Di Crackdown 3 we have been talking about it since 2015, the year in which that game (which had not been so successful with its second iteration) found new life thanks to cloud computing and the feature of total destruction of buildings and every area of the map. Sometimes, however, taking the longest step can lead to really serious complications in the success of a product, problems that could partially or totally affect the title. Will Crackdown 3 be among them? The last effort will be successful Microsoft products to get out of that heavy downgrade that everyone is talking about today?
An aesthetic that wobbles
Picking up the controller during Crackdown 3 sessions, it seems as if something has stood still: you want for the long 4 years of work, you want perhaps an anachronistic idea, but starting from the beginning everything you will see on the screen seems slightly wrong. The great Terry Crews he starts with great pomp with a motivating speech that is not bad at all, but even his exaggerated verve is out of context. After the introduction, what we will see will be a large colorful and futuristic city, just enough to make us accept its aesthetic a little too plastic and not very realistic (but there is, it is the style chosen for this title).
If you were already looking forward to the total destruction of every single building or wall, in Crackdown 3 this dynamic has been significantly reduced: in single player you can destroy something, but the damage will not be generated dynamically, but the materials will break in a clear and unrealistic way. In multiplayer, the power of cloud computing is used, but this boils down to an accentuated but still fictitious destruction, where every single building or platform will seem made of plastic and where the destruction will remain an end in itself. Right here we will talk, for the last time, about expectations: in 2015 there was talk of the possibility of breaking every single wall and take advantage of this advantage, perhaps by entering rooms that, according to the developers, would have been created one after the other, giving a realistic feeling to this mechanic. Now, however, breaking a wall will only take you into the cosmic void of these fake and not very detailed blocks of flats. But if you can overcome these obstacles of aesthetics and expectations, a world will open up for you.
Not a bad substance
Why in the end Crackdown 3 is damn fun, both in its crazy and adrenaline-pumping single player campaign, and in the Wrecking Zone, the multiplayer mode. Let's start from the beginning.
In the single player mode you will find yourself in an open world and in a setting that is very reminiscent, in terms of dynamics, of the first chapter of the series: in the role of an agent you will find yourself in this city called New Providence, controlled by an evil organization , Terra Nova, with your task being to help the rebels. You will therefore have "in your ears" both the classic voice of the Agency, and that of a girl who will guide you between obvious but at the same time fun objectives. You will have to defeat the underlings of this terrible organization to climb the ladder and get rid of the mind at the head of it all.
To do this, you will need to enter the neighborhoods of each of these sub-bosses, complete goals (classics like clean up the area, destroy the palace, etc) and advance from time to time. The fun will lie in this: the core of the game will take you to jump from platform to platform, shooting wildly at enemies of various types with weapons of various kinds. You can also move from one area to another thanks to mezzi that you will find around, also increasingly futuristic and strange.
We said that this title is closer to the first chapter than to the second: in fact, the "zombie agents" disappear in favor of human and robotic enemies, which this time, however, differ further, adding variety to the fights. In this way it will be vital to change your weapon (or steal it on the ground) for adapt to the confrontation, with final boss fights that will require a little tactic (but not too much).
In the Wrecking Zone all the shooting spree is translated into multiplayer, in maps large enough and with a greater dynamism (thanks to the jump points similar to Quake). Moreover, right here, also thanks to cloud computing, it will become more important exploit the destructibility of objects, you want to free shooting trajectories, you want to take enemies by surprise.
The end of Icarus?
Crackdown 3 is a modern Icarus of the video game: far from being perfect, if it had been released today without any pretensions, it might have received a greater approval. The expectations created by that possibility of sifting through a wall of shots and seeing them hit one after the other (with the respective fallen portion) instead weigh further on this game, creating greater damage to all those players who expect something more. Fortunately, Crackdown 3 makes up for the melting of its wings with a substitute means of transport, that of fun and pure action. It is not enough to completely raise the title, but just enough to make the game attractive both for fans of the series who have been waiting for years to return to the Agency, and for newbies who could instead look for that type of game that is now difficult see, and that Xbox got to know with Sunset Overdrive.
