CrossfireX review: Remedy’s biggest blunder

More than 690 million users are registered. Crossfire is perhaps the world’s biggest multiplayer shooter. Remedy Entertainment created a single-player campaign that was included in the Xbox’s recent Xbox release. Control, Max Payne, Alan WakeTo list a few, It’s a pity then, that despite being masters of narrative, world-building, and high-minded ideas, and with such a huge property to work with, Remedy has delivered mediocrity this time around.

Crossfire Smilegate Entertainment, a South Korean developer who created it originally. The app has an enormous following in South Korea as well as China. Counter-StrikeIt is similar to other team-based shooters. Players are placed in the shoes of opposing, but conceptally identical teams, Black List or Global Risk. According to lore, they are both mercenary teams. One is an alleged terrorist organization that claims to fight freedom, while the other is an antiterrorist group which asserts law and order.

Well, fine. It’s possible. Since time immemorial, multiplayer shooting has been possible by having two distinct teams. Problem is, this antagonism does not hold water in story-based gaming. Instead, players simply exchange bullets and do not take time to question these principles.

The “Catalyst” campaign sees players in the boots of a Global Risk team flown into Every Eastern European Wartorn Town that’s ever appeared in military shooters to take down a Black List leader. The story is narrated by a character called Captain Hall, who’s so generic he might as well be called John Smith. He’s a plot vector designed to fit archetypal roles: father, husband, friend. Is he a father, husband or friend? I don’t know. His personality and dialogue are as shallow as his plot. He’s a sieve through which the story is pushed, before it becomes a cut-up mess on the other side.

Image: Remedy Entertainment/Smilegate

Hall receives bizarre dreams-like messages in the story from his friends. Black List seems to have found a computer supercomputer called the Catalyst which can accurately predict the future, provided it is able to find the correct host. Having finished both campaigns, I still have no idea what the Catalyst looked like, where it came from, or who may have made it.” It simply … was there.

Three characters can be switched between: Randall, Hall, and Moralez, the assault trooper. It takes place in a monotonous and poorly maintained environment, including buildings and tufts, abandoned parks and other traces of human life. You can find both Catalyst And the next campaign. Spectre, ordinary citizens don’t seem to exist — everyone is either carrying a gun or on their way to pick one up.

The opening sequence for “Spectre” drops players — literally, from a helicopter — onto a moving train, where they take on the role of a man by the name of Logan. Black List is now the target of players. Players must now eliminate the mercenary from the previous campaign. This is one interesting bit of script manipulation. The game wants players to sympathize with the man, no matter how difficult it might be.

Spectre’s bombastic intro sees players moving from the train to night-time urban environments, fighting up to the top of a corporate building, and destroying said structure. Players are able to shift their perspective and find themselves in the shoes Torres, a petty theft victim who is wanted for an unsolved crime. This raises fascinating possibilities, and hints at gathering plot momentum — Philip K. Dick explored this concept in The Minority Report after all, to stunning effect.”

Remedy doesn’t live up to that promise. Although they are masters of strange sci-fi storytelling, these storytellers, who can be paragons, provide very little background, pacing or plotting in order to achieve their lofty goals. Torres is deemed a future criminal, and Global Risk attempts to thwart a future calamity, while you’re along for the ride — a bumpy, jittering, often disorienting ride. Although it isn’t a fantastic Remedy video game either in terms of story or awareness, the gun controls feel sturdy and the death animations seem incredibly realistic. This is Remedy in the bones and muscles, but it’s not its spirit.

Image: Remedy Entertainment/Smilegate

As a bundle, however Catalyst Spectre might be the worst-paced video game stories I’ve encountered in recent years, populated by shallow characters and anchored only by whispers of intrigue, rather than actual compelling plot threads. In the end, it all showed a mere glimmer of that Remedy weirdness I’ve come to love over the years. Tales of “weird ancient super computers that can destroy the world” or “magic soldiers becoming harbingers of doom” are This is exactly in Remedy’s wheelhouse — yet, CrossfireX Never explore them in intriguing ways. They are not. ControlIn a world where the players encountered the most unusual concepts, in-universe explanations were used to flesh out the story and connect all pieces. Incomplete absence of such tethering. CrossfireX. It’s all just glorified window dressing.

Remedy feels as if it is trying to replicate its previous greatness but not understanding what makes the other projects so special. Remedy has used fears of self-destruction, fragility and fear to create its unique brand of music. Strange. ControlWe used a superhero origin story as a way to illustrate how even the most common things could cause death. Alan Wake To illustrate the power and impact of storytelling, we used a campy horror story to show our appreciation. Max Payne He took an ordinary growly cop game and turned it into poetry, showing us how absurd self-destruction is.

I kept hoping and waiting for some similar Remedy subversion in this mediocre military shooter — waiting for some Remedy splinter that would pop out of the skin of this boring carcass of a game. But nothing happened. Remedy’s brand is merely a thin film into which this limp mess was stuffed.

I have always been excited for Remedy’s worlds — the stories the studio tells, the concepts its creators play with. While there are many studios that do great action, few can produce well-written stories with weird concepts. This is what you should do. CrossfireX, Remedy appears to have lost its identity, and only delivered the same thing that so many other studios were capable of.

The characters are not something I know much about. The voice acting was very evident OffThis is a bad B-grade action flick. The story often seemed like B-grade crap. That doesn’t necessarily equate to “bad” — look how Remedy treated the campy horror of Stephen King in Alan Wake and elevated it to be a genuinely creepy and fascinating narrative — with memorable characters, settings and clever ideas. Genre doesn’t determine boundaries. Here, however, it feels a little off. If you decide to play this for the Remedy name alone, don’t expect the Remedy pedigree to come with it.

CrossfireX Game Pass enabled the release of this game on Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Xbox One on February 10. Smilegate Entertainment gave the Xbox a pre-release downloading code. Vox Media also has affiliate relationships. Although these partnerships do not impact editorial content, Vox Media could earn commissions on products sold via affiliate links. Find out more. additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.