My Week With Crackdown 3

There are many high quality games in my collection that don’t receive much playing time because my attention is divided between other games. I’m not a gamer that buys just one game and then focuses all my effort on that one game until I complete it. Instead, I love variety as a gamer and just because I play, and enjoy a game one day does not mean that I want to play it again the next time I turn on the computer or console. So even though I purchased Crackdown 3 for the PC back in May, it wasn’t until this week that I took the time to take it for a true test ride.

I had played a few hours of the game back in May and had good first impressions of it. When Crackdown 3 was first released, many of the reviews slammed the game for being bland and not living up to the reputation of the first two Crackdowns before it. There were gamers that were turned off at the downgrade in the graphics from the original trailer to the final product. Even with all of that, I knew for myself that Crackdown 3 was going to be a game that I would enjoy once I immersed myself in it. That’s all that really mattered for me.

So I start playing Crackdown 3 this past Tuesday and then suddenly found myself back at the main menu three minutes later with the “SOLO CAMPAIGN” option grayed out and inaccessible. There was also a message that read, “A running process may be interfering with the correct operation of Crackdown 3…” At first, I thought I hit a key by accident that made this occur. But when I restarted the game and it kept happening repeatedly, I knew there was a problem. I searched the internet for solutions and found other gamers that were having similar issues and tried some solutions they suggested. Nothing happened after hours of searching out information and trying different methods.

On Wednesday, I decided to call Microsoft directly. I spent about three hours on the phone with three different representatives. We went through turning off Windows Antivirus and Windows Defender, uninstalling and reinstalling Crackdown 3, as well as updating Windows. At the end of the call, I still had no solution. At that point, I was tired and thought about just moving on from Crackdown 3 altogether. But I couldn’t let it go. I wanted to play Crackdown 3 this week and I was determined to play it. This was something I was going to figure out.

At 1 a.m., on Thursday morning, I finally had my breakthrough. I decided to run Malwarebytes and quarantined the three files that the program discovered. From there, I opened up the Task Manager and decided to go down the list of the background processes one-by-one, closing out the ones that I knew weren’t necessary. One particular process named “Nahamic service” caught my interest and I searched it on the internet. I found that not only was it an unnecessary process but it was causing certain games to crash as they were starting up. While I saw nothing related to Crackdown 3, I decided to still go ahead and end that specific process. Then I booted up Crackdown 3 and played for 2 1/2 hours before going to bed. The game did not crash one time and has not since.

This game brings a smile to my face. I like that it isn’t as crude or vulgar as Grand Theft Auto V or Saints Row III and IV. Being able to be a protagonist that is about fighting crime and ultimately helping the citizens within the city is another reason why I prefer this game. I love the action, the weapons, the abilities, and I get a kick out of Terry Crews being in the game. Can the graphics be better? Sure. Could the game be filled out with more things to do like GTA 5? Yes. Do I feel it needs those things as I judge Crackdown 3 on its own merit? No.

Many gamers that have lived at least as long as I have remembered the days of blocky characters and blurry pixelated graphics that characterized a significant portion of our gaming history. I can understand the perspective of gamers that began playing in the high definition era looking at the graphics of Crackdown 3 unfavorably. Furthermore, with the enormous amount of content that similar games in the genre contain, I also can see why some gamers would feel that Crackdown 3 doesn’t have enough. Again, it is based on perspective as I grew up during an era where a highly regarded game could be finished in one hour. For me, Crackdown 3 hits the right notes.

I first became introduced to the Crackdown series when I bought the first game for the Xbox 360 on sale last December. Overall, I believe the series is very underrated and there is so much fun to be had in all three games. Games like Crackdown are the types where what you get out of it is based on what you put into it and how you play. I’m just happy to be able to play Crackdown 3 again and being able to make things go all kinds of kablooey.

-TVGA