There are a wide variety of weapons in the game, although they’re all pretty much what you’d expect to find in an FPS. There are pistols, assault rifles, sniper rifles, submachine guns, and shotguns, each with different powers, rates of fire, recoils, ammo amounts, accuracies, and weights. Accuracy refers to the size of crosshairs, and weight changes your character's speed.

You’ll probably realize fairly early on that the differences between the weapons are not as significant as they might sound. Most players are fairly skilled and usually kill by headshot, and you’ll find that most weapons are more or less equally useful for headshots. You also have grenades, which explode neither too early nor too late, making them pretty useful without being overpowered. It’s too bad, however, that you have to switch to them and then throw them, instead of being able to map them to a dedicated key that throws them instantly like in many other FPS games -- online or not.

The modes in "Cross Fire" are pretty standard FPS fare. There are the usual free-for-all and team deathmatch modes, and elimination and search & destroy are basically variations on team deathmatch. Team deathmatch has respawns, but elimination does not, with each round instead lasting until all of one team has been, well, eliminated. In search & destroy, one team wins by planting a bomb in a specific area while the other wins by disarming it. However, search & destroy matches do not have any respawning within a round and therefore often end with all of one team being killed instead, effectively making the mode very similar to elimination.

The one unique mode in "Cross Fire" is the ghost mode, in which one team is partly cloaked, can only use knives, and must plant a bomb. However, again, this mode often ends with the elimination of all of the members of a team rather than with the bomb. Nonetheless, the invisibility is a nice change to gameplay, even if it is somewhat difficult to get used to. The cloaked team is completely invisible when not moving, slightly visible when walking, and very visible when running. This creates a stealth aspect similar to the spy in Team Fortress.

At first you might have trouble adapting to the gameplay in the mode. If you’re on the uncloaked team, you might find yourself continually killed from behind without seeing it coming. If you’re on the cloaked team, you might find it difficult to get any kills other than by camping, because you have trouble moving around without being seen by the enemy team. Attacking with the knife is also a bit finicky and inconsistent. However, once you learn some of the maps and strategies, you might start to enjoy this mode, one of the few elements of "Cross Fire" that distinguishes it from other first-person shooters.

There are only three ghost mode maps, two elimination maps, and two free-for-all maps, which severely limits the replayability of these modes. On the other hand, there are six team deathmatch maps and eight search & destroy maps, and most of them are fairly well-designed. Nonetheless, encounters don’t vary significantly from map to map and usually come down to using whatever cover happens to be available. Furthermore, spawn camping in the team deathmatch mode is often easy to do and cheapens the experience.

The game’s graphics are outdated, although this also means that system requirements are very low and the game is playable on most PCs. Animations are minimal, but this helps to keep the gameplay fast-paced.

"Cross Fire" is constantly being updated, so it’s likely that you’ll see more maps and weapons in the future. You are allowed more customization and upgrading than in most first-person shooters, and if that’s the sort of thing that you’re into, you might enjoy this game. Retail games of the same sort have better gameplay, but "Cross Fire" is free and easy to get started with, so it might be worth a try.

Review by Joel Jordon
June 26th, 2009