TO:Crossfire
Unreal Tournament 2004
- Single & Multiplayer First Person Shooter
TO:Crossfire
Unreal Tournament 2004 mod | Released May 29, 2007
The Game Inspired by TacticalOps, a game based on Epic's awardwinning UnrealEngine, a group of friends took an ambitious step, creating a sequel to their favorite game on a new level of UnrealTechnology. Led by the people behind TacticalOps and TOST, backed up by a bunch of artists, modellers, mappers and supporters, the team behind TO: Crossfire pushes the limitations of Epic's Unreal Engine 2. Facing the choice of bringing terror to the world or fighting it, you will be part of decisive battles at locations you will not forget. Rescue hostages, blow up a building, gain information, assassinate a target - there is a vast variety of possibilities to decide a battle! And thus the assault continues ...
TO:Crossfire
TO: Crossfire is a mod of outstanding quality, based around a concept that has been used one time too many. Can hard work and determination overcome a complete lack of originality? The answer is an unfortunate "No."
Posted by Sallycin on Apr 15th, 2007 digg this super bookmark
Review
[page=TO:Crossfire Review]
TO: Crossfire is a mod of outstanding quality, based around a concept that has been used one time too many. Can hard work and determination overcome a complete lack of originality? The answer is an unfortunate "No."
Don't Shoot! I'm sightseeing.
For those people that want to get in on the Counter-Strike experience without actually owning a copy of Half-Life, you may just be in luck. However, for those like myself, that are searching for something beyond yet another modern combat game, you need not even try TO: Crossfire.
Now, this is not to say there there is anything outright lacking in merit here. There is some fantastic, quality work here. TO:Crossfire ranks as one of the top Unreal Tournament 2004 mods, competing with the likes of Red Orchestra and other hits. The community is great, you can always find a populated server online and often a couple of senior players are more than willing to lead you through the ropes of the game.
It's just so tried and true that it's, well, not even true anymore.
Those versed in the gameplay of Counter-Strike will need little explanation. TO: Crossfire centers around the concept of two teams, Terrorists and Special Forces, duking it out over two action-packed game modes. The Bomb Defusal mode tasks the Terrorist team with planting explosives in certain key points on the map, while the Special Forces must then do their best to defuse said bomb before it explodes. The second mode is known as Hostage Rescue. This mode has the members of the Special Forces attempting to free a number of hostages from the grasp of the Terrorists, who are trying to prevent it. Both modes also allow you to win by simply eliminating all of the enemy team, same as a classic Team Deathmatch.
DolphinDude31 Says:"Though TO:Crossfire is similar to Counter-Strike in a lot of ways, it lacks many of the things that make Counter-Strike truly great: weapon variety and balance, ultra-precise movement and aiming and, most importantly, layered and deep level design. Unlike Counter-Strike--simple to learn, but with a huge amount of depth--my short time with TO:Crossfire makes me see it as a game without the subtleties needed for an extended lifespan."
I'd start raving about how good the AK-47 looked if there wasn't one in amost every mod ever made.
At the beginning of each round, players are supplied with weaponry through a purchase screen almost identical to that of Counter-Strike. Players gain more money based on how their team performed in the previous round, in turn being able to purchase bigger guns. The weapon selection is quite impressive, despite sticking to the realistic feel and leaving little room for creativity.
While the two gamemodes are quite solid, they left me wishing for more. I could see co-op missions fitting in quite nicely with the tactical, team based feel, or perhaps some sort of objective based mode. However, TO:Crossfire opts to go with its tried and true roots and stick to the basics, which is an effective strategy, albiet a disappointing one.
Despite its failings in the area of gameplay, it displays great work in art assets. There are a number of good maps included in the mod, around 15 if I recall correctly, each of great quality. The locations range from your classic desert combat scene to an interesting, Asian-styled town, each with solid gameplay. One problem I had in the maps, though, was a blatant abuse of sniping. I found myself being sniped seconds after respawning on a multitude of occasions.
Unfortunately, the great maps are not easily navigated by the lackluster bots. Some few seconds after entering a match using Crossfire’s integrated bots, it became clear that the mod was created purely as a multiplayer experience. To put it bluntly, the bots suck. They get stuck on walls, have trouble climbing stairs, don’t use tactics and just generally fail at everything. I even remember one bot dancing in random circles, completely ignoring any threat I might pose to him.
Tactic #11: Run 'em over with a car.
