Crackdown 3’s Wrecking Zone competitive multiplayer mode delivers on the promise of wanton demolition, and that’s seemingly the whole reason it exists. Unlike the single-player, here you get to make entire buildings crumble thanks to Microsoft’s cloud-powered physics. And that is kinda cool. But with a scant two modes, no progression system, stone-aged party functionality, and woefully simplistic rules of engagement, even destruction can’t save it.

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“ For as cool as it is to see building shrapnel rain down from the sky, it's shoehorned into a multiplayer mode that does little to make use of it.

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“ Wrecking Zone has an anemic pool of nine weapons, compared to the dozens in the campaign.

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“ Once you’ve played a couple of matches, you’ve seen it all.

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Breaking walls and floors to escape or get fresh lines of sight on an enemy is novel for a time. Like when I dove down on an enemy from above, peppering them to death with a minigun only to be immediately fired at by their teammates, I swapped to my rocketlauncher, pointed it at the floor, pulled the trigger and disappeared into the belly of a building. In those moments, you can see the potential in applying this level of destruction to competitive fights, but soon it becomes little more than the most interesting part of some very barebones and boring 5v5 team combat.Of the two basic modes in Wrecking Zone, I preferred Agent Hunter. It’s essentially Kill Confirmed from Call of Duty, where standard Team Deathmatch rules apply with the added caveat that you have to collect your opponents’ token after killing them to bank the point. It’s a smart decision that makes you focus on one of Crackdown’s best qualities: its constant movement.Territories, meanwhile, is essentially King of Hill with multiple points, where two neutral zones must be captured by standing in them for a few seconds without enemies around. Each zone only has so many points to give, and once one is exhausted another spawns for capture. But where Agent Hunter feels designed to make use of everybody bouncing around like ping-pong balls with guns, Territories is the opposite: babysitting a point waiting for the next wave of opponents to arrive can feel like a long, isolated pause in the rapid combat. It feels like a clash with Crackdown 3’s fundamental mechanics.Because the auto-lock gunplay is so incredibly simplistic and skill-free, just like in the campaign, the most important part of staying alive is positioning and fast movement. To promote this idea of climbing to an advantage position, everyone has two air jumps and two air dashes to use before needing to touch a solid surface again – and that’s not even counting the tons of man-cannons ready to fling you into the sky. Additionally, there’s a player-killing, building-breaking Flying Fist melee charge attack or a ground-pound slam that recharges a few seconds after use.It demands a different kind of strategy than you’d expect: When you’re in the middle of a fight and the building starts breaking or someone locks on from off-screen it can be chaos, especially when you consider how tough it is to spot people when all three maps are so gaudily lit in neon and swinging the camera across so much color can be jarring. However, when I sat back, picked my target, and swooped in for the kill before retreating back up out of reach and repeated the process, dominating the field was a piece of cake.You also get access to one of two gadgets: a deployable launch pad or an overshield, to take with you into combat. However, as you’re already so mobile by default there’s no reason to ever choose something that enhances your movement, so you’d be crazy to pass on the Overshield. In my experience, the majority of tactics during a firefight – besides deciding when to start one – consist of waiting until you and an enemy are fully committed to killing each other and then popping your overshield a second before it’s over, ensuring a kill and escape. That and the slow-charging Overdrive buff, which enhances your firepower, are the only chance you have to turn the tables on someone who sees you before you see them.Once you’ve played a couple of matches, you’ve seen it all. No matter which of the 21 agent skins you select, everyone’s movement and damage is effectively the same, and there’s no character progress of any kind, so that never changes. Every match plays the same every time, and Wrecking Zone’s combat just doesn’t have the depth or nuance to sustain itself for long without anything around it.And when a match ends, you’re in for a rude awakening: there’s no party functionality (though it’s supposed to be coming in an update). So whether you win or lose, you’re kicked back out to the main Wrecking Zone menu and have to spend the next roughly 30 seconds matchmaking again, every time, like we’re back in the pre-Halo 2 days. That makes caring about Wrecking Zone tough, because there’s no personal progression and no chance to build relationships or play with friends. All it has are achievements, if you’re still looking to add to your Gamerscore by any means necessary.