It is worth noting that Smilegate hasn’t made any official announcements for a potential Western release of Crossfire: Rainbow so far. The title is coming to PC, iOS and Android, and according to its trailer’s description, is being developed on Unreal Engine 5. The trailer itself was uploaded by a fan of the Crossfire series rather than Smilegate itself. Showcasing the PC version, it offers a mix of in-game cinematics and gameplay with some admittedly sleek-looking photo-realistic visuals.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t reveal much in the way of story aside from some supernatural elements at play, with the player character at one point even spotting a sinister human-shaped silhouette in a hallway before they are distracted by a nearby painting falling off the wall.

When it comes to gameplay, Crossfire: Rainbow will seemingly be inspired by other first-person horror shooters like Resident Evil Village, with the player having access to quite a few weapons to take on the seemingly supernatural threats with. While the trailer does feature an assault rifle in the beginning, we really only get to see what gunplay will look like for a pistol and a shotgun.

The game also seems to have a crafting system, and the fact that players can create makeshift suppressors for their pistol would also indicate that stealth might be one of the options as we make our way through the game. At a later point, the player also crafts a Molotov cocktail, which is then promptly used on a much tougher enemy that won’t just go down in a few shots from a pistol or shotgun.

While we don’t get to see too much of it, there also seems to be a mechanic for the player character’s sanity at play, with audio and visual hallucinations starting up when an indicator in the bottom-left corner is almost entirely red.

The last big game in the Crossfire series – Crossfire: Legion – launched all the way back in December 2022. However, the title didn’t seem to garner much of an audience and ultimately peaked at less than 400 concurrent players at launch. Last month, Smilegate Entertainment, along with developer Blackbird Interactive, announced that Crossfire: Legion would be delisted from Steam on August 18. The studio also said that it would be providing refunds to players “in accordance with the Steam Refund Policy”.

In the meantime, also check out details of CrossfireX losing support, along with its campaign going away back in 2023.

Of course, with active development ending, there won’t be any updates or support, which will cause multiplayer to potentially “degrade over time or become unavailable.” The developer said it will provide refunds “in accordance with the Steam Refund Policy” if that happens.

Based on Smilegate Interactive’s Crossfire franchise, Crossfire: Legion is a real-time strategy game with three factions to choose from. The gameplay loop is inspired by Command and Conquer, with players collecting resources, building units and assaulting the enemy. Alongside a campaign, it also supports competitive and co-op multiplayer.

Launched in December 2022, Crossfire: Legion failed to really make a splash, peaking at 383 concurrent players at launch and currently has a “Mixed” rating on Steam. Out of 682 user reviews, only 60 percent recommended it.

Those who have purchased anything within the last 14 days are eligible for refunds. According to this FAQ, even the single-player campaigns developed by Remedy Entertainment will only be available until May 18th. The shop will remain open for spending the remaining currency, but the option to purchase CFP/GP is disabled.

Furthermore, players will only have access to their data, including in-game progression and purchased items, until the game’s closure. As for why support is ending, the company said, “While our team worked hard to push out numerous content updates, including fixes, new maps, modes and in-game events, the game was ultimately not where it needed to be. As a result, we have made the difficult decision to close the game.”

Released in February 2022 for Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, CrossfireX features two single-player campaigns or “Operations” developed by Remedy. The multiplayer is free-to-play, though there are plenty of microtransactions. On release, the campaigns were heavily criticized, with many regarding the entire package as one of the worst games of last year. You can check out our review here.

Crossfire: Sierra Squad will put players in an elite fireteam in the middle of a war over a recently-discovered top-secret biochemical weapon. The game will feature action between rival factions Black List and Global Risk.

The game features a single-player campaign with over 60 missions, and will feature 39 types of weapons, from pistols and rifles, to throwables like grenades. Players can use these weapons to fight against 17 different types of enemies, as well as artillery like helicopters and LAVs.

Crossfire: Sierra Squad is just one of a number of games announced for PlayStation VR2 alongside the release date of the headset. Slated for February 22, other games announced for the headset include The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR, and Cities: VR – Enhanced Edition.

Crossfire: Sierra Squad doesn’t yet have a solid release date, but is slated to be coming to PS VR2 some time in 2023.

Here is the complete list of additions to CrossfireX in its Babylon update:

• Two New Maps – Babylon is a new Occupation map available in the Modern multiplayer mode, and the Satellite map is available in the Search & Destroy, Modern and Classic multiplayer modes.
• Reintroduced Maps – The Submarine map has been introduced with Classic Knife-Team Deathmatch for a limited Time. The Transport Ship map was added to Modern Team Deathmatch mode.
• Game Improvements – An improved matchmaking system, updated control customization options and more customization of the minimap and improvements to the standard aim response curve.
• New Weapons, Skins, and Accessories – Four new base weapons added: AP-45, HAMMER MK2, KALASH-LMG and MODEL 1903, each are purchasable with in-game currency (GP), alongside 25 new weapon skins and three new weapon accessories.
• New In-Game Mission: Rise of Babylon – Players can earn the new KALASH-103 Alpine Strike weapon skin and KALASH-103 Base weapon by playing the Babylon map for more than 100 minutes.
• Free Event Battle Pass + BP EXP Boost Event – Players will be able to unlock up to six free weapon skins, boosts, premium currency (CFP) and in-game currency (GP).

