eCrossminton

Genre: Sports (Crossminton)

Players: 1-4 Team Competitive (Local, Local Splitscreen)

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Review:

eCrossminton, released on PC and PlayStation 4 in 2019 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2020, is a Sports game with the sport in question being Crossminton, a fairly young sport derived from Badminton (one of its early names was Speed Badminton). Like Badminton, players use rackets and hit an object that resembles a Badminton shuttlecock (here called a speeder), but the play is faster-paced with the field of play limited to two separated 18-foot squares. In practice, this works out to something that feels a little like a cross between Badminton and Tennis.

The presentation here isn’t going to impress anyone, with ugly 3D visuals with stiff animations and character models that are not only terrible-looking, but with many of the characters looking identical save for different clothes and hair color. Stunningly, despite the low quality of the visuals, you can still see the framerates take a hit when you take the game into multiplayer split-screen mode. All of this is backed by a forgettable soundtrack and at the very least some decent sounds for hitting the speeder and moving around the courts.

At the very least, the gameplay here has a solid foundation, playing similarly to Tennis simulation-style games. Movement, hitting, aiming, and different shot types provide a good amount of variety, and there are even character-specific abilities… though the game doesn’t really explain this last bit very well. In addition, there’s a decent tutorial, and players can opt to play a selection of unlockable Crossminton minigames, as well.

However, unless you’re planning on playing against local human opponents, you may find your interest in this game waning pretty quickly, as the AI here is frequently dumb as rocks. I found it often fumbling easy shots, or even running in the wrong direction. Perhaps this was just supposed to represent an “easy” opponent, but I tend to think “easy” shouldn’t mean “randomly decides to stand still like an idiot as the ball (er, speeder) bounces off their chest”. And since this game features no online play whatsoever, you’re stuck playing with whoever you can rope into playing this game with you locally.

With its poor graphics, terrible AI, and obscure topic matter, it’s hard to imagine that most players will be able to get much out of eCrossminton. However, if you have friends who enjoy racket sports, don’t mind terrible graphics, and are willing to try something a little different, you may find some fun to be had in a session of eCrossminton. However, that’s a lot of caveats, and because of this I can’t recommend this game to most players.

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tl;dr – eCrossminton is a game that simulates an obscure sport, Crossminton. The core gameplay here is solid, but the graphics are terrible, the AI is atrocious, and there’s no online play. If you can find friends willing to play with you locally, this game can still be fun, but very few will likely want to bother with that when they can just find a decent Tennis game instead.

Grade: C-

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