insurmountable foes sometimes. But those of you who know me know I enjoy that when I like the meat and potatoes gameplay. That first boss (the gatekeeper to the city) took me about an hour to take down.

Let us know how it goes. He took me around an hour as well. The east side of town convinced me to give up on a legendary start.

I felt like turning it back up after hitting level 3s and grabbing some crazy guns. No more Crackdown for me for awhile. I’m enjoying this too much to want to finish it.

Achievement % puts it at over 3 hours for ~1/4 of players, seems pretty good for only one day.

I’m playing the standard difficulty and I’m totally fine with things being a little on the easy side. I don’t go to Crackdown for challenging combat, I like building a supehero who can leap tall buildings in a single bound and throw cars at his enemies.

The only faction-related objective I have left to complete are a couple radio towers I’m too lazy to climb, and what I assume will be the final boss.

I still haven’t touched any of the other agents, I’m guessing they’re just there so co-op partners have somebody to play as. No idea.

Right now my only max skill is punching, because punching is fun. Everything else (except driving) is just a little over 5.

I’ve located 82/250 secret orbs so far, and it’s pretty much the only thing that has raised my driving skill, which sits a little over 4. I would drive more if the special abilities button (like fire weapon) were mapped differently, but I’m too lazy to remap my Elite controller at the moment. I can say though, that mapping stick-presses to the paddles underneath is just about the greatest thing ever for jumping and air dash/dodging. I hate clicking the sticks, but this feels so natural.

As of right now I’m thoroughly enjoying my time with the game. I do wish there were some sort of progression system in place to encourage replaying the game over and over, like Diablo 3. I wouldn’t want it to affect the core game on my first play through, but it would be cool to give me something to aim for and get more use out of the world.

Crackdown is not improved but adding lots of obnoxious in engine cutscenes to stuff like securing objectives. The boss pop things where the only thing that were bad in the original Crackdown, but apparently someone didn’t realize that.

I’m so annoyed at the reviews for this game, essentially punishing it for a) not being exactly what they originally said they wanted to deliver five years ago, and b) not being Spider-man.

It’s another Crackdown game. It’s polished and good looking for what it is. I’m enjoying my time with it, even though I’ll readily admit it’s not a masterpiece that’s going to clean up on awards or something. It’s the quintessential 7/10 game, that picks up a few 8/10s and a few 6/10s depending on personal taste. But the 4’s and 5’s? Get out of here with that noise. You’d think the game was fundamentally broken or something, based on some of the scores I’ve seen.

And there’s just outright misinformation swirling around about the multiplayer, and the extent to which things are destructible. I’ve seen one person say it’s restricted to “punching holes in walls”; I’ve seen another say that buildings all have a metal endoskeleton that prevents them from actually collapsing, and so the “cloud physics” are a big scam. Both of these assertions are utterly false, and smack of skeptical reviewers who were winding up to dunk on this game before it even came out.

I played it for 4-5 hours today, and I’m enjoying myself. I’ll finish it, see if the multiplayer grabs me for any length of time, and move on, satisfied with my “purchase” (via Game Pass). It’s definitely not worth $60 though.

That last sentence might be the source of the disconnect in this hobby.

Reviewers are still working from the assumption that gamers are plopping down the full purchase price for each title. Game Pass has changed that dramatically. I think Sea of Thieves and State of Decay 2 were equally suppressed and marked down which makes more sense if you think of them as $60 titles. They are amazing experiences for the Game Pass paradigm though and new users can try them for a month for $1. It’s hard to compare Spider Man with Crackdown in an apples-to-apples metric when Crackdown can be played for $1 and comes with 100+ other titles (from a consumer’s perspective at least).

I think Game Pass will be a strong disrupting force in gaming.

I’m so happy Game Pass exists so that more people will give it a chance

I was always going to play Crackdown 3, that’s just a given. But if Game Pass didn’t exist, I probably would have held off until it was a $20 title or something. But if it’s going to show up for me day one, and I just download and play? Hell yeah, give me more of that!

So gamepass made me try this.
Cross-platform xbox to PC coop, same network.

Xbox perf seems fine. Pc perf feels really choppy. Framerate says 30, but it just feels baad. Like 20ish.

I know they lock to 30 for coop, but it doesn’t feel right.

And… Roll Credits.

I wonder if I’ll be able to go back into the world and finish off driving challenges etc. There’s still a weapon I haven’t found yet either… and about 160 hidden orbs.

One of the Lt’s was much harder for me than the end boss. I’ve been triggering City Lockdowns all day though because I loove action. Time to zone out and go orb hunting and get the rest of my skills to 6 from 5.

This would be a solid title at $30. Does a good job at its core gameplay but doesn’t have the extra that a Spiderman, Odyssey level game brings to justify the $60 AAA price. MS should have released this at the lower price point like they did with State of Decay 2.

A couple of reviews commented on the fact it felt like a rush job port kind of a game, a “Netflix Originals” game specifically for GamePass which is contrary to its years-long, troubled development history.