Crackdown 3 retains the core gameplay of Crackdown and Crackdown 2, featuring a number of different organizations controlling the city of New Providence that players need to take down by killing their bosses and Kingpins, destroying their facilities, and destabilizing their infrastructures. Players can use a variety of weapons to achieve this end, from guns to grenades to rocket launchers, as well as their own physical power. Players can also drive any vehicle found in-game. Picking up a new weapon or driving a new vehicle for the first time will add it to the player's collection at any supply point. The game features the "Skills for Kills" system as found in previous games, in which killing enemies with different tools and finding pickups hidden throughout the city award the player with orbs, which increase the player's core skills – agility, firearms, strength, explosives, and driving. Each time a skill levels up, the player unlocks an additional maneuver or item related to that skill, such as ground-pounding by leveling up strength, or double-jumping by leveling up agility. Agility Orbs, Rooftop Races, Driving Rings, and Road Races are also located throughout the city, all of which will increase the related skill upon collection or completion; Hidden Orbs can be found as well, and will increase all of the player's skills at once.
Different activities are connected to different bosses and underbosses; completing these activities, such as destroying vehicle lockups, liberating monorail stations, and destroying machinery, allows the player to acquire more intel on each boss, and the boss location is revealed on the map once enough intel has been collected. The boss of each branch of TerraNova controls a certain element of defense for the final boss, and killing each of them weakens an aspect of the final boss's fortress. However, causing a certain level of chaos towards one branch of the organization will send more and more reinforcements from that branch as the player's heat level increases, and being at the highest level for too long can result in a city-wide lockdown, forcing the player to kill a certain number of reinforcements to lift it and access their supply points again.
Crackdown 3 features cooperative play in both campaign mode and Keys to the City mode, which allows free roam throughout New Providence.
