I always liked collecting the agility orbs to level and then jumping a million feet in the air. Is there any other games that have something similar?
Galahad-117
I never played the actual game, only the demo on xbox 360 way back in the day, Crackdown 1 was so much fun, the demo was time limited so when time ran out you had to start over every time, i remember just doing different runs collecting different orbs of skills every time, it was so much fun to level Agility to Max and watch your character change as they grew stronger, i remember climbing the Agency tower because it had so many orbs and was an overall challenge, and the cars changing as you level your driving skill
totality911
What I enjoyed most about Crackdown 1 was, each time you killed a gang lieutenant there was actual progress in dismantling the gang. Kill the guy responsible for their armory? Now they had shittier weapons. Kill the guy in charge of training them physically? They had less health. I wonder if there are similar games out there.
aphilipnamedfry
Each Crackdown was essentially a lesser version of the one that came before. I was genuinely interested in seeing the destruction scale based on the cloud computing they were touting early on because it sounded like Red Faction turned up a notch, but we all saw that it ended up not happening because they seriously bungled the development of the third game.
Tyrest_Accord
Crackdown 2 was the most plotless waste of money I ever played. They couldn’t pay me to play another one.
Smegmajoe
The first crackdown was so good…
StickStill9790
Everyone forgets that characters have to be flawed. If you create what you consider to be the perfect good guy then you’re probably writing a sociopath.
Infamous, crackdown and Saints Row 4… oh and that elder scrolls game where you could OP your jump skills…. Such good stuff.
lupeandstripes
Crackdown 1 is genuinely one of my goated open world games along with hulk ultimate destruction & the prototype titles, and Scarface, the world is yours.
So sad that we don’t get games like these ones very often these days.
Galvaknight
Bought Crackdown exclusively for the Halo 3 beta it came with. Wound up being such a banger I played through it twice. Fantastic game, loved the skills, power fantasy, driving, agency cars. Had a blast getting a buddy to hop into a smart car and throwing him across the map.
Crackdown 2 felt like slop, never even bothered to play 3.
OG Crackdown and Mercenaries will forever be my favorite open world sandbox games. Just true works of art. All their sequels and competitors just feel shallow, soulless and empty.
lastdarknight
Leaving out why crackdown 1 was such a hit
Exclusive Halo 3 demo
Kracus
Crackdown 3 was a huge disappointment. I really enjoyed 1 and 2. Played maybe 1 hour of 3 and never again.
MatureButJustBarely
I think Crackdown 3 has a bad reputation simply because of the stupid cloud-based destruction announcement when the game was initially revealed.
This post seems silly, because no one walked away from the first Crackdown thinking about how amazing the story was. It was all about the gameplay.
And the gameplay from Crackdown 3 is as good as or better than Crackdown 1 in every way, except for the horrific driving. I never really bothered driving in the original either, but that doesn’t excuse how poorly driving was implemented in 3.
Anyway… If any of you reading this haven’t played Crackdown 3, give it a shot and play it for what it actually is rather than what some dumb demo suggested that it would be. You’ll probably find yourself having a good time.
doesnotgetthepoint
Really hope it gets recompiled.
GentlmanSkeleton
Crackdown 1 not being avaiable on pc is a crime.
McSnifferson
I still hear the noise of the orbs 20 years later.
DrexellGames
Remember seeing 3 looked decent in early game development and then the final launch turned into a disaster
TheOneCalledGump
Don’t forget “Spend all our money advertising that Terry Crews is one of the main playable characters and totally forget to spend any money on dialogue and voice acting, and players get to hear him say the same 10 voice lines!”
Power0fTheTribe
I wanted to love 3 so badly cuz I loved 1&2 but 3 was such abysmal shit it made me sad
Bruisedmilk
I enjoyed the era of developers showing new technology for their games and it not being in it at all. Crackdown 3 was supposed to have destructable environments with small details.
atko850
The twist at the end of 1 was the most obvious thing ever and then you never do anything about it. It’s just the end of the game. I get what you’re getting at but 1 was fun but flawed
jgarciajr1330
God, I was one of the many QA testers on Crackdown 3. We all knew it was going to be a rough game when it lauched.
One bug that came up at the very end before launch was the elevator to the final boss broke and wouldn’t move. Good times!
igwbuffalo
You know, I’d be all for a modern remaster of the crackdown series. Could fix some of the things that made them janky control wise, improve the combat a bit. Wouldn’t be a terrible play for some silly fun.
scarletnaught
Crackdown 3 was fun as hell just like the original
Irish_Whiskey
I can completely believe that that Crackdown 1 is a better game, without having played 3.