Nevertheless, TO:Crossfire's visuals are quite polished, and almost commercial quality at times. The visuals compare quite favorably with The Soulkeeper, commonly considered to be Unreal Tournament 2004's most graphicaly advanced mod. Character models are also of a professional quality, though there are only so many ways to depict a terrorist and counter-terrorist.
In the end, TO:Crossfire fails in concept, but succeeds in quality. When reviewing, previewing, or writing an article related to modding, I try to avoid mentioning Counter-Strike as a benchmark for a mod. Not because I consider it to be the Holy Grail of mods, a goal impossible to hit, but because Counter-Strike is a title that instantly polarizes people in their opinions. On one hand, people see it as a complimentary comparison, having their mod judged alongside a product that has been so successful. On the other hand, many people feel that Counter-Strike has bred a slew of imitators desperately trying to ride on the coattails of success while simultaneously watering down the modding industry.
Regardless of the side you may take, TO:Crossfire is basically a straight-up clone of Counter-Strike.
The devs behind the mod obviously have great talent and I wish that they had at least tried to take some risks, innovate, and come out with a more creative and satisfying mod. Nevertheless, TO: Crossfire will appeal to many people and is definitely worth a shot if you enjoy your shooters realistic and tactical, but its just a shame that it could have been so much more.
JoeX111 Says:"The terrorist vs. Special Forces sub genre of tactical shooter mods has become so redundant at this point as to be positively archaic. Seriously, when are we going to evolve beyond the point where high precision ballistic accuracy and pin-point weapon damage is enough to justify years of effort to create what is largely Counter-Strike: Part Deux?
Rather than mimic the same bomb-planting and hostage rescuing gameplay we've seen repeated ad nauseum, why not mix things up? Why not some co-op assault missions with multiple objectives that need to be accomplished? Why not have an assassination mode, where the Special Forces must protect key figures around a map from terrorist killers? Why not populate the map with dozens upon dozens of civilians that react realistically to the gun battle, forcing the Special Forces to strategize to minimize casualties while authorizing the use of increasingly deadly force for each time the Terrorists kill a civilian?
TO: Crossfire looks good and plays great, but we've seen it all before."
(+) Great maps, both visually and gameplay wise.
(+) Generally high quality content.
(-) Overused concept.
(-) Terrible Bots.
(-) Lots of camping.
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Besides the spelling error, nice review. I reckon that this review is a little unfair though. If I didn't have CSS, from what I have read, this would be an excellent mod for me to have. Excellent review, but I believe it still is a tad unfair to the mod. Perhaps their goal was to create CSS for people who have UT2004, and if it was their goal, they succeeded.
I also found that this review jumped around a little bit, sometimes muddying up a point it had made earlier by saying something different later in the text. I know it's just a minor thing, but this review is really good, I hope to see more :D
Oops, I figure I should add this bit as well in regards to your last comment.
Saying that down here in the comments section isn't a good way to put a point across to the reader, maybe if you had included what you just said in that comment, in the review, it would make the review a bit more fair.
I appreciate your feedback, but I must say I disagree with many of your points. First off, the comment in my comment post was just confirming something in the review. Hell, the first line of the review was "For those people that want to get in on the Counter-Strike experience without actually owning a copy of Half-Life, you may just be in luck. "
And I'm sorry, but I don't base a review purely on whether or not the team succeeded in their goal; I base it on whether or not I enjoyed it, and if I think others will enjoy it. Take Daikatana for example. John Romero specifically said that he liked the game, and though he succeeded in his goals, but all the critics rightfully said it was awful ;)
Oh, also. Mind alerting me to the specific spelling errors, I hate to have those sort of mistakes in there, definitely detracts from the professionality of the article.
Thanks for the feedback!
correction..... Ballistic Weapons is the most graphicaly enhanced ut2004 mod ^ - ^
Well i can only say the constant comparison with CS and the continuous saying that we are a clone just shows how little you investigated into our mod before making this review.
CS when it was still a mod was released on June 1999, while TO (known as swat when it was MOD) was in December of the same year, people cant build a game in a few months only it takes time so saying we are a clone is as bad as saying Quake Wars is a BF2 Clone just because it has vehicles.
Another thing is knowing what TO:C is, new game ? Sequel ? havnt seen in your review any info showing what TO:C is besides "CS Clone" or somehow related, our main goal as you could read in our about @ the website www.to-crossfire.net is to create a sequel, same thing Valve did with their Counter Strike Source, but since they have support and we dont, theres a big diference between the possibilities of each game.
