Crackdown 3 is finally here. For years it felt like the game would be relegated to the rumor mill graveyard alongside the cursed Valve trilogies but this year is the year of Crackdown 3. Microsoft went big casting PCMR demigod Terry Crewes in the game, and featuring Crewes’ trademark comedic intensity in the E3 announcement trailer. It’s been a long, long time since I played a game of Crackdown but I’ve been a loyal Saint’s Row guy and that franchise is in the same wheelhouse. But I’ll stop the comparison there because the Crackdown 3 I experienced at E3 was on a totally different level.
It’s hard to describe exactly what made Crackdown 3 so hypnotic. Waiting on line at the Galen Center watching people demo the game ahead of me, it felt like the demos went on at length. They were 10 minutes long, a fair amount of time for a semi-public demo event, but watching them felt much, much longer. Playing Crackdown 3 , the opposite happened. By the time I even noticed the countdown clock I had less than a minute to go. It shocked me.
Understand, big gaming events are hard places to zone out. There’s a lot of distractions, and a lot of discomfort as you wait in lines and jostle past tightly packed groups of people. So for me to feel myself totally fall into a game and lose all track of time in less than 10 minutes says an awful lot about the kind of fun I had playing Crackdown 3.
I’m not a longtime franchise fan, but I dabbled like any other good Xbox owner. Basically, I leapt, smashed, shot and demolished my way across a futuristic cityscape taking out heavily armed paramilitary thugs clad in thick black armor. Crackdown 3 does not encourage a tactical, cover-based approach to gunfights. Most of my time was spent boost jumping over the heads of my enemies, locking on with one of an assortment of SMGs or shotguns or assault missile launchers, and blasting downwards as I arced through the sky Matrix -style. Kills resulted in a plethora of neon-colored, glowing orbs that powered up various traits like agility or shotguns or explosives. I didn’t have time to get into the skill tree or study the different pieces of equipment. I just ran and jumped and obliterated stuff. It was a blast (pun intended).
The campaign seems to be centered around taking out fortresses/headquarters/gang territory controlled by men you know are evil because their health bars are red. You have to take out every enemy in a zone to clear it, something that’s easier said than done when your initial flurry of flashy offense ends with most enemies dead and your character on a rooftop wondering why the zone isn’t clear. Tracking down pesky enemies feels akin to smashing ants in your kitchen. You have to look hard to find them and they don’t last long once you do.
It’s also worth pointing out that Crackdown 3 had some rough edges when it came to textures and physics and the like. Overall, I think the cel-shaded style works great and I’d expect this rough build to be wholly optimized when Crackdown 3 releases on Nov. 7.
