The road to release for Crackdown 3 is a chaotic one to say the least. After being first announced by Microsoft as an exclusive for the Xbox One in 2015 with a 2016 release. So, the very fact it has only just released in February 2019 is scary and worrying in itself. I loved the original Crackdown game so much and had so much fun chasing down all the Orbs and maxing out my agent to true Superhuman levels. The follow up was less than great, a very mediocre and short that could easily have been released as DLC instead but the one thing that gave me some degree of hope for this third instalment was the focus on Terry Crews as the star of the game as Commander Jaxon. With 4 years between the first announcement till now, and having one of the world’s top comedic actor in Terry Crews, Crackdown 3 had to be worth the wait, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_9fG8hPCi0

The story to Crackdown 3 picks up about ten years later and sees a world without power following a terrorist attack. The Agency traces the attack to the city of New Providence, a city built and controlled by the Corporate organization Terra Nova, and steps up their first retaliatory strike led by the irrepressible Commander Jaxon, modelled on and voiced by Terry Crews. Now so far this all sounds very Crackdown indeed, and the opening cinematic of Commander Jaxon giving an inspirational speech as only a hero based on Terry Crews could give to a whole squad of Agents all sent to go kick some ass is funny and charming and the perfect lead into the game.

The plane carrying the Agents is shot down, killing every agent but you, the player once you have made a choice to which Agent you select to play as. Your remains are recovered by the leader of the rebels who is able to revive and regenerate you in a healing tank all ‘Luke in a tank in Empire Strikes Back’. After signalling that you agree to help the rebels fight Terra Nova, you will complete the regeneration and step on to the island ready to fight back. The twist is that because the rebels did not have access to full Agency Tech, you have been restored to health however you start with zero abilities, weapons and vehicles and so must gain back your abilities through the capture of orbs, and ‘Kills for skills’ in true Crackdown fashion.

Whenever a game is as late to release as Crackdown 3 has been, four years since being announced and then 3 years since the original release date, I really want to experience why it was delayed so much by venturing in and hoping to be amazed by something to justify it all. Crackdown 3’s problems begin right away as the brilliant cinematic gave me great expectations for more of the same only to suddenly be met with animatics with voice overs to tell the story as soon as the first cinematic is over. In all the years this game took to fully release, the best animation Sumo Digital as developers could bother to do for the story campaign, was slightly animated storyboard cut scenes. I am sorry but this level of laziness is just not acceptable for such a long wait. It immediately took me out of the world after seeing the brilliant performance of Crews as Jaxon and rightly the player should expect to see more cutscenes like it. The moment it switches to just voiced animatics disappointed me so much, spoiling my initial fun I had with the opening ten minutes.

But the gameplay itself once in the campaign felt very familiar, and for the first few hours was actually rather enjoyable. This sadly however, is more down to the sense of nostalgia I have for the first Crackdown game as this for me feels very much like a cheap remake of that first game because in no time at all I found myself playing it just as I had back in 2007 on Xbox 360. This may be set in a brand-new city but everything remains very much like the original in how you scale tall buildings and just jumping around the city, which feels very natural and the same. In fact, there is very little to really make this stand out from the previous series entries’ gameplay wise. Now as a sequel this is to be expected, but I am still not quite sure what about the campaign led to so many delays, it feels the same as the original games, you play it in the same way. Visually the cell shaded art style looks far richer here but again, its Crackdown and simply feels enhanced by being on the Xbox One family of consoles. The sound scheme is the same and the instantly recognisable sound of a nearby agility or mystery orb is again, nostalgia overload moments.

If you are not familiar with the Crackdown series, you play as an Agent, and you start off fairly weak and underpowered. You can evolve your Agent by powering up their core skills, agility, firearm use, explosions, melee combat and driving. Each one is improved the more you use them so shooting enemies will earn you Firearm orb energy as will using explosions to kill enemies. Agility orbs are all over the city to collect to increase your agility skill, punching things will level up Melee and driving and completing races and stunt rings will improve driving skills. As your agent improves each skill, they will evolve to have better skills so being able to run faster and jump higher and further as agility improves and so on. My personal favourite is levelling up the melee combat which will improve your strength to the point where you can pick up and throw large heavier objects such as boulders and even vehicles. Your Agent’s physical appearance will also change as you evolve from the normal sized agent to the “Iv been to the gym every day for years” level of true Terry Crewness.

