Crossout isn't Mad Max

Discussion
43

adding to the poop pile… :rofl:

15 Action Games Like Crossout to Play and Enjoy

September 25, 2021 by Saurav Rath

Crossout is what you’d get if you combined the post-apocalyptic world of Mad Max with the vehicle combat of Twisted Metal.

It’s an online action game in which you build your own custom ride and battle against other players. The goal is to survive and be the last man standing, much like a battle royale.

Damage models for each vehicle are extremely complex, and you can knock out specific systems/ parts of a vehicle with your weapon.

Talking of weapons, this game has everything from machine guns to missile launchers. And the vehicles you create are completely unique too, from tank-like tracked machines to hovercrafts equipped with anti-gravity fields.

If you like building stuff and battling in an arena against other players with your creation, I have made a list of 15 games like Crossout. Some of these focus more on the post apocalyptic world-setting and RPG mechanics instead of pure combat. But I’m sure you’ll have fun with them, nonetheless.

1. ExoTanks

So you’ve probably heard about World of Tanks, right? It’s a game in which you drive a bunch of World War 2 and cold war era tanks in a massive battlefield. World of Tanks is highly tactical and realistic.

ExoTanks is like World of Tanks, but with more arcade-like gameplay. It prioritizes fun over realism. Oh, and you are driving these ultra-futuristic tanks equipped with lasers and plasma weaponry.

And all of this mayhem takes place in space, on alien planets. Isn’t that cool? Each tank has their own unique special abilities, and can be upgraded in the middle of battle.

2. Robocraft

Imagine Rocket League, but you build your own vehicles from little building blocks. And instead of knocking footballs around, you shoot stuff. With rotary cannons, missiles, and lasers.

That’s Robocraft in a nutshell. You can build robot-like vehicles loaded to the gills with advanced weaponry and sci-fi armor technology. Plus, you aren’t limited to land combat.

You can build Robocraft that rolls on tracks, drives on wheels, or flies in the air. You can fight against other players in PvP or test your designs against AI before taking them out into the battlefield.

Designs can also be shared with the community, and you can join clans of up to 50 players.

3. Not My Car

It’s like PUBG but with cars, and the cars are all copies of real-life exotics. In this game you’ll drive various classes of vehicles, each with its own armor, speed, and health. There are tanks on wheels that can tackle the toughest of terrain.

You also have nimble and light yet extremely fast exotics that can set the tarmac ablaze. The goal of this game is extremely simple, like any other battle royale- be the last person standing.

Customizing the appearance of your ride is also very easy thanks to all of the horns, skins, flags, etc.

4. Gear Up

Will it be caterpillar tracks or spider legs? No matter which means of locomotion you choose, you’re guaranteed to have a blast of a time playing this online tank battle game.

Gear Up lets you build your dream machine for fighting against other players in arena-style combat.

You can create a wide variety of vehicles using tracks, wheels, jetpacks, fans, etc. Weapons include miniguns, flamethrowers, tesla coils, old-school cannons, and more.

And you can even camouflage your vehicle with stealth generators, this adds a new layer of tactical complexity to an already incredible experience.

5. Trailmakers

In this sandbox game, the focus isn’t on combat. Rather, it’s about building the vehicle you want and exploring every corner of the vast game world.

You can even organize rally races since there are so many different terrain types- sand, mud, asphalt, water, etc.

You can build cars, planes, boats, and even stuff that is a mix of all 3. If you’re really creative, you can make something that flies, swims, and runs on land. There are various game modes in Trailblazers, including both single and multiplayer.

6. Brick Rigs

Build an ambulance, fire engine, locomotive, SUV, semi-trailer truck, or something that’s a combination of everything. Brick Rigs is a game that lets you construct any vehicle you can think of by combining little blocks. These look similar to Lego, but trust me- they aren’t Lego.