Since we are a mod we are limited by the engine capabilities of UT2004, if we had a license believe me we would have done much better than this but we need to live with what we got.
Another comment is the realistic comment, we never said we were a realistic mod... we have an arcade style with fast paced action, again you havnt done your homework...
Besides this and the typing errors nice review :)
Nice review, gota try this mod out.
Counter-Strike itself was an imitation, like a bag of generic action figures. I'm just saying, it isn't such a damning observation. You either enjoy this nerfed tactical gaming or you don't.
I understand, and I specifically stated that I believe there is a large group of gamers who will enjoy it. I'm simply saying myself, and many I know dislike the fact that it is based on a somewhat stale concept.
Whist I have not actually played this mod, I'm not sure I agree with your statement that its "just a clone steer clear".
I mean Duke Nukem, Blood, Shadow Warrior are all just deathmatch games with different weapons.
Much like UT2004, Quake, Doom etc which are again all deathmatch games with a few gimmicks thrown in to distinguish them. This game is on a totally different platform and I'm pretty certain the TO: Crossfire team does not indeed to battle against CS but want to be accessed on what they have created. Having said all that, people who do come from a CS background will prolly just feel this is more of the same so I guess in some ways your statements are warranted.
Interesting observation, that was one of the points I tried to get across. If you want in on the Counter-Strike experience, and only have UT2K4, completely diregard my warnings and download this. I'm simply saying that if you've played Counter-Strike, or are just tired of realistic, unoriginal mods, don't play. I fully appreciate the hard work the team put into the mod, I only warn those similar to myself who are looking for something new to steer clear.
CROSFIIIIIIIREEEEE!
{img>http://www.ltsword.allegronetwork.com/crossfire/img/crossfire_board_textured_phase2.png
I could be completely wrong on this but I thought I remember hearing someone say that the original crossfire and counter strike (they were very similar in gameplay) were made concurrently so technically since this is based off crossfire it was be a crossfire clone not a CS one. This isn't me trying to defend the tired use of this gameplay. It's just pointing out that this type of gameplay (if what I said previously is true) isn't solely from counter-strike.
turns out it wasn't called crossfire its tactical ops and it was a mod for UT and was released 5 months after CS. So disregard what I said.
I think you're missing the point of this mod... most players (and even devs) are taking it as the sequel to UT99's Tactical Ops, that is, preserving what is good from that mod and upgrading what is obsolete (including graphics). It's natural to compare it with CS, but as I said, most players COME from the TO-community around the world (US, Europe, Brazil - where we have quite a strong community even with CS popularity), so if you ask them if they want "innovation", I bet the majority will say: NO!
And the current version is 1.6 Tactical Ops "ended" in 3.5.
Yes, but I don't believe you make it clear enough that there are many people out there who do like this mod.
And the spelling error was here
Perhaps not your fault, you just didn't pick up on it when you read through what he wrote, the spelling error is 'subtelties' should be 'subtleties'. Sorry for nit-picking, but you asked for it :P
All up, I enjoyed this review, it seemed quite well written except for those few things I noted in my posts.
Been Playing TOC a while back and I remember being surprised at its quality. Really nice texture work - impossible to guess this is the old Unreal Engine. I totally agree with Joe, there is no variation and even though I actually like the not-so-precise feel of the weapons, just shooting gets boring too. You have to invest some time to learn each and every weapon's character, but after that you've prettya much beaten the game, as its a boring repetition of itself.
Naturally speaking the game has hundreds of servers, while many more deserving mods aren't played by anyone. Shows how gamers appreciate a lot of diversity and deep gameplay mechanics - they don't.
Perhaps I cannot sway your opinion to my side Darkcraft, but I stand by my point. I mentioned that their were many servers always to be found, which directly suggests a large player population. I also mentioned that its community is comparable to that of Red Orchestra, which should be enough proof that there are lots of players.
Perhaps I didn't work enough backstory into the review, and I apologize for my lack of research. However, it's hard not to make a comparison to Counter-Strike when the exact same game modes are featured in TO:Crossfire. Additionaly, I don't mean realistic in pace of game play, but in the weapons, characters, settings, ect.
I appreciate the quality of all the work the team put into TO:Crossfire, and I'm by no means putting them down. The mod is done with fantastic professionality in presentation and artistic assets. And I don't doubt that the devs succeeded in their goals; I simply mean to say that the tactical shooter genre is getting somewhat stale at this point, and that I'd far rather see something new. I review games/mods based on my thought, not the thought of the team behind them ;)
Counterstrike was mentioned 11 times.
