Articles – Cubold Gaming

Crackdown 3 is the successor of Crackdown 2 originally released on Xbox 360. It took them 9 years to finally come out with a sequel, but ultimately, it was worth the wait. People might think that the second game is better, but we have never played the previous 2 so we are going off of what we experienced in the 3rd game . To be very blunt with you, I would not pay the 30 USD price tag on the game because of how short the game is. The time to beat a game is a major factor when looking at a game for us and it took me about 6.5 hours to beat. I didn’t find all the collectibles and 100% the game so you might last a bit longer if you do that sort of thing. Get Xbox Game Pass because you also get access to a trove of other games to play once you beat it. I am only going over the single-player aspect of this game because there is a multiplayer mode which is pretty much unplayable because of the lag and the small number of people playing it. Story I didn’t look up anything about the previous game’s stories, but this game takes place 10 years after Crackdown 2. Basically, a massive terrorist organization attacks from an unknown location and cuts power to the entire planet. You then are tasked with going to find the source, but you get attacked by the terrorists while you are on your way. The Agency finds and revives one of the agents and uses you to pretty much hunt down and eliminate the leaders of this organization. You eventually find a city named New Providence that happens to be the only city with electricity and you are tasked with taking down the entire enemy organization. They also are harvesting a substance called Chimera that they used to suck up the world's electricity and it is your job to destroy everything the enemies have built. It is far-fetched, but the story is actually very good. Combat There are some pros and cons that I have with the combat in this game. The arsenal of weapons they give you is phenomenal. Any weapon you pick up can be used again, later on, there are a ton of new gadgets to use like grenades and glide suits, and you can even change up your agent to give you different bonuses like more experience for let's say explosive damage and such. I did find that I pretty much used one or two weapons throughout the whole game, but I didn’t really have an issue with it since it is not a looter shooter like other games. There is also a great selection of enemies to defeat and it makes for a great experience. Even though the game is short, I still had a blast with the combat. You can also pick stuff and even people up and use them as weapons. It is definitely a game for combat. The one thing I am not a fan of is the lock-on aiming. I tried to find a setting to turn it off but right-clicking or aiming at the controller automatically locks you onto the nearest enemy. It's not that bad once you get used to it though. Mechanics Mechanics are a key factor when starting a game, because if the mechanics suck, then you aren’t gonna make it through the whole thing. From the maneuvering to the car driving, this game feels pretty good. I would say the only thing I didn’t really like as for mechanics is the glide suit gadget. It was a little hard to control most of the time. I really would only use it to get off a high building because there is fall damage in this game. The vehicles work the same way as the weapons. You have a supercar that you can call at any time, and if you get into any car around the city, you get to keep it and summon it from any checkpoint. The game feels like a sandbox, but at the same time, a story-driven game. There is a mode that lets you run around the world freely without story aspects if you are into that kind of thing. The driving thought actually feels very polished and smooth and the movement feels the same way. Microsoft definitely did a good job with this game and let's hope Crackdown 4 is an improvement on the already improved system they built. Open World Aspects Open World games give you a sense of freedom, and it is no different with this game. Crackdown 3 is an entirely open-world game. You can go anywhere on the map that you want to, but obviously, certain areas like the endgame areas are blocked off for the remainder of the story. This is another reason why people compare this game to the Saints Row games because of just how similar they are to one another. If you like games like Saints Row or Just Cause, then you will really like this game. There isn’t really anything bad to say about the exploration because I really enjoy the progression of completing everything on the map. There are also a ton of collectibles to find if you are a completionist. Soundtrack The soundtrack is actually very good in this game. The soundtrack is so different but I really like it. Go look up the OST of Crackdown 3 on youtube to see what I am talking about but it is like dubstep, rap, and the OST from Rogue Company got thrown into 1 genre. A key factor is the soundtrack of the game because if a game has a mediocre soundtrack, it kind of loses its focus, although there are a ton of games that don’t really have a soundtrack but are still very good. This game definitely pulls you in with its unique soundtrack, and if you like good soundtracks, then you might enjoy this game’s as OST well. Graphics/Performance If you like a mix of Borderlands and Saints Row graphics, then you will like the look of this game. It is pretty impressive what Microsoft put together in this game because the reflections and textures are all amazing. There was never a section that I was wondering why the textures were messed up. Every inch of the city is not flawless, but almost perfect, and the explosions look great as well. The performance of this game is not amazing, but if you are playing in single-player, then your game should run pretty well no matter what kind of rig you have. If you have an Xbox, you can’t really mess with any settings so sorry about that. You can also uncap your framerate on PC to get the max amount of frames as well. It's not the best performance, but it is definitely more than playable. Replayability It surprisingly has a lot of replayability. Yes, you might be a person to play through the game once, but you can use the same agent in multiple worlds. It almost reminds me of Minecraft in a way. You can create an agent, and then a world and take any agent in any of the worlds you have created. You can play through the game 3 or 4 times while using the one agent if you really want to. There is also a co-op mode so you and a friend can play through the campaign together, but I tried it with a friend and the server lag was pretty bad. We didn’t get too far into the game together because it was pretty much unplayable. This game is best if you play by yourself unless the co-op works for you. This game has a lot of replayability. Conclusion In conclusion, Crackdown 3 is a game that is worth playing, even if you only play through it once. I wouldn’t pay full price for it. As I said before, get Xbox Game Pass because you can play a ton of games once you beat this one. You can get Game Pass on Xbox and PC and is totally worth the investment. There are a ton of games on there like Doom: Eternal, Ark: Survival Evolved, and even Astroneer. Once you have it, you can play all these games at no additional cost. If you are interested, look into it because it is worth it. Also, play Crackdown 3, it is a great game.