If you used Lego, you wouldn’t get the realistic destruction models that Brick Rigs has. Every time a vehicle crashes, tumbles down a hillside, or explodes, you get this wonderful effect in which individual components peel off the frame.

The driving mechanics feel smooth and responsive, so even if you aren’t doing weird destruction stuff you’ll enjoy simply driving around the roads in this game.

7. From The Depths

Even though the primary gameplay component is creating your own battleships and boats, you can also design spacecraft and hot air balloons.

From The Depths is part simulation game and part ship-building game. You go up against AI combatants, using communication and strategy with your fellow human players to beat the enemy.

You have map editors and thousands of community-made vehicle blueprints that are downloadable. The physics in this game feel realistic. Things like mass, wind, fluids, etc. work in a very believable fashion.

8. Diesel Guns

It’s an arcade vehicle combat game with fast-paced action. There’s guns, missiles, explosives, and more.

You can shoot your opponents or ram into them; the goal is to disable their vehicles using any means possible.

There are hidden paths, collectibles, and power ups distributed across each map. Ramps are built into the arenas so you can fly over your rivals and grab essential powerups. You can drive ATVs, sports cars, and trucks- just to name a few.

9. Scraps: Modular Vehicle Combat

Scraps is an extremely fun game for kids and adults alike. It’s like Lego, but with people making crazy vehicles that fail in spectacular fashion.

After all, watching your creation fall apart in totally unexpected ways is half the reason anyone even plays this game.

It has decent physics. Not on the level of more accomplished AAA games, but enough to keep you entertained for an hour or two.

You can upgrade vehicles in gauntlet mode and fight against AI or human opponents in arenas.

10. Space Engineers

It’s part Minecraft, part space survival. Space Engineers lets you design, construct, and deploy your very own space ships to the farthest reaches of space.

Exploring different planetary systems and galaxies is easier with better ships, and to construct better ships you need more materials.

How do you get materials? It’s quite simple in theory, you just go to some alien planet and mine some ores.

But in practice, things are a lot more complicated since you’ve got a bunch of players competing with you for resources.

11. TerraTech

A sandbox adventure where you search for parts and resources to craft your personal high-tech exploration machine. You can even scavenge parts from broken or old machines to create something new.

If you aren’t too interested in fighting other players and their creations, that’s fine.

Just moving around observing the scenery is a very soothing experience. You’ll often run into new biomes that feel and look completely different from any other area within the world.

There are mountains, grasslands, snow-covered plains, deserts, etc. and you can battle it out against other players in various game modes.

12. Rocket League

A simple yet extremely fun sports game that has been around for more than half a decade.

It’s soccer mixed with vehicles, resulting in some pretty insane gameplay and totally unpredictable matches that feel more interesting than actual football. There are various game modes so everyone has a fun time in Rocket League.

You’ve got online multiplayer- both casual and ranked (it even has an esports scene).

For people who want to goof around with friends, there is split-screen local co-op. The cars themselves can do neat little tricks like sidesteps and 360° flips.

13. Mad Max

An action-adventure role playing game in which you are Mad Max. If you’ve seen any of the Mad Max movies, you know what it’s all about.

This game is tons of fun no matter what you’re doing- raiding enemy bases or building your dream vehicle.

The massive post-apocalyptic world is filled with quests, interesting NPCs, and hidden areas that provide rare items/ weapons. Melee combat is lifted straight from the Arkham Knight games, so it feels quite satisfying.

There’s a ton of variety in weapons and vehicles, plus you can upgrade Max himself by learning new skills.

14. Wrecked

There’s something about looking at a minivan with a tank turret mounted on top and dozer blades in the front that feels hilarious and awesome at the same time.

Wrecked doesn’t have the prettiest graphics, in fact it looks like a cheaply made mobile game at times. And there is no single-player, so PvP is all you have.

Finding matches can take a while since player counts have dwindled quite a lot since launch. But the game still has a very dedicated community.