TO:AoT was not mentioned, at all.
You have not done your homework.
Crossfire isn't a "Tactical" Shooter at all. Not on the server's I tried it on.
We plan on add many new/unique features in this genre of game but it will take more time to finish them, first we had to set up a base that the old players could say "I feel like home" from here we will work with the community feedback and keep improving this game with more stuff and more details. TO wasnt never much about the graphics but the gameplay its a unique feeling playing TO that any other game can deliver, many tried but none were able to get so close like we are at the moment.
This team is experienced with unreal engine and we are capable of much more than this, wait for the 2.0 version and you will see what we are capable of :)
on the post above i meant "but the gameplay its a unique feeling playing TO that any other game canT deliver,"
Well, I'll look foward to it. I unfortunately wouldn't call myself I huge fan of the current build, but some sort of interesting new modes might just win me over. Also, those that disagree about my classing it as a tactical shooter... Yes, it's a bit fast, but it still manages to stay well within the realms of the genre. Hell, the name has tactical in it ;)
It would of been awesome if there was iron sights. It woulda been a whole new game than cs :)
heh iron sights unfortunatly would slow down the gameplay but maybe we can come up with something for B2.0 :)
It's not meant to be complex - that's the whole point of it. It's meant to be a fast paced, action orientated FPS.
What a shite review.
And point out to me where I said it should be complex.
I totally agree with this review. I mean, TO is pretty cool, but the whole Counter-Strike-esque shooter is so old now. Even Counter Strike itself isn't that much fun anymore(to me at least, after all it is 8 years old). But if you haven't checked out this mod, you might as well. The guys did a great job making it and it's good fun for a bit.
This isn't Gamespot, mod teams can get easily put off and insulted from just one person, let alone an article saying all of their work is of a tired concept and a not so great mod aside from some played out models (see: ak47 comment, and continual "good quality graphics")
These people did it in their free time, for free, and I'm sure worked extremely hard and overcame impossible odds to release it. And here moddb is with people who haven't ever finished an entire mod of this caliber criticizing it and downing it. Constructive criticism is not saying the entire mod needs reworking and is tired out, thats just demoralizing and relatively rude to the developers.
Don't put people up on the podium just to push them down, it seems to be the norm here but its not really an accepted way of dealing with things. If the mod in your opinion wasn't good at all don't review it, because it just looks like you're insulting it and then publishing it for everyone to see.
Comparing games developed by scores of professionals who worked full time jobs for years on it versus a few amateurs doing it in their free time is like comparing apples and oranges, its just completely unrelated besides they're both fruit. (or in reality, both games with similar game modes)
i agree with carni =/
So you expect me to only review games I enjoyed a lot? Oh yes, that'd be quite interesting, a slew of reviews that merely said: "This is a brilliant mod, play it." Actually, lets go a bit farther, why don't we just destroy the review section as a whole. There's no sense in taking the risk of writing something that doesn't just compliment a mod over and over,. I mean, someones feelings could be hurt like that (oh the horror.)
The team is putting there work out to the public, and therefore is allowing others to respond to it according to their opinion.
This article is not to say that I do not appreciate the mod teams hard work, merely that it would have been great to see the team explore a concept not so stale. And I don't believe I said the mod needed total reworking, I only suggested that they mix around the classic defusal and hostage rescue modes to come up with something a bit more interesting.
And there are still many people who love this mod, as I stated. But I believe I warned off the group of people that wouldn't enjoy this.
Honestly, I'm just plain sick of people declaring that free mods/projects should be immune to criticism.
I agree that this mod is alot like Counter-Strike. But it's one of the few (if not only) mods for UT2004 that has an active online community. Unlike other big mods, this mod gets played every day by many people online.
I think, because the team chose to make a realistic shooter (like CS), it got a bigger community. If they did a creative mod, they wouldn't get so much people playing it online.
FrozenCow, this and CS are not realistic shooters........
Ok, wannabe realistic shooters?
the term is "semi-realism", or.... "really annoying shooter" :P
As opposed to the Gladitorial shooters like Quake and Unreal where you jump off your own rockets and stuff.
Although I'm a "Tactical gamer" as some people prefer to be known, playing games like Operation Flashpoint, I do enjoy the occasional romp in the fantastical FPSs like Quake, but for some reason I don't like the strange middle ground between the two extremes where games like CS and Call of Duty sit.