CrossfireX has gone through quite a few updates since its debut in February. It has gotten 10 new maps through updates, 12 new weapons, the Shooting Range mode, the Weapon Mastery system, the Specialty system, and control customisations.

https://youtu.be/CPfR0dGCf24

As detailed on the game’s official website, CrossfireX will be receiving a major update, which includes over 80 bug fixes and other performance-related issues alongside significant rebalances to the gameplay, such as controller sensitivity, fixes to hitboxes, respawn timings, and more. Finally, there’s new content as well- two new maps “Invasion (Spectre Mode)” and “Submarine (melee-only)”, silenced weapons, and a new Battle Pass.

There’s no release window for when the patch will be dropping, so it’s best to keep expectations in check for now. To read our review of CrossfireX, click through here.

To pull together a supposedly more fully formed experience, developer Smilegate brought in Remedy, fresh off their success with Control and the announcement of Alan Wake II, to cobble together two campaign operations focusing on the opposing sides of the Crossfire lore: Global Risk and Black List, two private military groups that see themselves as noble and each other as terrorists. While you can play them in either order, the game pushes you to play Global Risk’s side of the story, titled “Operation Catalyst,” first, not only by the ordering of them in the menu but also by the amount the Black List campaign, “Operation Spectre,” expects you to know about the story, despite the fact that there’s minimal overlap in the plots.

"CrossfireX not only doesn’t make almost any case for why it stands out among the crowd, but it’s so aggressively generic that I will almost certainly forget about it within a month or even a week’s time."

There’s an inherent potential in stories that show the inner workings of two opposing sides to elicit some sympathy and provide a moral gray area, as we’ve seen in games like The Last of Us Part II. CrossfireX’s campaigns waste this potential in record time. In terms of plots, the two stories have almost no connection aside from some characters, the existence of the two groups, and a very specific weapon called the Catalyst. Beyond this, it’s not like you’re playing two different perspectives of the same story. Instead, you’re playing what you could convince me is fever dream propaganda for whatever side you’re currently fighting on to show how terrible the other side is.

In Operation Catalyst, the Global Risk campaign, Black List uses the Catalyst to perform an action so far beyond belief that it borders on laughable. And in Operation Spectre, the Global Risk villain shows all but no motivation for his villainy aside from explaining how terrible he is at every turn. It also doesn’t help that the protagonists, alongside virtually the entire cast of characters, are fully forgettable and lack any kind of emotional consistency or depth. Especially in Operation Spectre, the motivations of the primary playable character, Luis Torres, turn on a dime and have you struggling to keep up with any of his actions.

The campaigns, then, boil down to cookie-cutter generic military shooters, if the cookies took only the lowest quality and fewest amount of ingredients, with around four total hours across two campaigns. They have gorgeous vistas and densely packed textures, but due to the almost unforgivable brevity of each campaign, there’s almost no semblance of pacing. Every chapter is a quick shootout followed by a cutscene and then another shootout, with a running sequence peppered in. Even the astonishingly contrived dream sequences in Operation Catalyst add almost nothing to the experience because they last just a couple of uninspired minutes before you’re back in another generic cutscene.

"The campaigns boil down to cookie-cutter generic military shooters, if the cookies took only the lowest quality and fewest amount of ingredients."

The only saving grace of the campaigns is a segment of the gameplay. The guns intermittently feel tight and easy to aim. That’s not to say that every piece of gameplay feels great. Longer-range weapons lose the tightness you’d hope for, and once you’re past a certain range, enemy AI becomes frustratingly unpredictable, especially when they lose all regard for their own self-preservation. It never gets unpredictable in a difficult way, though; in fact, the game is almost unforgivably easy in some instances where the odds should be massively against you. And it’s sometimes tough to swallow how much the game asks of one character. Other military shooters at least put up a façade of squad members to carry some of the weight of action, but in these campaign operations, you’re frequently taking down enemies in volumes.

In the context of pacing, there really aren’t any gameplay mechanics other than shooting and walking or running. There are even sequences that show wingsuits and vehicles, sections that even older military shooters would have you play, but they’re relegated to elaborate and admittedly gorgeous cutscenes. There’s one hint of a new gameplay mechanic near the end of Operation Spectre, but just when things are about to get interesting, it ends on an entirely abrupt and unsatisfying note. In all honesty, the only reason to play the campaign operations is if you want a brief escape into a mindless, soulless military shooter for a couple of hours that has some enjoyable gunplay if you find the right weapons, but you’ll have to look past a lot of unnecessary and recycled plot along the way.