And you’ll find tons of guides made by other players on how to create the best vehicle for combat.

15. MechWarrior Online

Unlike other games on this list, MechWarrior Online doesn’t have cars or tanks.

Instead, it has got mechs- giant humanoid robots outfitted with weapons of war. Designed for one sole purpose- destroying other mechs.

With a rich lore behind the world and each faction, MechWarrior Online is a game that will entertain anyone who is a fan of mechs.

If you’re looking for Titanfall-style action but with a lot more tactical depth and strategy- this is the game for you.

Conclusion

So, what did you think of my list? I know, there are certainly more games out there that deserve to be on here but I chose the best 15.

Of course, this is all my opinion and you might have some game in mind that you feel deserves a spot over here.

1 Like
44

This game is pretty good if you can get some friends to play with. The building is WAY more complex then Crossout. You can build some awesome machines.

1 Like
45

I played a lot of scraps. Definitely more than “hour or two” dozens of hours at least. Mostly because I found it before XO(if XO even existed then) I was hoping the game will develop and get viral, been preparing for some PvPs… I watched it develop for a decade I think. Been lucky enough to find some people to fight PvP.
Quite a game considering it is was designed by just 1 person, who ultimately found a job and give up on his project. Sad story, but interesting game.

You can say same about XO. I don’t have that though, when you understand what’s going on and how it works it doesn’t surprise you any more.

46

Mad Max it’s the closest thing we can compare Crossout with when trying to describe this game to others in a nutshell. Funny thing you mentioned Mad max 2 there’s a lot of plows.
Here we gain rations of water for two days, in Mad max they collect fuel from broken cars with dusty pots and pans.
Here, for the argument about hovers :slight_smile:

Meanwhile we can see further similarities with both of them.
plenty of plows
exploding sticks
spikey cars and things

About play style…
In Mad Max there’s plenty of dudes being run over, smashing, crashing and so on… here it’s the same and personally my builds has or i try to have all hose factors combined.

Now, am i saying Crossout is MadMax? No. But i’m not saying Crossout isn’t MadMax either.
Both are different but both have chosen the same set of rules to frame their universe.
Pos apocalyptic word, blabla bla.
The Crossout lore doesn’t support high tech Science fiction stuff, huge infrastructures, logistics and power supplies and manpower are needed to maintain the level of tech we see in game but industrialization is gone, it’s just to big of a thing to a small group or faction .
Just read the electronics description and that big thing of earning water rations for two days.
we are at a point where everyone uses technology but nobody understands or knows how to fix it and the few that may know don’t have the resources/ equipment to do it .
Know to answer your question.
I’m not against scy fy but i just want more consistency in the lore, triggers and destructors are a pain in the neck but i can accept them much more easily than energy weapons and hovers.
For starters they could appear with a look more beaten up, less perfect, with huge copper coils and so on.
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in the 19 th century everyone knows the story and her take on electricity, that huge and cumbersome apparatus that gave life to the monster
Here we are, a bunch of morons (our avatars) most probably, the large majority don’t even know how to read or write, we kill our fellow human for a water ration.
Ok, even if there is some effort to get back to industrialization.
A top specked, brand new build with energy weapons that rolled out of the assembly line yesterday it’s just too much.

Just an example
In the later period of WWII, do you know what was the life expectancy was of a BMW jet engine for the ME-262?
50 hours of flight.
The Germans had to build the engines with regular material cause they couldn’t get special alloys needed for the job their industry just couldn’t do due to how the war was going.
But they had industry till the end.

2 Likes
47

That all makes sense to me. People shouldn’t be put off when it gets compared to Mad Max. It’s too hard not to notice.

It does occasionally and unfairly get used as a lever to argue with when some sci-fi element wrecks somebody’s fun.

I think you’re right, and somebody else also mentioned it too, that the lore doesn’t support the conditions in the game well. There is an unusual amount of alien tech for people who can’t fly, I think…or can they? Somebody has helicopters now, don’t they?

