FIGHT GANGS WITH OLD SPICE!!!
The next game is another true console exclusive, another oft-delayed game announced at E3 2014, and another game I’m itching to play: Sumo Digital’s Crackdown 3.
The original game on the Xbox 360 is still a personal favorite. The sequel in the same console was forgettable. Sumo Digital and Crackdown fans hope the third time’s a charm. To that end, the gameplay seems to be reminiscent of the first entry. There are distinct areas in the city that are controlled by different gangs. As a supercop working for the Agency, your job is to roll into each area and eliminate the gangs. There are swarms of low-level grunts and more powerful foes in bases and hangouts. Once you dispatch the area’s boss, you clear the area of the gang’s influence.
The fun in Crackdown 3 lies not in gunning through hordes of gang members mindlessly, but in the number of creative ways you can do so. In the original, you powered your supercop up by collecting orbs. Those orbs boosted your supercop’s stats, allowing to lift heavier objects, jump much farther, and kill much quicker. That, combined with the game’s verticality and an endless number of objects to be picked up and hurled, opened up new possibilities. Instead of running into a base and climbing all the way up to the top to take out a leader, you instead picked up a tanker truck and leaped to the top of an adjacent building. Once you spotted the leader’s location you could throw the tanker at it then shoot the tank so it explodes when it hits the building. Or you could just drive off the rooftop into the building. If you could imagine it, you could (mostly) do it.
Crackdown 3 has been promising to amp that creativity to the nth degree. With its much-ballyhooed cloud computing helping crunch numbers, it may be possible to simply bring the entire building down with the gang leader in it. If it’s possible, I’m sure it won’t be that simple; you probably have to collect more orbs than the recommended daily allowance. But if that level of mayhem is possible, I’ll gorge on orbs until my insides glow!
This year’s trailer had two things previous trailers didn’t have: actual gameplay and Terry Crews. As for the latter, he is a national treasure and I’m not completely bored of his routine yet. So whenever President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho wants to show, I welcome him. In fact, can I play as him? As for the former, there were booths on the E3 floor that allowed people to play the game. This is no longer a vaporware dream folks; this is legit real.
Crackdown 3 pops on November 7th for Xbox One and PC. It’s a Play Anywhere title.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_9fG8hPCi0
