CrossfireX is Remedy Entertainment’s biggest blunder

polygon.com:

With over 690 million registered users, Crossfire is perhaps the world’s biggest multiplayer shooter. What makes its recent Xbox release special, however, is the inclusion of a two-part single-player campaign developed by Remedy Entertainment, the makers of Control, Max Payne, and Alan Wake, to name a few. It’s a pity then, that despite being masters of narrative, world-building, and high-minded ideas, and with such a huge property to work with, Remedy has delivered mediocrity this time around.

Crossfire was originally created by South Korean developer Smilegate Entertainment. It has a massive following in China and South Korea, and like Counter-Strike and other team based shooters, it puts players in the boots of two opposing but notionally similar teams: Black List and Global Risk. In terms of lore, these are both mercenary groups, where one is allegedly a terrorist organization (which claims to fight for freedom) and the other an anti-terrorist faction (which lays claim to law and order).

Well, fine. I suppose. Having two indistinguishable teams has worked for multiplayer shooter purposes since time immemorial. The problem is that this moralistic antagonism finds no purchase in the new story-based gameplay, as players do not spend any time interrogating these principles on the battlefield, but merely exchanging volleys of bullets.

The “Catalyst” campaign sees players in the boots of a Global Risk team flown into Every Wartorn Eastern European Town that’s ever appeared in military shooters to take down a Black List leader. The story is narrated by a character called Captain Hall, who’s so generic he might as well be called John Smith. He’s a plot vector designed to fit archetypal roles: father, husband, friend. What