Is Crackdown 3 struggling to take off solely because of bad reviews?

Aside from the intense pressures that devs experience during the development of a game, the tension really doesn’t let up once the title is out on the streets.

That’s because, in our constantly online culture, people can voice their pleasure or every annoyance with as little effort as typing out a message on clicking on the mouse. Social media and critical reviews of games thus have a bigger impact on the financial success of a game than many of us like to realise. The recently released Crackdown 3 might be yet another victim of failed marketing hype – or it could just be a bad video game.

Crackdown 3 not winning over critics

Where you stand on the issue probably depends on a lot of things, but one thing is sure: Crackdown 3 isn’t winning the ever-more-critical war of social media and it is already causing panic on the publisher’s side.

After numerous delays and setbacks, Crackdown 3’s release was met less with anticipation and more with a spirit of skepticism and even outright apprehension. Critical reviews more or less panned the game, giving it an average of 60 out of 100 on Metacritic as of press. Needless to say, reader reviews are even less kind, with a 4.4 score being the current average so far.

For a game that came out on February 15, that’s pretty bad and would be enough to kill most titles. Nonetheless, Xbox Game Studios is fighting back, but maybe not in the most constructive ways.

Early price drop speaks volumes

In what many are taking as a move that only underlines the game’s lack of quality, the price was recently lowered to $30. That’s a steep drop so soon after release. For people who bought the game early on, there’s a feeling of bitterness and wariness. Surely this can’t bode well for the future of the game. Further evidence of what can only be called Microsoft’s folly with lowering the price is seen in IGN’s article, where they delineate how a game’s price and a game’s quality are not connected.

This point is probably not as clear cut as IGN would like for it to be. Many of us take value into consideration when it comes to indie titles and the like. But high standards are typically the norm for triple-A titles, and that makes Crackdown 3’s lacklustre package an almost unforgivable sin in modern gaming media.

Are people clouded by negative press?

Fans of the game will argue that many people are not giving it a fair shake, mainly due to the negative press it has received so far. This is a far and logical argument.

Yet it is hard to ignore the almost universally negative critical response the game has. Sure, in some instances it might be the case that reviewers are biased or that websites tend to favor certain devs over others. But where there is such universal consensus, there is often a universal reason for it and, as far as we can tell with Crackdown 3, it’s just not the game people were expecting.