The original Crackdown had Agency vehicles which evolved as your driving skill improved which was incredible to see on screen, for Crackdown 3 you instead get one vehicle which instead can morph into different types as your driving skill increases so you can have the Lightning sports care from the start capable of high speed before unlocking the Spider, a care with the ability to spring jump and climb walls. The final vehicle type is the Tank, which you can unluck at level 4 driving skills and is just that, a tank. The types can be switched too at any time using the d-pad and can even be summoned to come to you, which more often then not can actually run you over if you are not paying attention.

Any gun, grenade type and vehicle you pick up will instantly be added to your arsenal and garage to be called on or equipped to our loadout at any Agency safehouse which you can find dotted all over the city and need to be claimed by defeating the enemies in that location. Until your Agent has evolved a few levels, a lot of the enemies in the world can provide a pretty good challenge to you so finding the right combination of weapons will be key until you have levelled up your Agent to really take the fight to them. The challenge will not just come from the grunts on the ground but in how you build your way to the main boss fight itself. Like the original Crackdown game, once again the aim will be to weaken the infrastructure of the Terr Nova leadership by taking out the lieutenants first, doing so will then make other bosses vulnerable to attack. The aim is work your way through each boss, level up your agent and kick some ass.

The big problem with this and pretty much my major issue with Crackdown 3 campaign on the whole, is that is that is very quickly becomes repetitive and therefore rather boring by the time you are closing in on the final boss fight. Go here kill and blow things up, defeat the boss then rinse and repeat. By the time you have found really powerful weapons to use and your Agent is so powerful that you are triple jumping around the city like the Hulk on Lucazade, and you will not bother using any vehicles or other weapons just because you wont need to. The enemies you may have struggled with before simply melt before you now so there is zero challenge until you take on a boss and even the all the boss fights appear to be the same with the majority of them just being in some kind of giant mech suit you need to take down.

There is a variety in the different Agents you can use, as by exploring the city you can find more remains which can then be regenerated into playable Agents, each one can then be levelled up but really it is just a cosmetic change. The biggest crime is that of Commander Jaxon himself as Terry Crews is used so poorly in the game itself once the opening cinematic is over. As a playable Agent, Jaxon has no one liners, no fun dialogue at all and becomes nothing more than a player skin in the game. Terry Crews has done more in the marketing of this game then he was clearly asked to do in the game over the years it was lost in development hell and that sadly diminishes the campaign for me. Their greatest asset and he is reduced to only a few lines of dialogue, a cinematic intro and an Agent skin and is just another example of lazy the road to Crackdown 3’s release is.

Which brings me to the MP component in ‘Wrecking Zone’ , a 5 v 5 deathmatch mode which uses all the skills and weapons of a powered up Agent. Over the long wait for release, much was made about how destructive Agents were going to be in the game with world destruction to supposedly play a big part of the campaign. Well, that never turned out to be the case but instead ended up in this MP mode. The MP is even a separate download component to the game if you look in your installed games on your console or external drive. Sadly, Wrecking Zone is nothing more than a tagged-on MP mode that delivers some fun for the first few matches or so, but soon becomes dull and uninspired and certainly not a mode you are going to keep returning to considering what is currently out there already to play. It is so throwaway and I sense no doubt the reason why it was delayed for so long and if that is the case, it was not worth the time it took to make it a feature.

Crackdown 3 is the perfect game for the Xbox Games Pass, but the very fact it is so shallow in the campaign and forgettable in the MP mode just annoys me that it was given a full AAA price for release, I mean this released on the same day as Far Cry New Dawn, a spin off from Far Cry 5 which released at the sensible pricing of £30 physical and digital whilst Crackdown 3 is an astonishing £49.99 in the Xbox store. This is not worth that money or to be honest, anything above £25 so please only use the Games Pass to play it because once you have completed the campaign, unless you are an Achievement hunter, there is next to nothing of replay value with this game.

