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The original Crackdown is free on the Xbox One

The original Crackdown is free on the Xbox One

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It’s worth a download

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To drum up hype for Crackdown 3’s release on February 15th (and as a consolatory gift for making gamers wait so long), Microsoft is making the original Crackdown free for all Xbox One owners. The game, which originally launched in 2007 on the Xbox 360, is backwards compatible on the Xbox One S and Xbox One X. If Crackdown is your first foray into the series, it’s a good place to start. Though its mission design and NPC dialogue haven’t aged all that well, you’ll still get at least a few hours of entertainment running around its open world, collecting orbs, and quickly scaling buildings with superhuman leaps.

Microsoft last offered Crackdown for free during its XO18 fan festival in November 2018 when it announced backwards compatibility support for the title, adding that Crackdown 3 would be coming to Xbox Game Pass at launch. Speaking of Game Pass, Microsoft’s buffet-style subscription service for games, the company recently announced that Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Batman: Return to Arkham, among others, will soon join the service’s catalog.