Releasing CrossfireX onto Game Pass may ensure it gets some attention, but even then Xbox’s platform has so many better alternatives. This game landing in the public eye at this moment, this year, is bonkers. Perhaps the best thing about the campaigns is that they’re both mercifully short. I was waiting for a flash of brilliance, even a brief moment of excitement to burst through the murky fog of mediocrity, but it never came. It feels about ten years late to the party, despite Remedy’s best efforts to make the campaign offerings in any way engaging. Even outside, enemy soldiers shout with echoing voices like they’re sitting in little tin boxes.ĬrossfireX is a below-average game, all things considered. It has a lifeless quality not seen regularly since the mid-noughties, where drab soldiers are almost invisible against dull concrete backdrops. At the very least it adds to the sub-par Metal Gear Solid atmosphere CrossfireX appears to be shooting for. There’s no reason your squad of identi-heroes can alter physical reality – but then there was no reason Max Payne could do it either and Remedy gotta Remedy, I guess. There’s also an unexplained bullet time mechanic that trivialises most encounters because it recharges fast and lasts for ages. You’ve about as much agency in what happens to you as a bobblehead on a tumble dryer. All the cool stuff happens in cutscenes, and the rest of the time you just shoot, move, repeat. They run at you, stand still on grenades, and occasionally you’ll find one standing behind you shooting you and missing from three feet away. Enemies are dumb, and will endlessly spawn until you push forward. Global Risk’s sniper, Randall, sounds like Idris Elba, while The Blacklist’s Cora is at least an interesting character with conviction.īut the gameplay is sorely lacking. They’re incredibly generic and painfully dull, but they don’t do anything wrong. In fact the cast of both stories are pretty decent. The issues come not necessarily from the plots or even the characters. Both are okay, but that’s as high as I can set the praise. The second sees stock bad guys The Blacklist attempting to develop dehumanised super soldiers. The first sees Global Risk searching for the Catalyst, a kind of magic 8-ball for warfare. There’s some interesting tech at work on either side of the conflict. Remedy’s involvement does add an element of sci-fi, though. And Remedy are just throwing darts at it and including whatever they hit. I can imagine a wall somewhere covered in post-it notes with FPS tropes scrawled on them. The fact that Remedy are involved is the weirdest part. Soon they’re fighting for their lives, against braindead enemy soldiers and heavily signposted betrayals. The story begins in media res, with the PMC sending a small unit into Generistan to capture an arms dealer. The first focuses on Global Risk, the “good guys” of CrossfireX. There are two: Operation Catalyst and Operation Spectre. The campaigns only fair marginally better. But this is stuff we’ve seen so any times before, and the idea that this is one of the most played multiplayer FPS games in the world is mind-boggling. Spectre is probably the best mode, which gives one side knives and smoke bombs and the other guns and grenades. There’s the usual Search and Destroy, zone control, etc. Sadly none of the modes do anything new or interesting. When you die you stay dead, and must watch the rest of the match or round. It’s also maddeningly frustrating to play, as there’s no respawn. With only one map per mode, and all the modes themselves following a very standard set of templates, the multiplayer element just feels kind of lacklustre. What this actually boils down to is that Classic removes the ADS and sprint, while Modern is, well, normal. This is CrossfireX’s bread and butter mode, with multiple objective modes and a choice between Modern and Classic control schemes. Problems began right away, when I jumped into the multiplayer. Given Remedy’s catalog, you’d be forgiven for expecting something special. What’s perhaps even stranger is that there are two single player campaigns available for this version – and they were developed by Remedy Entertainment. Unfortunately, CrossfireX is nothing but a poor man’s Battlefield. And with Smilegate at the helm, I expected big things just based on Lost Ark. After all, 670m registered users is impressive, even for a free-to-play title. A lot of noise has been made about how CrossfireX is one of the most played games in the world.
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