Crackdown 3 Review: We Deserved More | Nerd Much

Nerd Much: We deserve better than this - that's the gist of our Crackdown 3 review. Read on to see why it's ultimately a failed venture.

[NarutoFox]

What were they doing in 5 years?

[DarXyde]

Crackdown 3, more than anything, was meant to be a proof-of-concept title for their cloud computing. They talked about it at the Xbox One reveal and they wanted to make good on that promise. The game itself was never meant to be any remarkable--it's Crackdown. The first two were pretty much games that you played to waste some time, but they were never meant to be a system sellers. Crackdown 3 is like a "launch title" for the cloud in the same way that Batman: Arkham VR is a launch title for PSVR. Granted, games have lightly used the Xbox Cloud in the past, but this is something a bit more fleshed out in its application.

The problem is that the cloud computation doesn't seem to do anything significant at all. It doesn't really add to the experience, and that's an indication of its critical failure. I do expect future software to make very good use of the cloud, but they messed up by not letting one of their better studios take the lead (and not handing it off to Sumo Digital of all studios). If they were smart, they'd do something very physics intensive in ways that can be aptly appreciated like Forza, nevermind the AI cloud application. People are now looking at the Cloud like it's smoke and mirrors, and frankly, I don't blame people at this point. It's not enough that their cloud computing technology is still in its infancy and isn't really a game changer, but the game is getting panned across the board and it's ugly ON TOP of taking 5 years. At this point, people are probably wondering why they would even want it in their games if it comes at the cost of quality.

It's a messy lesson to learn, for sure. Guess we'll see what's next.

[mcstorm]

I think this is part of the review issue. People thought crackdown 3 was going to be some game changing game but really it's not.

This game is no more no less than what it is which is crackdown. Its a game where you switch off run jump and shoot things just for fun.

In that seance it's a great game for doing this and for me I did not expect anything more than this. On the flip side people who took what was said over the years have had expectations of what this game will be and its not lived up to that.

[DarXyde]

mcstorm,

I think it's a bit deeper than that. I do agree that the game was never meant to be anything groundbreaking, but I look at it from the perspective of what the game was meant to represent. The whole idea behind the cloud was to supplement and enhance games, and yet it seems abundantly clear that compromises were made. It's ugly, the destruction doesn't add to the game's impact, it took a very long time to come out, and it's more of the same. If the game looked great or at least ran at 60fps, I would be less critical. But honestly, I understand the disappointment. The game was severely downgraded, just to add physics where it doesn't even matter if a destroyed statue falls on top of you or anything.

It had potential to really say, "this cloud stuff is really a gamechanger", but there are too many things wrong with it to let go. Honestly, it seems like the only promise it kept is that it's definitely a Crackdown sequel.

[Thundercat77]

After all that propaganda we got here about "how Xbox is going to dominate 2019".

This is an horrible first step. This is why the majority of people simply doesn't trust Microsoft at all.