Crossfire, Crossfire, CROSSFIRRREEEEEX
I haven’t been looking forward to writing this particular review; and not for the reasons you would think. This is usually the opening bit where us reviewers like to share an anecdote or explain how/why we came upon this game. Usually it works, and it’s a nice little intro into a review, I think. But these are unprecedented times we are living in and because of that we have games like Crossfire X which launched recently exclusively on the Xbox. I am here to confirm every meme, clip, and bug that you may have heard about regarding this game is true. All of it.
Crossfire X is the console port of the STILL popular PC game Crossfire; seriously they have had over 1 billion players and that is impressive. So with an install base like that, the desire to move to consoles and garner fans makes sense, so to help them out with that; publisher Smilegate West turned to the creators of legendary single-player campaigns, Remedy Entertainment in hopes that they could bring in a new audience into the war between the factions of Crossfire.
MSRP: Free-$29.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PC
The campaign’s that Remedy created are by far the best things about Crossfire X. And that’s saying something because both campaigns are pretty basic and average fare that’s commonplace in the FPS market. While Remedy does manage to inject some of their DNA into the shooter by adding a neat bullet-time ability it wasn’t enough to make the roughly six-hour journey (roughly about three hours each campaign) feel like a long harsh slog through the worst conditions possible. It wasn’t even the basic content, or real lack of character development that Remedy is known for; its everything else.
When I initially booted up Crossfire X, on my Xbox Series X mind you the first think I am hit with is the main menu chugging along at about four frames per second. There is a rain effect that is happening in the background that was super dope…when I first saw it in Battlefield 3 or various other games. My point is it’s on display as if it to say “Hey, look kids we have cool water effects” yea well if it makes the frames drop is it really worth it? I digress, but once the game catches up and loads the menu the surprising lack of content may surprise people. There are four options, two of which are the Modern & Classic multiplayer modes which are free. The other two slots are for the Operation Catalyst and Spectre campaigns both of which need to be purchased however Operation Catalyst is included with a Game Pass subscription which is nice.
Jumping into the ‘Modern’ multiplayer tab will give players a choice between two modes with a 3rd coming soon, the baffling part is that there is only 1 map per mode. Yea… you read that right, 1 map for Search & Destroy and one map for Point Capture. And if you thought that the ‘Classic’ tab was going to give you some sweet Counter-Strike vibes…well you’d be right but those good vibes quickly turn to horrible nightmares. The only real difference I can tell in-between the two modes is that in ‘Classic’ players don’t have access to ADS unless you are using a sniper rifle. Apparently not wanting to stop the “severe lack of content” trend that they have going; players will find three new modes (Search and Destroy is available in Classic) with three new maps; of course, each mode is locked to one map. In the year of our Lord, this two-thousand two hundred and twenty-two; how a multiplayer F2P game that is going to live and breathe via microtransactions launches with this little content is truly beyond me.
The lack of content would be forgivable IF the game was actually playable. There are so many problems with this game, it makes Cyberpunk’s original launch look like sheer perfection in compassion. I’m serious here folks, you name it and it’s broken; the UX is built for the PC, so players move the slowest mouse pointer around to toggle tabs. The graphics are extremely dated for this to be a game that was used to showcase the power of the Series X before launch. Controls are the ABOSULTE worst and there is no way to adjust aim acceleration or even tweak sensitivity to a degree that makes it feel remotely comfortable. Now, this is just my opinion of course, kudos for those that have made it work and in fact please hit me up and help me adjust mine; because after days of trying various settings I gave up. Animations are janky and look awkward from a distance as if the characters were animated with Claymation. I really could go on, but I will just say I have no earthly (or heavenly for that matter) idea how this made it past QA and out for release.
CrossfireX is a bad game in its current state, the developers have committed to fixing quite a few of the issues with the game with controls being one of them. But we have to review the product that was given and not the one we hope it to be and as I said CrossfireX is bad. It is available on Xbox Game Pass currently, which makes it easier for me to tell people to give it a try, but I warn you, you wont like what you see. (That is a line from The Shadow if you didn’t know…I’m a movie nerd too) Basically that’s it, if you wanna give it a shot then the price of admission is awesome and maybe you will be one who will find something to like here. As for me, I’ll give this a few patches and come back and see if the game has improved because right now, I most assuredly did not get caught up in CrossfireX.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