A game that had three release date delays over 4 years is normally a sign that it should be avoided, but this is worth playing, once at least and done so via the Xbox Games Pass. This is clearly the last of the old Xbox era of game decisions, and with Microsoft now owning thirteen in house studios to produce new fresh games, the future is a lot more hopeful then what Crackdown 3 represents. I have no issue with Xbox releasing games straight into and only on Games Pass, but this is a very average game that disappoints more than it entertains and though it can be fun, especially with a friend in co-op, it becomes far too simple and repetitive too quickly and is just instantly forgettable. When it was delayed last year, it was at the same time Agents of Mayhem, a criminally underrated game, was released and I said in my review of it that if you were looking forward to Crackdown 3, it was a good substitute.

Now Crackdown 3 is out, I still say go and play Agents of Mayhem which is also in the Xbox Games Pass and play that instead once this becomes dull and boring. What a shame, but I do hope MS have learned lessons from this mess and focus on doing far better in the future. So was Crackdown 3 worth the wait…..sadly not.

The METRO game series has always had a special place in my heart because for me, no other shooter title experience matches it for story telling and world building. The setting of a post-apocalyptic world which has been ravaged by used of nuclear weapons in World War III has left the only survivors in Russia using the metro system to live and move around created a perfect platform for a first-person shooter blended with true survival game mechanics. Now we have the third entry in the series following the canon ending to METRO Last Light and fans have been eagerly awaiting to carry on the adventures of Artyom whose world is about to change forever.

Players return to play as Artyom, a year after the events of the last game (using the good ending) where we find him still serving as a Spartan Ranger but now married to Anna. Life is still stuff, with the Rangers heading out to find resources and supplies to help feed the community whilst tackling the dangers of rival factions and mutated creatures on the surface where venturing out into is still highly dangerous and life risking. Life is relatively good for Artyom but his world and that of the people he cares about the most is about to change forever.

Now I do not want to spoil anything about the story because the opening that leads to the massive change is something players should discover for themselves, but what I can say is that this is by far the largest world in the series yet as Artyom and his companions will be off exploring far more of the country then ever before. For the first time, players will be able to explore outside of Moscow and travel across Russia in search of a new home adding new exploration challenges to the tried and tested linear story missions of the previous games. The new narrative has an immediate impact on the gameplay and with so many games now moving towards a more open world style of gameplay, this is the next natural evolution of the Metro Series.

However, METRO Exodus is not an open world game but instead offers far more freedom to players to experience this new larger world as they see fit. The traditional story missions are there which follow a linear path for the player to follow but now that the world is so much wider, the player will also have the option to expand on that by having more room to explore the world and taking on side missions and objectives around the main story stuff which thrives well using the same survival game mechanics METRO games use so well. It takes a few hours into the game for the world to open up and almost as much time to get used to that new level of freedom you have because you have to take the time to plan and prepare for everything you do in the game.

It is the survival aspects that stay true to every fans of the METRO series in Exodus and they are more vital to the gameplay as ever. Crafting for me plays far more of a crucial part in Exodus than previous games in the series especially if you are planning on exploring the new areas as you will still need to make sure you have enough air filters for your breathing mask for toxic areas you will find throughout. Far more crucial though will be maintaining, upgrading and making your weapons and ammo. This side has always been the main factor that METRO has stood out against all over shooters and in Exodus, the risks of exploring and failing to master crafting and maintenance can literally cost you your life in the game. It can be a double-edged sword as well as in order to find new designs and materials needed to craft weapons, med kits and ammo will require the risk of going out and exploring new areas in order to find the materials needed. This is why sensible planning comes in as you will need to check what you currently have in terms of med kits and ammo before you head out on any mission but especially if you go exploring.

A number of times when I chose to go exploring a new area, I would be caught out by running out of ammo for my guns and being left to run or hide from mutated creatures and wild animals until I either found or crafted new ammos. Thankfully, your backpack can also serve as a basic crafting table for making repairs to weapons or crafting new ammo, filters and med kits but of course, this is only if you have enough materials to craft with. By not preparing properly I often ran out of ammo for my carried weapons leaving me with one of the worst melee combat systems in a recent game, to fend off attackers. When you can craft ammo, do not expect to be filling up your ammo quickly, often crafting will only provide you with a handful of bullets or cartridges so deciding which weapons to carry is also key, I often relied on having the A-Shot revolver as my back up piece to my assault rifle.

