Crucible developed by Amazon Games, is available on Steam and the combinations in this FPS and MOBA-style levels make it very different.
Crucible is the new multiplayer from Amazon Games that combines classic FPS mechanics with a MOBA-style leveling system. If you’ve spent too many hours on games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, PUBG, or Call of Duty, you should be curious about this new Battle Royale.
The game is free for PC , and launched on Steam May 20. It’s inspired by other shooting heroes like Overwatch and Apex Legends, but it brings much more to the table through its myriad of characters, or hunters, that will adapt to almost any game style you have.
When you combine that with Crucible’s three game modes, which offer something different, there really is something for everyone. Alpha Hunters, which is the game’s Battle Royale style mode, pits eight teams of two on the edge of known space. While that sounds like a traditional battle royale, it does come with a twist.
If your teammate dies mid-game and you meet another solo player, you can offer an alliance and form a team. However, that truce will be broken if both reach the bottom three.
In Heart of the Hives, two teams of four have to fight to destroy the hives and secure three hearts, and in Harvester Command, two teams of eight play a mode that is essentially domination mixed with team deathmatch.
While all modes offer something different, Hunters are what makes this game special. Crucible has no set roles, but it does have a leveling system that will help define your character and its impact in later stages of the game.
Due to this setup, hunters are geared towards specific playstyles and leveling them up by collecting essence , which would be the game’s XP experience, is part of the fun.
The leveling system adds a layer of unpredictability to the game that keeps it exciting. Since hunters are locked up before a match starts and players have a short window to change their builds based on the composition of their opposing team, games get more complicated.
That is why it is so important in Crucible to understand the construction of your hunter, and of the others around you before entering a fight.
Take Sazan, for example. A woman’s army, who likes League of Legends’ Aphelios, has several different weapons at her disposal that she can only reuse if she cycles them, they can be built in different ways.
It can be made stealthier through a cloaking enhancement or more deadly through a combination of others. Since each player has a different setup, it’s hard to know who you’re really up against in a fight.
Leveling keeps games fresh and competitive, and that’s exactly what Amazon Games is trying to capture. Crucible has been in development for many years, and although it has changed shape several times, it has always been built with competitiveness in mind.
To help with that, the publisher has worked with various professional players and content creators to find the right balance to make a game competitive while keeping a wider audience engaged.
However, there are things that are still missing, for example there is no voice chat, so a team fight without my colleagues being able to hear me is quite hellish. Additionally, the lack of a currently ranked mode prevents players from approaching games competitively.
With nothing to work for, be it a rank or an overall position, the game will have a hard time taking off like anything but casually. However, Amazon wants to build this game around its community and is planning to add these features in the near future.
We also know that Relentless Studios has built the game with Twitch in mind, so we’ll have to wait and see if it takes off the same way Apex Legends did and how that will affect its long-term development. If you had told me weeks ago that I’d like to play a MOBA-style hero-shooting game, I would have.
The game has a long way to go if you want to find your feet as a serious contender in the competitive multiplayer space, but the potential is there: Amazon Games and Relentless Studios just need to seize the opportunity with both hands.
You can download the game from Steam. And you can read our Crucible review here to have more info about the new game from Amazon Games.
