The Terry Crews Propaganda Machine hard at work. There are so few options that, unless you’re among the hardest of hardcore fans, you wouldn’t give it a second glance. However, as a multiplayer experience, it’s forgettable. On the gameplay front, I think Crackdown 3 pushes character progression to a new level for the series, with new powers and perks unlocking at a steady rate.
They’re more likely concerned with how the gameplay and multiplayer stack up to the competition. Returning Crackdown fans might not be bothered by this. If you put decided to mute the game and put some music on, I wouldn’t blame you. He’s basically a conduit for their endless diatribes about plot details and other nonsense, and after a while you learn to tune it out. Though Crackdown 3 marks the first time the Agent has dialogue, the Director and Echo talk so much over the Agent’s intercom, he might as well not exist. H e’s joined by a new character, Echo, who serves as your New Providence liaison, and is responsible for saving your hide in the opening.
His role in the grand scheme of things is still a mystery, but this game makes an attempt to flesh him out, even giving him a name. He barks orders in your ear and relentlessly encourages you to kill, level up, and destroy everyone. Though he’s ditched the fascist ideology of the previous games for a pro-imperialist vibe, the Director is about the same as ever. Neither day nor night can stop the Agent’s quest to invade New Providence. Despite what the game sets up, this is an invasion for a party of one, maybe two people. I was initially interested in this idea, but when I realized that these Agents weren’t going to do anything unless you had a co-op partner, not even populate the world like NPC’s, I became disappointed. Along the way, you can find the DNA of the other fallen Agents, and clone their bodies to get them back into commission. After a moment of crisis where most of the Agents are wiped out in one fell swoop, it’s down to you, the playable Agent, to execute all of the city’s leaders, destroy their chemical plants, and replace their propaganda with your own. Tasking itself with freeing the city of New Providence from its dystopian government after a terrorist attack threatens the entire world, the Agency sends in a team of Agents to invade and clean up shop.
It’s hard to believe they’ve changed so much, but the game’s themes are so underdeveloped, it’s hard to take the game at anything other than face value. Despite being a sequel, Crackdown 3 asks us to ignore these previous events, and accept that the Agency is now good and righteous. It was never clear whether these ideas were meant to encourage the player or disgust them, but they were clearly there. Crackdown 2 took this authoritarianism to an extreme by pushing for the genocide of its sick and mutated citizens as the Director of the Agency crooned in your ears at every kill. In Crackdown, the big twist was that the all-powerful Agency used you, as the Agent, to eradicate crime from Pacific City and set the stage for a new police state. One of the most interesting things about Crackdown 3 is the way it changes the story of the series.
If you're trying to play with others, just don't. When you're playing alone, Crackdown offers some fun, but it's the kind of fun you'll forget a week from now.