…but this is a nonsense comparison that does nothing to justify why one is better than the other. The first panel just described Crackdown 1’s plot, the other just does the same thing but simpler and with a lot of judgement. Nothing in what’s listed actually shows why one is better than the other.
Metareferential
The first Crackdown is a phenomenal game. I’d love to go back on pc. Please? xD
2Scribble
Call me crazy – but I don’t think *most people* played either game for the ‘story’ – like, as a comparison, I’m sure there’s the odd DOOM 3 nut who can tell you every single detail of all those [random documents and audio logs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL1FErzQWI8) that were forced down your windpipe back in the day – but they’re the minority, not the majority
Especially when the first game’s story was a ***lot*** stupider and full of rampant cliche than you’re presenting it
Doubly especially when you consider that – sure, at the end, they pulled a little funny and revealed that your authoritarian big-boys club ***is*** actually as authoritarian as the completely non-subtle foreshadowing made it seem (these are the same writers, I’ll remind you, who named their secret authoritarian agency ‘the Agency’ and the bad guys ‘the Cell’ and the monsters ‘the Freaks’ and the city ‘Pacific City’ ) but neither two follow up games really *do much* with the whole ‘actually, the agency you’re serving is controlling all this…’ plot.
Plus, to quote Zero Punctuation
>Crackdown 1 was a great game. It had a strong emphasis on fucking around, but when you were ready to grow up and behave, there was a structured challenge curve in which you besiege and kill everyone on the kingpin’s Christmas card list, until the kingpin’s own defenses are weakened enough to risk taking on.
>An important goal makes fucking around all the sweeter when you can imagine your administrator impotently shaking his gnarled fist as you waste another hour throwing trains at children.
Like, it was one of the first mainstream open-world successes – the glut of which we now struggle under daily in hopes of finding someone doing something
#Anything
That’s interesting with the concept
But, much of what made Crackdown work wouldn’t work today – mostly because people aren’t daddled with the concept of a huge open fuck-off world anymore
I mean, [Gertie the Dinosaur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertie_the_Dinosaur) was groundbreaking in 1914 – but in 2025 you’d struggle to hold the attention of anyone who wasn’t being forced to watch it at gunpoint 😛
![[Crackdown 1] vs. [Crackdown 3]](https://www.fpshub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/jzgn9jyuw51f1-scaled.jpeg "[Crackdown 1] vs. [Crackdown 3]")
26 Comments
I always liked collecting the agility orbs to level and then jumping a million feet in the air. Is there any other games that have something similar?
I never played the actual game, only the demo on xbox 360 way back in the day, Crackdown 1 was so much fun, the demo was time limited so when time ran out you had to start over every time, i remember just doing different runs collecting different orbs of skills every time, it was so much fun to level Agility to Max and watch your character change as they grew stronger, i remember climbing the Agency tower because it had so many orbs and was an overall challenge, and the cars changing as you level your driving skill
What I enjoyed most about Crackdown 1 was, each time you killed a gang lieutenant there was actual progress in dismantling the gang. Kill the guy responsible for their armory? Now they had shittier weapons. Kill the guy in charge of training them physically? They had less health. I wonder if there are similar games out there.
Each Crackdown was essentially a lesser version of the one that came before. I was genuinely interested in seeing the destruction scale based on the cloud computing they were touting early on because it sounded like Red Faction turned up a notch, but we all saw that it ended up not happening because they seriously bungled the development of the third game.
Crackdown 2 was the most plotless waste of money I ever played. They couldn’t pay me to play another one.
The first crackdown was so good…
Everyone forgets that characters have to be flawed. If you create what you consider to be the perfect good guy then you’re probably writing a sociopath.
Infamous, crackdown and Saints Row 4… oh and that elder scrolls game where you could OP your jump skills…. Such good stuff.
Crackdown 1 is genuinely one of my goated open world games along with hulk ultimate destruction & the prototype titles, and Scarface, the world is yours.
So sad that we don’t get games like these ones very often these days.
Bought Crackdown exclusively for the Halo 3 beta it came with. Wound up being such a banger I played through it twice. Fantastic game, loved the skills, power fantasy, driving, agency cars. Had a blast getting a buddy to hop into a smart car and throwing him across the map.
Crackdown 2 felt like slop, never even bothered to play 3.
