Just like collectible orbs, the stats remain the same as previous games, encompassing everything one might expect from a super agent – agility, firearms, explosives, strength, and driving. Finding a lot of them can be a massive boon to your survivability and combat options. And they’re a huge help since each one slightly increases all of your agent’s stats. Finding them hidden behind a giant sign or at the top of a narrow gap between two buildings requires constant situational awareness, and I had a lot of fun tracking down a large portion of them. The hidden orbs placed in more inconspicuous places are just as numerous, but they require more exploration than fancy maneuvering or puzzle-solving. Coming back later when you’ve increased your agility enough to reach a new spot is usually the most viable option, but most of the orbs can be reached with a bit of ingenuity, precise jumping and timing, and trial and error. The game’s agility orbs, green orbs that improve things like jump height and dashing, are placed intelligently around the map in such ways that implored me to think about the best route to collect them all in any given district, and I was happy to see that the developers created a puzzle element to reaching many of them. Navigation is less tedious with an ever-expanding suite of new movement abilities like dashes and multiple jumps, alleviating some of the problems caused by the otherwise unfixed quirks. That said, much of Crackdown’s gameplay has always revolved around finding and collecting hundreds and hundreds of orbs scattered around its open world city, so I was thankful for the expanded movement system to help keep things moving rapidly. The movement in the series has never been graceful, and legacy issues remain, such as the stiff jumps and occasionally janky turning. I enjoyed clearing the map clockwise from the bottom (which is apparently the closest you can get to “the right way” to do it) and tackling the missions on my own time in between exploration of the game’s many side-objectives. Knocking out that boss moves you one step closer to the final fight of the game, but giving players such freedom to do things in any order they want allows the journey to the end to be a lot less tedious than it could’ve been. Each of the game’s villains have specific markers objective markers on the map dictated by color, and each of them have anywhere from 3-9 objectives to complete before tackling the boss themselves. This time around, players are given a significant amount of freedom in the order they tackle objectives. However, the story takes a backseat to the mayhem, layering in short and infrequent animated cutscenes for exposition without ever dragging down the action. Players still control an enhanced agent in Pacific City, a fictional city that seems to never run out of problems for the Agency, an organization known for creating and assembling super-human agents to protect and serve. If there’s something to truly appreciate about the series as a whole, it’s its unwavering dedication to being extremely video-gamey. The finished product, however, is somewhere between the original and its sequel – both fun and rough around the edges. And if you’ve followed Crackdown 3, you might expect the same mediocrity when you consider the long, tumultuous development rife with delays and iffy previews. The original Crackdown was an exceptionally fun breakout hit for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 way back in 2007, but its direct sequel was a ho-hum and repetitive affair thanks to its rushed development and release cycle.
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