What Crossfire became known for outside of the West is its multiplayer. While the campaigns were primarily developed by Remedy, the multiplayer was handled by Smilegate, the game’s original developer. The single-player and multiplayer even use different engines, which if you weren’t aware of, you might be able to infer, because the two feel like completely different games, with almost no link between the two aside from the names of the opposing factions.

"It’s difficult to find a case for longevity for this multiplayer when there are so many better multiplayer shooters on the market."

The multiplayer comes in two flavors: Classic and Modern. Classic brings the original Crossfire gameplay over, with no aim down sights and no sprinting. Among the four modes in Classic, really only Team Deathmatch feels like an even match. In most of the other matches I played in any of the other modes, one side would win virtually every single round, and games don’t end after one side wins enough rounds to clinch. Rather, it makes you play every round anyway, so you’ll be forced to play for example, the full ten rounds in the Nano mode, despite the final score being 9 to 1. This happened frequently in my playtime, since this mode so clearly favors those effectively infected that the only chance the humans had at winning was to exploit the uninspired map design to take advantage of a bottleneck.

The Modern multiplayer brings in those updated sensibilities of aiming and sprinting, but almost to the game’s detriment. There doesn’t seem to have been any update to the gun balancing, so you’re still being hit with the damage expected when firing from the hip and in turn die way too quickly. In a mode like Point Capture, this is less of a problem, aside from the static spawn points that allow for easy spawn camping, but in Search & Destroy, this means that you have far too little time to react before you’re out of the round.

Even when you can play normally, both the Classic and Modern multiplayer options are far less fun than most other multiplayer shooters out there. Aiming is finnicky and inconsistent, and gunplay is far less tight or consistent than anything in the campaign. Maps, too, are too small and one-dimensional compared to the standard the industry has grown into over the past few years, and as of writing, there’s only one map for each mode. It’s difficult to find a case for longevity for this multiplayer, either Classic or Modern, when there are so many better multiplayer shooters on the market.

"With its campaign operations, even a gorgeous backdrop with spurts of enjoyable gunplay can’t save it from being the most generic, forgettable military campaign I may have ever played, and its multiplayer – the thing that got it to where it is today – may have even less staying power."

It makes sense why Xbox would want to bring Crossfire over to the West given its popularity, but CrossfireX doesn’t compare to any of the military shooters we’ve seen over the past decade or longer. With its campaign operations, even a gorgeous backdrop with spurts of enjoyable gunplay can’t save it from being the most generic, forgettable military campaign I may have ever played, and its multiplayer – the thing that got it to where it is today – may have even less staying power. There are reasons to try it out, mostly for an understanding of what’s popular around the world, but in an industry where military shooters are everywhere, CrossfireX can’t save itself from getting drowned out.

This game was reviewed on the Xbox Series X.

On the official CrossfireX website, Smilegate Entertainment recently revealed that it is working on a number of fixes based on player feedback to aforementioned issues, among others, while more maps are also on the way. The developer also states that the updates will is planned for early March- which might be a little farther off than some would like.

You can find a list of planned fixes, as provided by Smilegate, below. CrossfireX is available now on Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One.

FIXES:

• ADS with CAR-4 – sometimes the aim-down sight goes in and out while shooting. This is a bug and will be fixed.
• Aim settings – we hear your request for options to adjust aim acceleration and sensitivity settings. We are working on adding more detailed options for the analog stick including acceleration, sensitivity, dead zone and aim assist.
• Sliding – the issue that sliding stops when colliding with the side of an object will be fixed. Also, we will improve the experience of speed reduction while sliding.
• Boogieman imbalance – We will adjust so as not to be able to obtain additional points while being in the Boogieman state. Also, the ability of HP auto-recovery will be removed, and the difficulty of becoming the Boogieman overall will be increased.
• More maps – several maps will be added for both Classic and Modern modes.

Of course, the most noteworthy new addition is the campaign by Remedy Entertainment of Alan Wake and Control fame. It features two Operations – Operation Catalyst and Operation Spectre – each consisting of multiple missions. While the game is available on Xbox Game Pass, only Operation Catalyst is playable for subscribers.

To play the second Operation, you’ll need to purchase the Ultimate Pack which includes the multiplayer component, Season 1 Premium Battle Pass and both Operations for $30. For more details on CrossfireX, check out our feature here. Release windows for new multiplayer content and Operations have yet to be confirmed so stay tuned in the coming months.

However, both Operations won’t be available to Xbox Game Pass subscribers. In a recent tweet by the game’s official Twitter, it confirmed that only Operation Catalyst would be available. In the meantime, there are the game is available to preload on consoles and there are three preorder packages. The Ultimate Pack offers the base game, both Operations and the Season 1 Premium Battle Pass for $30.

Given mixed impressions of Operation Catalyst in previews, it remains to be seen if this will be worth it. But it does point towards Smilegate monetizing its campaign and having players purchase additional Operations like they’re DLC. Time will tell if it goes down this route so stay tuned for more details in the coming months.

CrossfireX releases on February 10th for Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.

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