You can carry Molotov cocktails which are great at enemy crowd management and throwing knives which are great for dealing with enemies when going for a stealthier style of play. I prefer to go full stealth when possible, and I love being in an enemy human location and sneaking about taking down enemies by either simply knocking them out in a more pacifist way or lethal take-down with my knife, depending on how you are feeling. You can pretty much stealth your way for most encounters but if spotted then enemies will actively hunt for you so remembering location layouts. It is very satisfying to be able to get in, take out the enemy and looting everything you before make a cheeky escape that is always so very satisfying to me and now there are more opportunities to put those skills to the test thanks to the side missions now added along with exploring new locations.

The size and scope to METRO exodus is brilliant to see as the game will take you the player as Artyom on a year long journey. This means you will also see all four seasons from Winter to Spring, Summer and Autumn all play out throughout that year as you travel on the train named ‘Aurora’ now travelling across Russia. This also means visiting new locations and environments such as desserts which is such a stark contrast to the bleak winter wilderness of the past two games. Even finding vehicles that can be driven or sailed add so much to the experience after spending two games barely seeing anything above ground and being in tight tunnel systems. The biggest surprise however came from the new dynamic day and night system which can be used to great effect when planning to raid a bandit camp for example as during the day you are far more likely to be seen but under the cover of darkness at night, especially if the new weather system kicks in giving you a nice electrical storm to mask your sound, really helps you out.

Where 4A Games, the developer of the METRO series has been clever enough to do is to not get carried away with what an almost open world style game can do and instead have used it to enhance almost everything you have already experienced in previous METRO games but maintaining that core value of at times, linear shooting missions that can make you feel all claustrophobic at times of being in a confined area and constantly on the edge of your seat fearing that you could be attacked at any time and knowing that you have only a few bullets left in you guns. Just as Artyom is discovering this new game world, so are you as the player and because the game stays so true to all the best elements of the METRO series, it never strays too far from that core experience despite having so many new features this time around.

The pace can be rather sluggish at times as can a lot of the ex-positional dialogue you can have with the NPC’s dotted around the game who are all very happy to talk your ears off even if you choose to just walk away from them. The melee combat is very frustrating as if you do run out of ammo your only real option is to use the right stick to hit them with the butt of your carried gun when all I wanted to do was carry a pipe to smash enemies over the head with as the melee combat is clumsy and awkward and leaves you feeling  all brittle and useless when outnumbered by enemies and you fail to hit anything with your melee. I also did not like having to hold down X in order to interact with everything whilst at times very little action would break up long story cut-scenes. But overall these are really just niggling issues to what is a very fun game for fans of the series and forced me to get better at using the crafting system and knowing when or if I could pick a fight or to avoid a possible environmental encounter with beasts until I was ready and better equipped to do so.

METRO Exodus is the evolution the series needed for a 2019 release, and the new elements and features compliment what made the series stand out so much in the first place. By keeping the core elements to METRO at the heart of the game but managing to open the world up for new experiences for seasoned fans of the series but also to attract new players to it with Exodus, 4A Games have delivered a real belter. I have already planned out my next run with the game in order to spend more time exploring and making better use of the crafting system instead of just sticking to the story missions, which the game completely allows you to do with little hand holding as possible. The freedom, to play the game as you want is a big game changer for me as it is something that I really like in my games now such as the Far Cry series.

This game offers so much that I really hope more people give it a chance than just the faithful series fans, because there is so much to sink your teeth into if you want a real test to your survival skills next to an incredible story with rich characters. Visually this game is stunning and you will get more than enough use of the photo mode to take advantage of the new environments to indulge your artistic talents or just to show off the scenery. I was a little worried about how much the game experience would change with the new size and freedom to METRO Exodus but it works so well that this is a great way to kick of the big releases of 2019 and put the series firmly into the mainstream deserving of more attention.