Crackdown 3 – we did that

GameCentral reports back from Gamescom on what may be the most technically impressive console game ever made.

There have been a lot of great-looking video games released in the last two years or so, but for the most part the new generation of consoles has done little to drop jaws from their normal position. But that all changed when we got a go on Xbox One exclusive Crackdown 3. The game doesn’t necessarily look particularly impressive in static screenshots, but when you see its destruction effects in motion it feels like the sort of revolution that has been a long time coming.



If you’re familiar with the original Crackdown on Xbox 360 you’ll already know broadly what to expect from this game: an open world third person adventure that casts you as a high tech policeman with almost superhero levels of agility and strength, and abilities that can be upgraded as you progress. Apart from its four-player co-op feature the disappointing first sequel is being largely ignored, and this is almost a remake of the first game – except with a game world that is 100 per cent destructible.

Armed with a specially overpowered missile launcher, Dave Jones (director of the game and creator of the original Grand Theft Auto) and his three team-mates set about blowing up literally everything in sight. Games have been making that sort of claim, or something similar, for years but the level of detail and realism in Crackdown 3 is truly staggering. Not even a video does it real justice, but when you witness the outer shell of a building slowly being blown away, to reveal girders and gas pipes (the latter of which promptly explode) it’s a magical sight.


It gets even better when a battered skyscraper slowly gives up the fight and collapses in a hail of smoke and rubble – demolishing any smaller buildings beneath it. As Jones points out the series has used cel-shaded graphics since its inception; but the real benefit of the art style is that the world isn’t trying to look photorealistic, and so the question of not seeing every single brick as it falls is neatly side-stepped.

Crackdown 3 – the best new tech of the current gen

We should say at this point that what we saw and played of Crackdown 3 was more tech demo than actual game. Crackdown 2 is still a long way from release and although we tried to press Jones on what exactly the phrase ‘multiplayer begins summer 2016′ means, at the end of the trailer, we got no straight answer. But we think it means the obvious, that a beta is due next summer and a full release sometime after that.

The odd phrasing probably has to do with the fact that Crackdown is two, technically three, games in one. There’s an offline single-player campaign, a four-player co-op campaign, and competitive multiplayer. The latter we saw nothing of but there’s a bigger distinction between the online and offline modes than you might think, as it’s only the online mode that features the 100 per cent destruction effects.

Microsoft hasn’t talked much about ‘the cloud’ lately, presumably because they realised everybody was getting sick of a buzzword that had provided little in the way of tangible benefits. Dedicated servers and Forza’s Drivatar system are all very good but Crackdown 3 uses the technology in a much more interesting way: by calculating the destruction effects for the buildings. Jones demonstrates how it works by turning on a debug tool that paints the buildings in different colours, with each colour representing a different server.



A single Xbox One would never be able to process the destruction effects on its own, but by tapping into the cloud it’s able to exceed its own limitations. This is why such a distinction is made between offline and online mode, and why the single-player features much more simplified destruction (and apparently a different city).

We ask Jones why he didn’t simply make an online connection an option for the single-player, but his answer was the slightly unconvincing insistence that he wanted one mode of the game that you could always play to its full potential offline. We suspect there’s more to it than that – likely a concern at how the speed of your Internet connection will affect your experience – but it’s clear that four-player co-op is the best way to play the game anyway.

Crackdown 3 – very likely game of the show

Jones did discuss a few specific gameplay details, such as concentrating your attacks on specific gangs so as to draw out a boss enemy. One of these was shown in a pre-recorded video, which showed you attacking a giant mech by dropping a cargo container on it or ramming into its legs with a car. This were pre-planned tactics, but the scope for emergent gameplay, where you make up whatever strategy you like on the fly, is obvious.

‘You have to think like a lumberjack’, says Jones as he knocks a skyscraper down to act as impromptu bridge across the landscape. Even one of the simpler demos, that shows small piles of rubble building up as you shoot a concrete wall with a machine gun, has an obvious use as a ramp for vehicles.


Our hands-on preview involved simply running around a skyscraper-filled area of the city, devoid of any enemies or vehicles. But even so it was with almost maniacal glee that we started picking apart the buildings, exposing their innards, and seeing exactly which bits blew up the best.

It was only the first proper day of Gamescom today, but Crackdown 3 was easily the most impressive thing we saw – and that included a hands-off demo of Fallout 4 and the destruction-filled Just Cause 3 (we’ll write those previews up later). In fact amongst our excited demands for the final game we insisted that Jones and his team licence the tech out so we can finally get a decent Superman and Godzilla game.

But what really has us so excited is that this is not technology for technology’s sake. Developer Reagent Games haven’t spent years inventing ways to make slightly more realistic looking moustaches (yes, that was a dig at The Order: 1886), they’ve used it to create something that would’ve been completely impossible in the previous generation. That’s what we’ve been waiting for, and we couldn’t be more excited to see Crackdown 3 finally destroy any lingering disappointment with the current generation.

Formats: Xbox One

Publisher: Microsoft Studios

Developer: Reagent Games

Release Date: 2016

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