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Long read: The beauty and drama of video games and their clouds

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A much longer look at Crackdown 3's destroy-everything multiplayer

It's… real.

Finally, a proper look at Crackdown 3's much-wondered-about multiplayer mode in action, and those big promises of buildings being blown to pieces seem to be... born out. It looks quite fun.

The footage, around 40 minutes of it, comes from French Twitch channel jvtv. It follows a short blast of multiplayer footage aired a few days ago alongside the game's 15th February 2019 release date.

The multiplayer mode in Crackdown 3 is called Wrecking Zone and pits two teams of five against each other in arenas you can apparently completely destroy - a technological feat made possible by Microsoft's Azure cloud. It's this fancy destruction Grand Theft Auto co-creator Dave Jones famously announced on Microsoft's Gamescom stage four years ago, and then poof!, the game disappeared. A twisty-turny tale of Crackdown development unfolded thereafter.

Nevertheless, here is the multiplayer in the flesh, apparently working as intended. Player Agents leap as high as buildings and blow great chunks from buildings, with debris clattering to the ground below.

Crackdown 3 will also have a campaign built by Sumo Digital, and Microsoft has - rather more confidently - shown this in the past.

Not long to wait now, but will it be the Crackdown revival we've been waiting for?

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