Microsoft Game Studios has revealed new gameplay of Crackdown 3’s single-player campaign via IGN. The three-minute preview highlights some big improvements over the original build that underwhelmed at E3 2017.
It won’t come as too much of a surprise that Terry Crews once again takes center stage for the showcase. Agent Jaxon, as he’s called in-game, resumes his mission to rid the island metropolis of New Providence from Terra Nova Corporation. Before he gets started, though, we’re shown some of the progression systems and character options.
The campaign is non-linear, we’re told, allowing players to take down different divisions of Terra Nova Corporation in any order they wish.
The sharper fidelity of Crackdown 3’s graphics are perhaps the most obvious improvement, and the physics and character animations seemed to have been tweaked for the better, too.
Creative Director Joseph Staten reminds us during the preview that Crackdown 3 is “a comic-book-inspired playground that encourages experimentation and aggressive action.”
It’s hard to get a feel for just how much substance there is to gameplay, though.
We get to see Jackson show-off some of his bombastic moves and some jump/thruster traversal as he takes down enemies and collects various objects through an Industry Division mission, but it’s unclear whether Crackdown 3 is going to feature the sort of depth and strategy to keep things interesting throughout a full playthrough.
What we can say is that the game does look much more compelling overall than what we’ve seen in the past. Here’s hoping the multiple delays and various development woes are well and truly behind Crackdown 3 as it approaches its February 2019 launch window.
Microsoft has promised more developer updates showcasing the game’s anticipated destructible environments in multiplayer mode throughout the coming weeks.
