Crackdown 3 Review
A disappointing time capsule from 2007.
After numerous delays and years of development, Crackdown 3 has released with nothing to show for the extra time and funding. Crackdown 3 is a relic of the older generation that is an absolute disaster in the modern era of open world games. This has no business taking as long as it did to release it such a poor way.
First and for most the games does not look great. While the game is stylized around the cartoon art style of the series, it does not make any improvements upon it visually. A 4k rerelease of the original Crackdown would look almost identical which is not good. The environment, which is incredibly small, looks bland and uninspired. The city is split into sections, or at least that’s what the game tells me when I enter new areas, but the only time I can even tell is when I enter industrial areas, full of pipes and machinery, with no real rhyme or reason.
The story is a waste of time but it’s very prevalent in the game. They continually present cutscenes and dialogue from the games bosses but they all feel similar and generic. None of the bosses stand out and neither do the boss fights. Every boss fight is either climbing a tower to fight a giant mech, or going into an area to blow up a bunch of stuff to eventually cause the boss to explode. The game involves entirely around combat which is passable at its best. Every encounter feels identical, with the difference between the three enemy factions being almost exclusively visual. The enemies don’t have any personality, never yelling at the player or doing anything besides being presented to be shot at. The factions have mildly different weaponry but don’t offer different combat styles.
The game revolves around doing different activities to weaken bosses, who after killing, leaves another boss weak to eventually lead to the final boss. With the exception of the propaganda towers, these activities involve blowing stuff up and holding a button ton “hack” and occasionally unplugging or plugging in a power source. While the game presents multiple different activities, they are very similar, with a few minor differences. This makes for what was a six-and-a-half-hour experience for me that got repetitive within the first hour. The only activity with any variety is the propaganda towers, which revolve around some platforming to reach the top. Traversal is the only time the game feels good, and even than it lacks a level of precision that some of the towers seem designed around.
None of the weapons stand out beyond shooting bullets or explosives. Some are more powerful so once you get those you never switch for the rest of the game because there isn’t a reason to. While the game does a decent job of making you feel more powerful as you progress, the game never felt challenging or difficult on the normal difficulty. This wouldn’t be an issue if you got to the point where you felt ridiculous overpowered to the point of insanity but you don’t, it just gets really easy. Another issue is the skills all max out at six, but after doing all activities besides the races before finishing the game, none of my skills were maxed out. I had all except driving at five, since driving feels awful and is entirely optional for the entire game, with all driving activities being optional side missions. Maxing the skills would have required grinding beyond completion of all side activities, which was not something I felt any desire to do.
The world and characters are bland, including the Terry Crews character that was so heavily marketed. The game has a wide variety of agents to pick from and you continue to unlock them by finding DNA but the game was marketed as the Crews agent being the canon option but it’s lackluster. He has some enjoyable lines like “Fuck, gravity” if you fall but his audio is mixed down, getting drowned out by the annoying Director and uninspired Echo character who talk the majority of the game with very little to actually say. The game feels like it was meant to have Saints Row levels of absurdity and humor, but never comes close to this. Crews agent should have been yelling and screaming the whole game with the enemies yelling back but, none of this happens. The occasionally video game announcer style comments from the director based of what you are doing are limited and repetitive almost immediately. The game is full of NPC humans and weird food stands and stores, but they offer no dialogue or purpose.
The multiplayer is presented in a way that makes it seem large and fulfilling. They gave it its own game launcher which plants the idea it isn’t a tacked-on mess, but it is. The main game does not run amazingly but the multiplayer functions around 20 fps and isn’t fun at all. There are too modes, agent hunt and territories, which function as basically team death match and domination. The mode features the cloud destructible environments that Microsoft was boasting but the destruction isn’t very good and serves no purpose. Everyone can jump and maneuver around the small maps with ease, so destroying the environment provides no benefit. The aiming features the auto aiming of the main game, which requires no effort beyond pulling the triggers.
I can’t fathom why this game was given so much time and resources to release and why they chose now beyond just trying to move on from it. The game offers nothing new to the series and doesn’t improve in any areas of it either. It also does not stand up to any game similar to it and offers no real reason to play it. As someone who very much liked the original Crackdown this game would have been better off being cancelled instead of delayed. While there is room for games that aren’t perfect, Crackdown 3 does not offer anything worth anyone’s time.
Crackdown 3 is a 1.5/5 because it is a functioning video game, but not much else.
