"Skills for kills, Agent. Skills for kills." That minor line from Crackdown 1 has been burned into my brain for nearly two decades, a strange little earworm that isn't even a particularly significant comment in the game itself. Sometimes this NPC bark triggers when you empty three boxes of LMG ammo into a jaywalker. Sometimes it happens when you pick up a burning eighteen-wheeler and huck it down the street, smearing panicked criminals into the tarmac. And sometimes it happens when you run down a drug dealer with a batmobile, slap a sticky bomb on the mangled corpse and kick the explosive carcass at his closest friends, turning him into an improvised payload.
Perhaps it's less the line itself that sticks in my mind, and more the surreal and spectacular events that always prompt it. Either way, I can't deny that Crackdown left an impression on me as one of those damn good times of the mid 2000s. But eighteen years and two sequels later, Crackdown went from one of the hottest Xbox 360 IPs, standing alongside icons like Fable 2 and Halo 3, to a minor Microsoft footnote. What the hell happened?
Lawful evil
Crackdown isn't remembered as one of the best Xbox 360 games, but perhaps it should be.
I couldn't get that question out of my mind, which of course meant I had to replay all three games to get some context. Well, call it two and a half – I couldn't get through the third and final game before boredom drove me away, which itself is illuminating.
Crackdown 1 is practically a relic these days, coming as it does from the long-gone past of 2007. But I'm pleased to say it's still a good time, in a rudimentary, arcadey, rough-around-the-edges sort of way, though missing some of the quality of life improvements we've come to expect from open worlds, and definitely, er, showing its age when it comes to portrayals of certain ethnicities.
That being said, it's also a game that sits alongside Prototype and God of War 3, as you are clearly a monster through-and-through with absolutely no attempt at nuance, complexity or redemption. The notion that a crime wave can only be stopped by an army of lab-grown supercops Hulk-smashing people with heavy ordnance seems pretty suspect from the start, and during the end credits your handler cheerfully acknowledges that The Agency has always been out for world domination, a goal made easy now you've cleared the streets of any resistance.
A nicely ominous ending! Which made it a bit weird that 2010's Crackdown 2 basically sweeps that whole angle to the side and becomes a zombie apocalypse game, broken into a day/night cycle wherein you fight terrorists during office hours and hordes of mindless mutants by moonlight, with The Agency's shadowy machinations reduced to the occasional passing comment and some optional audio logs.
And when it comes to gameplay, the best parts of Crackdown 2 are largely just what was left over from Crackdown 1, with the zombie hordes doing little to elevate old material and just becoming an endless morass to mindlessly pour ammunition into.
Reviews were shruggingly flat, and in hindsight, I really can't argue. In fact, I remember a sixteen year old me taking it back to the store for a refund a couple of weeks after buying it, more disappointed than cross.
But disappointment would become frustration with 2019's Crackdown 3, which took a glacial 5 years to come out after being announced at E3 2014, worrying fans with repeated delays and rumors of development hell.
When it did come out, the twin gimmicks of destructible environments and Terry Crews did little to foster interest, and when all was said and blown up, Crackdown 3 felt even less innovative than the previous game. For me personally, the increasingly loud, cartoonish tone felt like an abrasive attempt to mimic Borderlands, a task so ill-advised that even Borderlands itself can't work out how to successfully pull off that tone these days.
If you could endure it to the end, a post-credits sequel tease would probably be Crackdown 3's funniest moment. Ultimately, twelve years later, we were still struggling with the same flaws we had forgiven the first game for, now magnified by time and exposure.
Call my Agent
Crackdown's problem as an ongoing series was that it never really worked out how to get past the shadow of the first entry
Some franchises flopping makes perfect sense. Remember Ryse: Son of Rome? No, I bet you don't, as "Call of Duty: Asterix Edition" was never going to be an easy sell to the world. But Crackdown? Half GTA, half superhero sandbox, with a beloved first entry that ranks as one of the great Xbox 360 titles, backed by the raw wealth and power of Microsoft? How is this not one of the strongest franchises out there today?
Some might say the series is dead and to leave it be, and they may very well be right. But even now, as Xbox struggles to formulate a solid lineup of major first party IP to win back audiences after misfires and poor press, it feels like the moment to bring back Crackdown with some real effort and innovation behind it. And the reason I say that is simple: Helldivers 2 exists.
Helldivers 2 is a game all about over-the-top action, orchestrated by helmeted goons throwing themselves around. It's a satire where we effectively play as the bad guys, working for an obviously fascist government. It's all about blowing things up to send both enemies and allies flying, revelling in the spectacle while still recognising the dark context behind it. And people love it.
And besides, when it comes to Crackdown's tones and themes, the subjects of government authoritarianism and the brutal excesses of law enforcement are just as topical as they were in 2007 – more so, in fact.
Not to mention that more broadly "the big superhero open world game" is a conspicuous gap in Xbox's lineup. I doubt it would match the success of Sony and Insomniac's Spider-Man games any time soon, but I can't help but notice that Microsoft hasn't had anything like this since… Well, Crackdown 3, and Sunset Overdrive before that.
Ultimately though, it would have to be a new game. Part of Crackdown's problem as an ongoing series was that it never really worked out how to get past the shadow of the first entry, refusing to evolve with the rest of the world.
A new Crackdown game would need to take the foundation of what was fun twenty years ago – bouncing around a cool city with a rocket launcher on your back and a souped-up Bond car in your garage – and rebuild that foundation for the modern day. You can't half-ass something like this, or fall back on outdated systems. As the man said: skills for kills.
Check out the litany of upcoming Xbox Series X games we're waiting on in 2026... sadly, a new Crackdown isn't one of them (yet?)
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