Right now people are real mad about this new update, because Hovers (of course), but…what if…

IDK, but it seems like to me, the way these new controls are set up…The way hovers were handling reminds me a bit of how the planes handle in War Thunder.

SS-025
SS-0251600×900 207 KB

I think the developers should stage an alien uprising and establish in the lore and in the game environment where all this alien tech has been coming from that saturates the Wasteland, and then take us to the next level.

Personally, I’ve been making a choice to focus more on the sci-fi elements than I have in the past. I just have a hard time seeing it. This thread helps excavate it a bit for me. This new update might help a lot.

1 Like
48

How far in the future is Crossout supposed to be?

I don’t pay very close attention to the lore stuff, but I keep a vague picture of it in the back of my head. My interpretation of all the sci-fi stuff was that the kind of mad scientists who would have holed up in bunkers during the apocalypse might have planned ahead and had the resources to have some highly automated industrial production capabilities in those bunkers (could have been government bunkers, or the bunkers that the billionaires of the world are building in New Zealand).
If you’ve got the resources to build a giant underground bunker, why not include some factories?
And when society collapsed completely, the mad scientists took control of one of these facilities.
As far as raw materials, a smart bunker factory would have some advanced recycling technology, which is why we collect, buy and sell raw scrap, copper, wires, and electronics.

Incidentally, one of the problems the real world billionaire survivalists are grappling with is how to keep your armed guards from killing you once your money has no meaning?

49

About five years from now (2027) is when it starts, according to the wiki. If you go look outside, you’ll see that’s probably a fair prediction. The year is currently 2051.
Here is an official timeline: Crossout. Event timeline - News - Crossout

1 Like
50

It’s Mad Max with lasers.

Yes, we get it, you like your sideways hovers. It’s still Mad Max with lasers, though. And while there are other influences… As Doc said, Mad Max is clearly Crossout’s father. And you have to be in denial to claim otherwise.

1 Like
51

And aliens. ← this is one of the things that makes this not mad max.

Sure it has a ton of elements that look like the franchise, no one can really argue that.

But as soon as you add aliens to the main story then all bets are off as far as this being a straight forward Max Max rip off. You are going to have high tech, you are also going to have things that are not from this earth.

3 Likes
52

Yup, a lot of people either don’t know the lore or conveniently forget about the fact cosmic butt probers are a part of Crossout lore!
Also if people are going off the aesthetics by saying this is a Mad Max game … then all post-apocalyptic movies, and games should be called Mad Max copycats

1 Like
53

OR… and hear me out. You have a serious control issue trying to define something as something it clearly is not and you just want to keep shouting it until everyone else shuts up. The devs have disagreed with you, the lore disagrees with you, the -game itself- disagrees with you, all the comics, the video shorts… literally everything about the game says “No” to this being simply “Mad Max”.

I get it, I do… Often when presented with something that runs contrary to a deeply held belief, humans react… poorly. That said, just because there’s funny smashy cars and it’s a dystopia doesn’t mean it’s mad max. Mad max wasn’t even the first of its kind, just what carried the mainstream popularity of the genre in film. So… keep shouting to get off your lawn… I’ll keep trying to find you in a game.

54

What I see is that nearly the only recognizable theme this game has is it’s striking resemblance to Fury Road, and it’s not just a vague or distant similarity, or one they don’t lean on heavily to market this game. It’s not odd for people, perhaps unaware or uninterested in the lore to liken this game to Mad Max, IMO.

Imagine you were playing this game for the first time. What’s the first thing you see?

This is the trailer for Mad Max: Fury Road

Nobody should have to justify why they see similarities.

It bears other themes, but what are they exactly? I liked this thread for it’s examination and revelation of those less obvious themes, and aim to cultivate them myself, so this game isn’t seen as just another Mad Max spin-off, at least by me, and for my own entertainment.

