Speaking of not being able to see the story through to the end, I’ve got a another complaint with the final part of the game. The game cleverly hides this behind the MMO still receiving updates and patches, but it still felt a little unsatisfying to not be able to see both stories through to the end. In a game like this, both the story of the game, as well as the story of the game within the game, must be interesting. CrossCode succeeds at this with its normal story, but the story of CrossWorlds is generic and boring. This is where I have a bit of a complaint with CrossCode. This means that she needs to play through the story of the MMO. The idea here is that it may help her remember some of her past. To progress forward with regaining her memories, Lea must explore CrossWorlds and the Playground. Granted, they’ll likely be obvious to players with a keen eye for detail and familiarity with this unique setting. There’s actually a bit more to it than just that, but the game has a few twists that I don’t want to spoil. Either way, let’s talk about the story of CrossCode.ĬrossCode is all about Lea’s adventures in the Playground as she works to regain her memory.
A reference or two is fine, but CrossCode is chock full of them. It all feels a little too cringe and makes me think of 16-year-old me walking through Hot Topic in the mid-2000s, and those memories are better left buried in the past. These are mostly from anime and other games, but also include mentions to media such as The Nightmare Before Christmas. The game is also filled with so many references that it loses some of its own identity to them. Some of the terms aren’t clear and it just made it a bit confusing when adding it to the idea of an MMO that actually exists in a physical space. Maybe I’m just nitpicking at this point, but the first couple of hours did a lot to break my immersion with the game. They could be Instant Matter, but that wasn’t really made clear. It seemed strange to me that they would complain, when these blocks shouldn’t even actually exist. In fact, one character even complains about being told to do it, which is how Lea gets stuck with the task. However, early in CrossCode the player is tasked with cleaning up some of these blocks on the starting ship. The player can use the AR balls to destroy them, which implies that they too are just an AR construct. There are also these blocks that, well, block the player’s path. It’s shown later in the game that it doesn’t take much for a real person to push an avatar around. The two never fight, but it also isn’t really clear how exactly they were going to in the first place. Plus, the captain puts on AR googles to see her attacks. The game makes clear that Lea is the only avatar on the ship. At the very start of the game, Lea, our heroine, is given the opportunity to fight against the captain of a ship carrying here to CrossWorlds. With all this in mind, CrossCode plays a little loose with these rules. Avatars can also naturally see these AR attacks, but anyone that is actually in the world physically needs to wear special googles for that. It also keeps the Instant Matter avatars from falling apart at the slightest bit of combat. This and the weak nature of Instant Matter ensures the Playground is never damaged by its players. To get around this, the avatars attack with balls that are actually part of an Augmented Reality program. Significant impacts, as well as water, can bring an end to it. This is a type of matter that can come together instantly, but isn’t very strong. The avatars that the characters control are made of a special sci-fi material called Instant Matter. The game inside the game is called CrossWorlds and the areas that players explore is the Playground. There are actual buildings, bridges and other parts of the environment built into an area on the moon of a faraway planet. See, the characters in this game are still controlling avatars in an MMO world, but that world actually exists in a real place. It’s actually a setting that I quite like, which was one of the things that caught my attention about the game.ĬrossCode takes this whole concept a little further than before.
I’m not new to this as the Dot Hack series is one of my favorite media franchises out there. The setting of the game is a simulated MMO experience. It’s a unique type of game that doesn’t come around all that often. Playing unfinished games typically only ever leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I didn’t want that here.ĬrossCode is a labor of love. I always thought it had a lot of promise, which is why I didn’t play it until its final release. I watched it go through Early Access and I know its development stretches beyond that.
Man, just where do I start with CrossCode? This is a game that has been on my radar for some time leading up to its full release.