As I wandered the show floor at Gamescom, I stumbled upon an enormous booth for CrisisX, an all-new open-world, post-apocalyptic survival shooter from HK Hero Entertainment (Hero Games). This title popped up on my radar a couple of weeks ago when it was dubbed ‘The Day Before 2’ by sceptical gamers worried about ambitious promises and the ‘too-good-to-be-true’ image of CrisisX.
Let me preface this by stressing that CrisisX boasts one of the largest open maps ever made, promises to accommodate 5,000 players per server, is free to play (with microtransactions), and comes from a developer that hasn’t released anything major ever.
I played CrisisX at Gamescom, and I’m here to give you the full rundown.
Who The Hell is Toby?
I started playing CrisisX and was presented with a diverse selection of characters to choose from. At first, I was pleased to see a super detailed character customization screen, but things turned sour as soon as the game began. I was walked through a brief tutorial stage that introduced me to weapons and basic mechanics, and then I quickly uncovered how rough CrisisX is.
I’m sure the voice acting was AI-driven, and it was riddled with grammatical errors and nonsensical lines. The animations and visual platter were straight out of a mobile game from days gone by, and the enemies were low-IQ cannon fodder, presenting no real challenge.
At one point, while looking for a mode of transport (a poorly designed horse), I came across a hulking, stronger zombie enemy named ‘Toby’. Why he was named Toby, I’ll never know.
CrisisX has a huge focus on the massive game map that can be explored at will. Within seconds, I’d opened this map, which is reportedly more than five times the size of DayZ’s map, and been utterly overwhelmed by all the icons and possibilities of this gargantuan environment.
Where the map is complex and packed with markers, the gameplay loop is numbingly basic and uninspiring. You kill things, you loot things, you build things, and you collect things. The version of the game I played had no other users around, but the full product should have servers that accommodate 5,000 players.
Sure, you’ll need a huge map for that, but 4,999 other players vying to destroy my enjoyment of the already drab CrisisX is not an encouraging thought.
I’m certainly not going to agree with anyone dubbing this ‘The Day Before 2’, though. That was a rug pull at best and nothing short of a scam that lasted a matter of hours on the open market before being pulled and decimated by the shady developers who have since disappeared into the abyss.
For starters, I’ve played CrisisX, which is much further than I (and most other people) got with The Day Before.
CrisisX doesn’t have a release date yet, but it’s supposed to drop next year. Perhaps it’ll be sharpened by the developer before then, and we can enjoy whatever the finished product looks like.
Let me know if you’ve had your eye on CrisisX on the Insider Gaming forum.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the important stats from the Battlefield 6 beta
Grant's adoration for gaming started on the Amstrad CPC in 1996. Now, he's a multi-platform expert gamer with a deep love for the industry, a passion for esports, and more…
More from Grant Taylor-Hill
