Crucible
PC
What is Crucible, exactly? It’s a question we flounder to answer as we introduce the game to friends joining for a quick match or two, and one that Crucible itself struggles with. Broadly speaking, it’s a free-to-play online PvPvE hero team shooter, but that’s so many buzzwords jammed together that we’re not quite sure what order to put them in, and the resulting scramble doesn’t tell you much about the actual experience of play. While many of Crucible’s elements are deeply familiar, the way they’re organised is unlike any other game we can point to.
Maybe it’s so difficult because the answer keeps shifting from match to match. First, you’re Ajonah the mer-sniper, grappling to the high ground then watching the frontline through your scope, picking off enemies as they crash against your half-dozen teammates. Next, as Drakahl, you swing your axe to smash AI creeps, farming XP for your side as they head for the objective. Now you’re one half of an unlikely buddy-movie duo, military buzzcut and wide-eyed robot, pinging landmarks as you scurry across the map together and watch the number of players gradually tick down to victory.
Depending on the mode and character you choose, you’ll see a different side of Crucible, an alternate reference point. It’s a thirdperson Overwatch; a zoomedout take on Dota; a small-scale battle royale. The latter comparison is clearest in Alpha Hunters, one of the game’s three modes. If that name sounds like someone fed the words Apex Legends back and forth through an online translator, well, you’re not far off the experience of playing it. The mode pairs you up with a teammate and then, after you’ve picked a drop point, challenges you to survive as long as possible inside a shrinking circle.
The Overwatch comparison shines brightest in Harvester Command, an 8v8 battle over five capture points, whoever holds the majority nudging the score in their direction and topping it up with the occasional kill. Most matches feel like a tug of war, both sides trading the lead right up till the end. It’s the most consistently satisfying option for playing Crucible, which leaves us scratching our heads over why it’s hidden away behind a sub-menu that designates it – and it alone – as an ‘arcade’ mode.
Then there’s Heart Of The Hives, Crucible’s premier mode and the one where the game lets its freak flag fly. It’s essentially a MOBA that plays like a hero shooter, two teams of four vying to defeat an AI-controlled hive, then hold the point long enough to grab the heart it drops. On top of that, there are harvester control points to grab and roaming creatures to kill in exchange for essence, a resource which levels up your team, letting you max out a character’s skills before the slate is wiped clean again at the match’s close. These elements – hives and creeps, harvesters and essence – recur in the other modes, but they feel like they’ve been designed with Heart Of The Hives in mind.
To really see how Crucible reassembles itself into different shapes, though, you only need to switch hero (or Hunter, to use the game’s own terminology). There are ten Hunters to choose from, a total which might look paltry next to the 21-strong roster Overwatch
arrived with, but it’s hard to overstate just how distinct each member of the cast feels. Take Summer, with her dual wrist-mounted flamethrowers which introduce a unique heat management mechanic. Her attacks and special abilities all draw from a single regenerating pool, rendering her essentially useless if you let her overheat. Unlocking her first upgrade, however, gives you a damage boost for pushing the meter into the red, adding a tense risk-reward layer to every encounter. Or consider the aforementioned Drakahl, Crucible’s one pure melee character and, based on our playtime, one of its most popular. Every Hunter has abilities bound to Q and E, but in Drakahl’s case, holding down either button modifies your mouse buttons, effectively doubling his moveset. Bugg, the Wall-E-alike gardening bot, is armed with a futuristic watering can which does as little damage as you’d expect–but also activates the electricity-spewing flower-mines you can plant with a right click.
The cast is equally diverse in terms of representation and visual styles, from bright Pixar knock-offs to the edgy Street Sharks reboot Drakahl has apparently been borrowed from. So much so that Captain Mendoza (the game’s generic gruff soldier man, equipped with a basic sprint, grenade and medkit supply drop) almost feels like Crucible making a joke at the expense of other shooters.
There are effectively ten disparate games to learn here, before you factor in the different modes, and all the ways characters can be customised – each has a skill tree you prune in advance, choosing which branches you’ll level up along. Looked at one way, this represents great value for (no) money. But it also means sifting through dozens of versions of the game that don’t quite work before finding the one that does. For us, this turns out to be playing Bugg in one of the larger team modes, which frees us from having to worry about the strangely weightless guns and muddiness of direct combat.
Fights often devolve into one of those cartoon punch-ups where all that’s visible is a cloud of dust, with the occasional fist or sound effect poking out. It’s one example of too much going on in a game that is crammed with ideas, borrowed and new, all fighting for attention. Occasionally we spot a glimmer of something special, and it’s not hard to imagine a version of Crucible where that something is wrenched from the fray and sharpened to a glittering point. But the fact that we still can’t put our finger on what Crucible stands for, even after so many hours of play, suggests there won’t be many people sticking around to find out.
While many of Crucible’s elements are deeply familiar, the way they’re organised is unlike any other game