Crossout Legends

Genre: Third-Person Shooter

Players: 1-12 Team Competitive (Online)

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Review:

WARNING: THIS GAME HEAVILY PUSHES MICROTRANSACTIONS AND BATTLE PASSES

Crossout Legends, sometimes referred to simply as Crossout, or as Crossout: Forced Measure, is an online-only 6v6 Team-Based Third-Person Shooter where players construct a vehicle and use it against the opposing team to complete objectives. This game was originally released in 2017 on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, with a port to mobile devices in 2022, and a Nintendo Switch release in 2025.

The presentation here is sufficient, but not great. The game’s 3D visuals with a post-apocalyptic “Mad Max”-style theme get the job done, but don’t look especially impressive, and there are even some major framerate problems, though thankfully I haven’t had anything like this pop up during competitive play, just in test areas. This is all joined by a Southern Rock-inspired soundtrack with heavy guitar twang that works well enough for the game, but doesn’t really make it feel especially distinct.

While the presentation doesn’t impress, there is a really cool premise at the heart of this game. Each of the game’s vehicles (all referred to as “cars”, even though some are tanks or walking mechs) is constructed of individual pieces, and can be disassembled and reassembled piece by piece, in a manner similar to Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, or The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Players select from their inventory of parts a cockpit (which determines things like your maximum number of attached parts), battery (which determines your max power output), traversal method, weaponry, protective shielding, and so on, meaning you can potentially create a vehicle that’s completely unique and never been used by other players.

What’s more, once you take your vehicle into battle, you’ll find that yours’ and enemies vehicles are destructible part-by-part. Destroy an enemy’s weapons and they become incapable of attacking. Destroy their wheels or legs and they become increasingly less mobile as their traversal methods are stripped away. Deal enough damage to armor and it’s blasted off. And destroy their cockpit and the vehicle is destroyed completely.

The ability to pick apart opponents’ vehicles piece-by-piece is truly exhilarating, and this adds some wonderful strategy to your vehicle construction. Do you emphasize speed? Firepower? Do you place all of your extra armor around your cockpit to keep from dying as long as possible, or do you use some to protect your weaponry or wheels?

The actual core gameplay itself is pretty good as well, with this working as a pretty typical Third-Person Shooter, regardless of your vehicle type, with the left analog stick moving you in the direction pressed (as much as your vehicle will allow), and the right analog stick used for aiming. You’ll find game modes tend to have you either capturing a neutral position or capturing the enemy’s base before yours is captured… though any match end when one side has all of their vehicles eliminated.

Thus far, this may seem like a pretty fantastic game, with a great premise and solid gameplay. And you might wonder how such a thing could be messed up. And the answer, of course, is the depressing presence of cynical monetization.

Players gradually earn access to some parts as they play, unlocking them through progression and accomplishing personal goals. However, building them takes time, and this time can be sped up using currency purchased through microtransactions. There are battle passes that you can purchase to gain access to additional parts. Or you can just straight-up buy parts in in-game shops using currency purchased with real money.

If these parts were well-balanced, this would be frustrating but perhaps forgivable. But sadly, they are not. If you have a better cockpit or a better battery than your opponents, you’ll have a better vehicle, simple as that. More battery means more firepower. Better cockpit means more armor you can equip. And this is made blatant after a match when all of the competitors’ power ratings are shown, and it’s undeniable that some players are simply going into battle with better equipment than others.

There are other problems too. The menus are pretty terrible to navigate, and unnecessarily confusing. The actual construction menu suffers from this too, with it being really awkward to create or edit vehicles in three dimensions, and with the game often being unclear about why you can’t do something if it’s not letting you do it. And there are frequent, annoying loading times.

Perhaps due to these issues, the online lobbies are only sporadically populated, and you’ll be spending much of your time playing with and against computer-controlled bots. And yes, these bots are just as capable of being unfairly overpowered compared to you as human players can be.

While some of Crossout’s problems could have been addressed with a bit of work and polish, its biggest issue is depressingly just greed. This game had so much potential to be an incredible online competitive shooter with an immense amount of possibility in its vehicle customization letting people challenge each other to see whose death machines reign supreme. Sadly, the pay-to-win elements and overbearing monetization result in far too many uneven matches that sap the fun out of this game. As a result, while there’s still some fun to be had here, it feels like much of the potential this game had is lost.

tl;dr – Crossout Legends is an online-only team-based 6v6 Third-Person Shooter where players create and customize their own combat vehicles. The core gameplay is fun, and the premise has a world of potential, but that potential is ruined by nasty pay-to-win monetization, poor menu design, and a lack of actual players. This game is still somewhat enjoyable, but it feels like a pale shadow of what it could have been.

Grade: C

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2025 Game Awards:

Winner:

Worst Monetization / Scam – All of this year’s contenders for this award use gross monetization, but in Crossout Legends this monetization injects a pay-to-win element that ruins what was otherwise a genuinely fun game. If the game’s online wasn’t virtually abandoned (gee, wonder why), I could easily see players getting trounced by those who poured money into powering up their own personalized death machine. It defeats the entire point of the game if your ingenuity and creativity making your own vehicle can be trumped by someone with more cash than you. The real winning move here is not to play at all.

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