Amazon's Team Based Shooter CRUCIBLE Comes Out Today!

In a world full of really great free-to-play options, I was very skeptical to see a new team-based shooter, especially coming from Amazon of all places. However, upon further inspection, Crucible has some strong potential to be something really great. But it isn’t all roses and candy, there are also a few things about the game that have me worried that it could be dead on arrival.

Let us get the main negative out of the way first. The roster of characters is impressively diverse, but there are only ten of them. In a team-based shooter, that feels very limiting and possibly boring down the line. There are three different game modes, all of them with varying amounts of PvE and PvP elements. Matches will range from eight teams of two, two teams of four or two teams of eight. That means that matches will have either a lobby of sixteen or eight players at any given time. And with only ten playable characters, this means every match will have basically all the same characters except one or two. As fun as the different game modes are, matches will start to look very similar, very quickly. There are other small issues too, but they can wait for our in-depth impression later.

Now that we have gotten the bad out of the way, let’s look at all the great stuff. The game looks really nice. It looks intense, fun, balanced, and unique. The three game modes and their varying amounts of PvE and PvP elements are a really fresh take to online multiplayer games compared to current stuff (yes, I know there are plenty of other games that mix PvE and PvP. But still, Crucible has some great ideas). Each game mode also seems to balance well the amount of strategy a player needs with their pure killing power and skill.

Another great part of the game is the roster. As small as it is, each character looks to be enthralling; be it their physical design, movement, or gunplay. All characters look to have a great balance of unique abilities that are offensive and defensive. Just watching the brief overviews of the characters entice me to play just about all of them for a variety of reasons. I really wish there would be at least sixteen characters so that games would have more variety and players could work on discovering new strategies and cool combinations, but we’ll make the best with what we have.

Lastly, Crucible will be free-to-play. We don’t know to what extent that means, but it looks like players can access the three game modes and characters for free. Cosmetics and possibly leveling-up could be bought, but we are unsure as of now and will let you know in our later posts about the game.

We are excited to play Crucible but also understand its current limits. Let us know if you’re going to try it out in the next few days, what you think of it, and if it will be the next great game or not!