We recently got a chance to check out the Alpha version of new team vehicle brawler Crossout from Gaijin Entertainment, originally seeing the games at GamesCom 2015, we were given access to an alpha account to test the game in our own time. Putting a few hours into playing the game and testing the various features we have to say that there is a pretty good title on its way to you all, but we’re not without a few reservations.

Starting out we were taken straight to our main home screen where we could select our freebie vehicle that we’d been allocated, a beat up old truck with a machine gun turret attached to it, it wasn’t much to look at it in comparison to the types of vehicles we’d seen, but it would do for now. Hitting “Build” pulled us into the garage with our vehicle where we could completely strip it down into its basic components; wheels, frames, structure parts, weapons, cab, armor, components, each piece of the vehicle was its own individual item that has various connection points to attach it to other parts. We could turn, rotate and flip each part to reposition them, with the tab button we had instant access to our Storage and all the other objects we currently had access to for making our machine monstrosity. It literally feels like being a kid again playing with Legos and making some weird creations out of all the odd shapes we had.

There’s a near endless amount of customization available, whilst there are limitations in some places how one item can be attached to another, the sheer number of components available and the ways they can be arranged and combined completely makes up for it and when out on the battlefield it’s always exciting to see the ingenuity of some players and their builds. When creating a vehicle you do have some mechanical restrictions, to keep the game as balanced as possible, primarily coming in the form of TEC and Energy. Each item has its own TEC value, from small chassis parts to the largest weapons, radios and satellites that you can put on your vehicle; typically the greater the boon an item might give the higher its TEC value and so players can’t go completely overboard and have a ridiculous number of weapons. Energy value is determined by the type of battery, weapons and electrical components such as the self-righting car jack (that flips your car over if you end up on your roof) all take up a certain amount of the vehicles battery, so you are limited in this way as to how many components you can have. You can of course increase your TEC threshold and equip higher quality batteries to increase your Energy, but these take time and money to get access to.

When your build is complete you are able to test drive it before heading into battle, an open area complete with ramps to test your vehicles mobility and a duplicate copy of your vehicle that you can test your weapons on and see just how easy you are to destroy. The further you advance into the game obviously the more options you have, extra parts, more powerful weapons, more cosmetics, so early on the amount of customizing you can do is a little limiting, our own attempts at being creative resulted in a tiny lorry cab on top of 4 wheels that would end up on its back every time we accelerate due to being too heavy in the rear, and a truck with four wheels but not steering wheels so we could only drive in a straight line… back to the drawing board with that one.

Accessing new components, weapons or generally upgrading your vehicle generally revolves around upgrading your Camp, a feature of the game where players own and can upgrade four different buildings: Residential, Marketplace, Workshop and Garage, all of which will cost Scrap (the main currency in the game earned by fighting in matches). Some upgrades do have level requirements and so players can’t simply buy their way to the top, but the early upgrades don’t cost too much and can be accessed after only a handful of games. When upgrading your Workshop players then get access to crafters who can use Scrap to make various components for you, each item must be made individually so if you want to create an 18-wheeler big rig then you need to make each wheel individually and put it into your Storage. Players can get access to new item schematics, earn items through completing missions or trade with each other and buy them on the Marketplace.

With a vehicle made (and tested) we finally headed into battle. The matches take on the form of team deathmatches with the dual objective of either capture the enemy base by occupying it with your vehicle, or destroying all the enemy teams’ vehicles. Battle is very fast and adrenaline packed and it’s only in the heat of battle that you start to realise the strengths and weaknesses of your creations: our own front wheel drive meant our back end skidded out a lot, which was useful for some quick mobility around corners, but had us turning in circles a lot of the time one dusty terrain and there was a time where we totally lost control and ended up in a toxic lake. Every component that you place on your vehicle can be shot or smashed off, the game has melee weapons not just ranged, including armor, frames, components and wheels; it’s only with the destruction of your cab that you are out of the fight and so there were plenty of times where a vehicle was sat in the middle of the battlefield with no wheels acting like a turret waiting to be picked off.

Battles in general are actually quite short lived, around the three minute mark seemed to be the norm for us, though whether this scales up to be a little longer as players get more durability and armor on their vehicles (though mitigated with more powerful weapons so perhaps not). This meant that it could be a little frustrating if you died early in the game, which was more than possible, and then had to sit around for two minutes to see the outcome; quitting the match would lead to item damage, which we found odd given that we were trying to leave when we’d already been removed from the fight. Early games for us consisted of a lot of AI fights with a couple of players sprinkled in, and the AI generally sucks when it comes to tactics, they seem to bee-line for objectives even if the enemy has started capturing their own base, they never head back and so it gets a little frustrating. Fortunately as the matches are so short that frustration is short lived, however, the short matches might be one of the bigger issues with the game as it does mean you cycle through all the maps very quickly and seeing them constantly pop up can get a little samey. It’s an odd situation as in different game you might spend 20 minutes on a map in one sitting, but being on the same map for 3 minutes at a time but seeing it 7 times in the same hour (equating to nearly the same amount of time spent on a 20 minute map) seems like a lot longer. If the game doesn’t have a constant influx of maps then we can see it getting a little tedious unfortunately.

CONCLUSION:

• Pros: So much customization you can make near any vehicle you can think of, battles are brutal and very fast paced, the Camp advancement is a nice touch.


• Cons: The available maps can get repetitive seeing them pop up so often, dying early in a game means sitting around waiting until the match ends which is pretty boring.

Rating: TBD

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