Crackdown 3 - By whatever means necessary

Windows version runs fine for me so far.

It’s pretty much straight Crackdown for good or bad with better graphics.

I got started this morning before work. I didn’t get far (maybe 15 minutes). Looking great so far. I really missed these mechanics.

The video I posted showed fully-destructible buildings which topple over and leave debris around persistently. I don’t think there are many indestructible supports in Wreaking Zone - just supports which take much more of a beating before they collapse.

Again, Red Faction Guerrilla is incredibly impressive, especially considering it was on last-generation hardware, but in RFG specifically most debris does fall through the ground and disappear, and overall it’s multiple orders of magnitude less complex than what’s going on in Wreaking Zone.

The campaign’s a very reasonable 21gb download. I did the Game Pass deal last night, so I’ve only booted up the game for about 10 minutes this morning. It runs completely maxed out on my laptop and the customization options are pretty comprehensive. HDR’s nicely implemented, too.

I’ve been playing this all day on my Xbox One X.

After spending several hours with it, I’m a bit miffed that the reviews are so universally bad for it (Metacritic shows the average professional reviews coming in at 60/100, and the average player score rating 3.8/10). Rather than a reflection of the game as it would stand in a vacuum, it seems seems to me that a lot of the attitude towards Crackdown 3 is more of a reflection of the end result not living up to the “game” revealed by Microsoft so many years ago. There also seems to be a common theme among Xbox “Fans” retaliating against Microsoft by way of Crackdown 3 because Microsoft isn’t delivering top tier exclusives like God of War, Spider-Man, Bloodborne, Uncharted, Horizon Zero Dawn etc.

While I certainly sympathize with the players feeling a little more than envious of all the great stuff PS4 owners have access to, I’m not quite ready to start taking it out on perfectly acceptable games like this just yet.

Anyway, I just wanted to whine a little bit about how unfairly the game seems to be treated at the moment. There are other reasons that I think this game might not be resonating with players, and I think a lot of that has to do with gamer’s tastes changing since Crackdown 1. I’ll admit that Crackdown 3 has made pretty much zero advancements since the first entry in the series, but unless your tastes have changed or you’re just thirsting for something newer, bigger, and more bombastic… if you like the first one I just don’t see why you wouldn’t enjoy this one.


Okay, really, enough complaining from me for now. Here are my thoughts on the game:

First of all, I made a big mistake when I started the game because I began on the default difficulty. Turns out the default difficulty is much, much, MUCH too easy. I’m invincible, and the only time I’ve died so far was near the beginning when I fell off a building with almost no agility collected yet.

I’ve completed all the objectives (aside from vehicle racing challenges) on the left 50% of the map so far, and if I continue at the rate I’m going I’ll probably end up finishing the campaign the next time I sit down to play. I haven’t looked to see if I can ramp up the difficulty in my existing save or if I have to start over, but the next time I play I plan to find out, because as of right now the game feels much too short given how easy it is to progress.

That being said, I LOVE THIS SORT OF COMBAT. It’s 100% arcadey, and I just love jumping around, throwing cars, blowing shit up, taking rocket-launchers to the face, butt-slamming crows of enemies, and repeating all this while my danger meter goes up and up, until they finally lockdown the city and I defeat the final waves of the onslaught. It’s very cathartic for me to to play these style of games, because it is pure adrenaline, without worrying about cover mechanics, low TTK, or any of the other issues that make most modern shooters the worst games on the market.

To me, this game should be judged on the level of an ARPG or a twin-stick shooter, because it’s just go-go-go when you’re fighting. Folks have labeled it repetitive, well, so is Diablo, so is Geometry Wars, so’s Forza, so is Breath of the fucking Wild. They’re all fucking repetitive, and repetition isn’t a bad thing if you actually enjoy what you’re doing over and over. And in this particular instance, I do, because I enjoy arcade shooters.

If I were to give a couple tips to people heading into this game, they’d go something like this:

  1. Select an appropriate difficulty level. God mode might only be fun for so long.
  2. Play with headphones on. It makes finding hidden orbs 1000% easier, because for some reason I just don’t hear them well at all on my stereo, but they’re quite audible with stereo headphones.

I haven’t tried multi-player, but I’ll get around to it at some point.

The game isn’t perfect, and there’s a few things i really wish they’d spent more time on (like delivering 60fps, better vehicle handling and controls, more varied objectives etc), and I’m not trying to suggest that it deserves a 9.5 out of 10 or anything, but it checks a lot of the right boxes for me.

Anyway, I think the game is currently being underrated. I enjoy it more than Agents of Mayhem, but not as much as Saints Row 4 (which is the best Crackdown/Super Hero game yet).

I played about an hour last night and an hour this afternoon and I’m really digging it. In fact, the only piece of the whole thing that really doesn’t work for me so far is driving. I tried the first car race that’s available to you and it was virtually impossible to gold medal the thing at driving level 1, which that race was tuned to. In fact, I spun around so many times trying to get the gold that I finally managed to bump up to level 2 and car handling improved immensely. At level 1, it feels like you’re driving on ice, and colliding with the smallest thing can potentially flip you. But I hung in and got it, so yay me! Not sure how many of these road races I’ll be bothering with (for comparison, the first foot race you do is super easy, I gold medaled it first try).

Digging it so far.

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.