Crackdown, the original Xbox 360 version, is currently free to purchase and play on the Xbox Live Store for both Xbox 360 players and Xbox One thanks to backwards compatibility.

This is likely a move made to hype up anticipation for Crackdown 3, which will be launching on Xbox One and PC on February 15, 2019. Crackdown originally released for the Xbox 360 on February 20, 2007 and was mainly sold on the marketing of the Halo 3 beta that was bundled with copies of the game. Thankfully it turned out Crackdown was actually a pretty fun open world action game that didn't take itself too seriously. A sequel followed on July 6, 2010 but was disappointing for mainly failing to build on much of what the first game did. Crackdown then went into hibernation for quite some time until E3 2014 when it was revealed a new Crackdown would be coming to Xbox One and would feature complete destructibility thanks to the power of the cloud.

However, thanks to Microsoft's backtracking on its original always-online plans Crackdown 3 got thrown into a sort of limbo with small updates coming every now and then but no real gameplay or demo's available for the game. Delays occurred, Terry Crews got brought on to help promote the game, its November 2017 release date got pushed back, eventually settling on February 2019. Crackdown takes place in Pacific City with four islands and three major gangs vying for control. As an agent for The Agency (very clever) you get to run around, blow stuff up, and collect orbs. Oh, so many orbs. Crackdown 3 is hoping to tap back into the fun of the original but for a new generation of consoles.

The cloud based destruction is still in the game technically, though now relegated to multiplayer matches where two teams of five go head to head against each other and can freely destroy anything and everything they see, given they have the right tools.

Crackdown 3 is set to release on February 15, 2019 and you can pre-order it on Amazon for Xbox One and PC or sign up for Xbox Game Pass as it will be available at launch on that service as well. Those who have an Xbox Insider App can also participate in a Wrecking Zone: Technical Test that will test out the multiplayer portion of the game starting tomorrow, February 5, 2019.