![]() I suffered a crash midway through the game that might have resulted in me losing some small amount of progress, but with how same-y many of the objectives are, I honestly wasn't sure if I was repeating one I had already completed. All of these bases you complete are just another box you can check off the to-do list, rather than a satisfying challenge you look forward to dealing with. After multiple hours of this, the action begins to bleed together. For a certain objective, you have to shoot a piece of machinery or throw a rock underneath it (always two times) to destroy it. Sometimes you'll have glowing targets to shoot. Once you're there, you'll usually hold a button. No matter the faction, you're always mindlessly shooting an endless wave of foes as you work your way toward objective markers. Yet it quickly becomes apparent that what distinguishes them are only surface-level details. ![]() Ostensibly, each of the different factions presents its own unique challenges and objectives for you to complete. The problem is, what you do in that opening section is representative of the entire game there's very little variety to speak of. Before long, the game opens up and you're given access to the full city and a wider selection of objectives to tackle, at which point there's some hope that the newfound freedom and variety will provide the excitement that's lacking in this early area. This tutorial is somewhat of an off-putting start for a game about freedom and doing badass superhero things, you're stuck in a tightly confined area, underpowered, and tasked with a goal that entails killing some enemies and then removing a pair of batteries powering a propaganda station. The game's opening takes place in a small area of the city and lays out the basic structure of your goals: Take over a particular boss's various bases to locate him or her and then complete a boss fight, which, in most cases, is a pretty standard encounter where the enemy has more health than usual. There's no meaningful destruction in the campaign, and the end result is a world that feels lifeless, as if some key element of it is missing. The one technological advancement the game has to boast about-large-scale destruction, powered by Microsoft's Azure cloud servers-is reserved entirely for the online Wrecking Zone mode, which uses mode-specific maps rather than letting you blow up parts of the city itself. Draw distance aside, the visuals are underwhelming, leaning too heavily on recreating the simple cel-shaded look of past Crackdown games. From the moment you gain control of your character, it's hard to shake the sense that this doesn't feel like a game from 2019. The core of collecting orbs (to level up your agility and jump height) and wreaking havoc remains enjoyable, but it isn't strong enough to make up for Crackdown 3's numerous shortcomings. It would be fine for this to feel so familiar if the action itself were more engaging. ![]() Yes, I'm describing Crackdown 3, not its 2007 progenitor. There will be collateral damage along the way that is frowned upon-kill too many innocents, and a local militia puts up a halfhearted effort to put you down-but is soon forgotten. Enemy factions are responsible for certain aspects of the criminal operation, such as manufacturing a sort of poison, and taking them out weakens that area and makes your ultimate goal of taking down the big bad leader more feasible. You start out relatively weak but progressively grow in power, jumping higher and gaining the ability to perform ground pounds, pick up and throw increasingly heavy objects, and so on. You play as a superpowered member of The Agency who is sent into a city to dispense justice as you systematically eliminate the comically evil members of a nefarious evil corporation. It's large and bombastic, with plenty of chaos and collateral damage, but few redeeming values-like a video game version of Man of Steel. Crackdown 3 firmly falls in the latter category, offering some amusement but little in the way of interesting new ideas or fun things to do. In other cases, it can result in what feels like a dated experience. Delays can be a positive thing, offering developers time to refine and polish a game.
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