Crossout Review

If you like the concept of being Mad Max, than you’ll probably enjoy this game.

Crossout is a free to play game that is centred around vehicular PvP in an apocalyptic wasteland. It is structured very similarly to the PC game Robocraft, but has improved massively on the overall concept.

You get to build your vehicle out of parts, adding bits like the structure, utilities, or weapons. The structure parts tend to be allocated to the outside of the vehicle, whether it be fenders, pipes or panels. Each piece increases the collective health of your vehicle, whilst adding up to your total part count.

Each is weighted the same, so both small and large parts will count towards the total with the exact amount. But there is another limit that you have to worry about. The tonnage of your vehicle can be reached if you add too much weight to it, so smaller bits can be more useful overall if you want to build a light scout vehicle. You’ll want to stick to heavier parts if you want to build a tank (this means class or a literal tank, seeing as they have treads in this game) or a bit of a rammer.

The total tonnage of your vehicle is decided by the cabin part that you put on your vehicle. The other stats determined include Power, which in itself determines how many utility and weapons you can include on your vehicle, and also top speed and acceleration.

From what I’ve seen, weight does have an effect on overall performance of the vehicle, so your big Semi-truck won’t have the acceleration of a buggy, for the added weight will cause it slow down.

The other thing you have to worry about is your CoM, or Center of Mass. If you don’t have it in the right spot, which typically is a little behind or in front of your turning tires, than you’ll have a lot of difficulty driving your vehicle. You’ll spin out or not have a very small turning circle because the physics engine is pretty good.

Now, there are many utilities, but they are all pretty self explanatory.

Radars increase the range with which you spot enemies on minimaps, drills do damage on contact and coolers reduce weapon cooldown. However, there are a few that are newer and warrant structuring your vehicle to include them.

The first of these is the Car Jack. This allows you to flip your car over in case you roll it and can’t recover. This comes in handy if you decide to dive off a cliff onto an enemy, or if your enemy decides to push you off a bridge. If you don’t include a Car Jack, then you’ll have to wait 30 seconds for the Auto-Jack to become available, and the flip could fail and trap you for another 30 seconds without anything left for you to do. It may even leave you open to enemy fire on your structural underbelly.

The second thing you’ll want to bring is a Petrol Barrel, a utility item that doesn’t use power. The Petrol Barrel is a dangerous thing to keep on your car, mostly because it can explode with ridiculous amounts of damage, almost always killing you immediately. The best way to circumvent your fiery demise is to cover the barrel up and prevent it from facing direct fire. This usually means putting other utilities in front of it, or covering it on all sides with fenders and roofing.

The reason the barrel is so useful comes from what it gives you, should you keep the barrel intact and you win the match. You see, it gives you fuel, a resource that allows you to participate in raids. You get 25 fuel for every victory, and so you can easily rack up hundreds of fuel points if you work on self preservation.

The last item that I recommend acquiring is the rocket boosters. These allow you to take on a large amount of speed for a short period, allowing for powerful rams into your enemy. The only issue is that turning is not recommended, which brings us on to the issue of the driving in Crossout.

The driving is, strangely, the worst part of this game. It mostly comes from the fact that it is an analog stick driving system, so you push your left stick forwards to accelerate. You also use that stick to steer, and as nobody pushes an analog stick straight forwards, you’ll probably spin out or get latched onto a teammate because you tapped them and your wheels locked together.

This game would benefit heavily from being just like any other driving game and leaving the trigger for acceleration and the fine control to the analog stick, rather than having them bound to one thing.

The reason why the acceleration and steering are on the same thing is because the game allots all of the face buttons, the triggers, and maybe one of the bumper buttons for weapons. Which is, in no uncertain terms, way too many weapon buttons. You can rebind a lot of the settings, but there is still no changing for the acceleration and steering options. If there were an option to have trigger driving over steering, it would make it much easier to enjoy the actual gameplay side of things.

The final part of the game, the combat, is pretty much as expected. The vehicles take damage, and the cannons have massive recoil, but there is a nice touch to it: there is actual individual part damage. If you shoot a part enough times, it falls off, enabling you to disable your enemies by shooting out the tires. You can also have your parts shot off, so you have to make sure that your armor covers all of your integral parts, otherwise your connected parts can see you turning from a tower of guns into a neutered vehicle.

Crossout also has a well worked factions system alongside a few other things that really are worth mentioning. Every time you finish a match, you get reputation points that will increase your standing with the faction you choose. The increase of ranking helps increase your total of points available, whilst also letting you craft new parts, which can give you extra power score for your vehicle.

There’s a player market that allows you to trade parts for coins, and there’s even a way to load and use other blueprints from players if you want to gain inspiration from others who might be more acquainted with the building system. There is also the Leviathan mode, which is hidden behind a level 17 wall. After quite a few hours of playing and actually getting a decent performance on most of my matches, I’ve still not quite reached Leviathan approval, but it is basically a mode in which you design a massive enemy, and the blueprint is added to the overall pool of available enemies. Then, with three other like minded warriors, you take on said Leviathan in a cooperative measure to destroy the massive boss.

Overall, Crossout is great. There’s a decent progression system, there’s a nice combination of skill and creativity, and the matches don’t feel all that repetitive, especially when you go up against some awesome tank designs. It is well worth the time downloading and playing. You don’t even have to fiddle with the building process, for it’s easy to utilise the nice schematics others have created.

If you’re looking for something to get your teeth into, something with a nice progression system and loads of content that will keep you busy, then Crossout is the game for you.