Battles of cars made from scrapyard pieces – this is Crossout in a nutshell. This online production makes you feel like you’re in the Mad Max movies, albeit the micropayment mechanism isn’t ideal, as is typical with Free to Play games.
The gameplay is reminiscent to free-to-play tank games. In the primary mode, two eight-person teams play on relatively tiny maps, with the objective of capturing a certain zone, however you may instead win by just eliminating all opponents. When we obtain weapons other than the basic rifle, the game gets much more entertaining – the destruction system comes in handy here, allowing us to shoot off an enemy’s wheel, or even a gun or other element of a car, and then finish off the poor individual. This approach allows you to successfully slow down or ground a deadly opponent and beat him from a distance. Just as in War Thunder, staying mobile and adequately positioned is critical to success. The maps are constructed in such a way that we can hide behind anything in most spots. We can’t just go headlong into a swarm of opponents.
We have the option of cooperative combat with bots in addition to the standard mode, which is not extremely fascinating, even when we have additional tasks to achieve, such as protecting a point. There’s also free-for-all fun, which is a welcome change from the more systematic team bouts. At higher levels, we may even engage in battles with bigger machines, which can be constructed by the players themselves. Outside of the battles, everything we do looks too difficult and convoluted. There is a faction system, for example, in which we climb to higher degrees of reputation to gain new components and plans for new vehicles. However, without various components such as metal plates, wires, or screws, there was no mechanism for making your own cars, which was one of the game’s finest features. True, we can’t allow our imaginations go wild if we want the vehicle to be useful on the battlefield, but building the vehicle ourselves is still an intriguing aspect. We can even design cars without wheels, depending on anti-gravity fields. In addition to the entertaining gameplay, we have micropayments and related issues, as seen in other Gaijin games or competitive Wargaming products. Crossout has instances when we definitely feel as if the game is tempting us to grab for our pocketbook.
We made a new account to start the game from scratch, just as many potential players would. Everything appears to be good at first, but after a few hours, we find that gathering new materials and pieces required to build and enhance vehicles is a time-consuming procedure. Furthermore, if we use one of the paid vehicles right away, we will almost completely dominate the battlefield in the first dozen or so matches – until we reach level 5-6 – because we will almost entirely use machine guns, while we ourselves will operate with a heavier caliber.
Ultimately, despite numerous flaws in the advancement mechanism and acquiring new car parts, Crossout leaves a favorable impression. It’s a speedier, post-apocalyptic, and slightly warped take on War Thunder. Anyone may begin playing the game for free, so it’s worth a go.