Crackdown 3

Crackdown 3 was a long-delayed sequel to the cult open-world series about a super-agent fighting criminal organizations in the stylized city of New Providence, with Terry Crews as agent Isaiah Jones as the main star of the marketing campaign. The game retained the series' signature vertical gameplay built around collecting so-called Agility Orbs, thanks to which the player's character gradually gains the ability to jump to ever greater heights, turning exploration of the open city into almost a platforming discipline and the blinking orbs on rooftops into one of the most addictive collectible loops in the genre.

Combat combines shooting from a varied arsenal of weapons with comfortable auto-aim and a super-strength ability allowing the player to lift vehicles and pieces of the environment and hurl them at enemies. Progression is free-form: the city is controlled by divisions of the Terra Nova corporation, and the player chooses which parts of their structure to dismantle first, since eliminating subordinates weakens their superiors. The main draw was meant to be environmental destruction technology powered by Microsoft Azure cloud computing, enabling real-time demolition of entire buildings, but this feature ultimately ended up confined solely to the standalone multiplayer mode Wrecking Zone, while the single-player campaign offers destruction only to a very limited degree.

Development of the game took nearly five years and was accompanied by repeated delays and changes on the development teams' side, which showed in a somewhat dated graphical presentation compared to competitors of its release year and in a sense that the game arrived a generation late. Nevertheless, Crackdown 3 retained the lighthearted, arcade-style fun that made the series famous back in 2007, offering full open-world cooperation full of vertical challenges, and thanks to its release directly into Xbox Game Pass, it was ultimately tried by far more players than would have bought it.