OG Crackdown and Mercenaries will forever be my favorite open world sandbox games. Just true works of art. All their sequels and competitors just feel shallow, soulless and empty.
Leaving out why crackdown 1 was such a hit
Exclusive Halo 3 demo
Crackdown 3 was a huge disappointment. I really enjoyed 1 and 2. Played maybe 1 hour of 3 and never again.
I think Crackdown 3 has a bad reputation simply because of the stupid cloud-based destruction announcement when the game was initially revealed.
This post seems silly, because no one walked away from the first Crackdown thinking about how amazing the story was. It was all about the gameplay.
And the gameplay from Crackdown 3 is as good as or better than Crackdown 1 in every way, except for the horrific driving. I never really bothered driving in the original either, but that doesn’t excuse how poorly driving was implemented in 3.
Anyway… If any of you reading this haven’t played Crackdown 3, give it a shot and play it for what it actually is rather than what some dumb demo suggested that it would be. You’ll probably find yourself having a good time.
Really hope it gets recompiled.
Crackdown 1 not being avaiable on pc is a crime.
I still hear the noise of the orbs 20 years later.
Remember seeing 3 looked decent in early game development and then the final launch turned into a disaster
Don’t forget “Spend all our money advertising that Terry Crews is one of the main playable characters and totally forget to spend any money on dialogue and voice acting, and players get to hear him say the same 10 voice lines!”
I wanted to love 3 so badly cuz I loved 1&2 but 3 was such abysmal shit it made me sad
I enjoyed the era of developers showing new technology for their games and it not being in it at all. Crackdown 3 was supposed to have destructable environments with small details.
The twist at the end of 1 was the most obvious thing ever and then you never do anything about it. It’s just the end of the game. I get what you’re getting at but 1 was fun but flawed
God, I was one of the many QA testers on Crackdown 3. We all knew it was going to be a rough game when it lauched.
One bug that came up at the very end before launch was the elevator to the final boss broke and wouldn’t move. Good times!
You know, I’d be all for a modern remaster of the crackdown series. Could fix some of the things that made them janky control wise, improve the combat a bit. Wouldn’t be a terrible play for some silly fun.
Crackdown 3 was fun as hell just like the original
I can completely believe that that Crackdown 1 is a better game, without having played 3.
…but this is a nonsense comparison that does nothing to justify why one is better than the other. The first panel just described Crackdown 1’s plot, the other just does the same thing but simpler and with a lot of judgement. Nothing in what’s listed actually shows why one is better than the other.
The first Crackdown is a phenomenal game. I’d love to go back on pc. Please? xD
Call me crazy – but I don’t think *most people* played either game for the ‘story’ – like, as a comparison, I’m sure there’s the odd DOOM 3 nut who can tell you every single detail of all those [random documents and audio logs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL1FErzQWI8) that were forced down your windpipe back in the day – but they’re the minority, not the majority
Especially when the first game’s story was a ***lot*** stupider and full of rampant cliche than you’re presenting it
Doubly especially when you consider that – sure, at the end, they pulled a little funny and revealed that your authoritarian big-boys club ***is*** actually as authoritarian as the completely non-subtle foreshadowing made it seem (these are the same writers, I’ll remind you, who named their secret authoritarian agency ‘the Agency’ and the bad guys ‘the Cell’ and the monsters ‘the Freaks’ and the city ‘Pacific City’ ) but neither two follow up games really *do much* with the whole ‘actually, the agency you’re serving is controlling all this…’ plot.
Plus, to quote Zero Punctuation
>Crackdown 1 was a great game. It had a strong emphasis on fucking around, but when you were ready to grow up and behave, there was a structured challenge curve in which you besiege and kill everyone on the kingpin’s Christmas card list, until the kingpin’s own defenses are weakened enough to risk taking on.
>An important goal makes fucking around all the sweeter when you can imagine your administrator impotently shaking his gnarled fist as you waste another hour throwing trains at children.
Like, it was one of the first mainstream open-world successes – the glut of which we now struggle under daily in hopes of finding someone doing something
#Anything
That’s interesting with the concept
But, much of what made Crackdown work wouldn’t work today – mostly because people aren’t daddled with the concept of a huge open fuck-off world anymore
I mean, [Gertie the Dinosaur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertie_the_Dinosaur) was groundbreaking in 1914 – but in 2025 you’d struggle to hold the attention of anyone who wasn’t being forced to watch it at gunpoint 😛