I’m certainly not interested another thread about name calling and insults. It’s a little weird to get upset that somebody thinks this game is a lot like Mad Max, I think. That’s just not an odd perspective, especially considering the trailer that starts at the beginning of every single player’s experience. Thinking it’s wrong to mention the similarity seems strange, and actually acting offended by the comparison is even stranger.

Rather than argue the ridiculous notion that this game doesn’t bear a striking resemblance to Mad Max:Fury Road, I ask again, then what is it, for example?

I think the punisher reminds me of this Judas Priest album cover…
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fpriest.the-croc.com%2FJPImages%2Frrrr.jpg
I think the last time I put up those two vids up yonder as a comparison (this is an old and worn argument), RoughMonkey posted a vid that was a Crossout promo for something or other that had a distinctly stronger sci-fi feel. I’d like to see that vid again, and then ponder WTF is that? What does that look like, or remind you of? How would we describe that (just for fun, rather than for fueling personal insults)?

2 Likes
55

Just because my legs look a woman’s when I shave them doesn’t make them as such.

56

Well, if you did dress like a woman, I think it would be odd for you to get upset if some guy treated you like one.

57

Prey, the last predator movie, one of the reasons i liked so much that movie, they were very successful in showing how brittle and how fragile that kind of society was.
they really depended on each other, if something would happened to some of them the collective would suffer

58

I’ve seen this control be affected by the regulation of water and salt in Cambodia during the early '70s. Money wasn’t something those people had in the first place.

Ultimately I think it comes down to controlling either of those two things, but it could be said that propaganda and a belief system is an even stronger control mechanism, since that is what drove the soldiers in Cambodia to reduce the people’s currency to water and salt in order to control them in the first place.

59

Yeah, I remember that. I found a bunch of stuff with lasers and hovers and spider legs and stuff like that.

I think in the advertising they have slanted the game a little more toward a “Mad Max” feel. If you guys didn’t know I own a graphic design business. And I’ll be the first to tell you that advertising is meant to make money and not always portray the full truth. These are not lies, but they skip details to make whatever your trying to push seem the way a certain focus group wants to see that product.

For example, in the case of Crossout, when they released the Syndicate they where trying to push a heavy Cyberpunk vibe because that was the new hot game on the market. The images and videos out of that update focused more around the Tokyo drift tech feel.

So with that last part said, I could pull enough marketing materials and exclude other materials and make this game look like it was meant to be cyberpunk style. But that would not be true, it would only be one of many thing this game is.

The real facts is “XO is all these things”. Some people can except that Crossout is a flavorful world with lots of different styles… and some can not.

3 Likes
60

I’m not the one in here kvetching that Crossout isn’t Mad Max. Funny how every time someone brings up the topic that XO isn’t 100% identical to Mad Max, it’s always an atempt to defend the balance state of hovers.

When the OBT started, pretty much every single thing available in Crossout was totally relatable to Mad Max, the difference being that the lore had a different cause for the apocalypse and the geographic location was different. Everything else was about rust, styled up post apocalyptic vehicles and different factions of savages and raving lunatics among the ruins of civilization. It was only after that that they started adding adding things that were clearly not inspired by Mad Max.

The roots of Crossout were always heavily inspired by Mad Max and related works, it’s the first thing anyone will see about it, it’s in half of the game’s official artwork and it reflects in the vehicles players build even 5 years after they added hovers into the game. Nobody here ever claimed that Crossout is 100% identical to Mad Max, but the roots are still there, you don’t have to deny what’s right in front of you just to disagree with me.

1 Like
61

One thing occurred to me that might be responsible for driving these opinions apart about the nature of Crossout, is that how when you start the game it is very Fury Road (zero sci-fi), but by the time you reach PS 14K there isn’t much of that Mad Max vibe left in the game you’re playing. People who play at that level consistently are probably more likely to say, “Mad Max? Who? What? Where?” I think The game past PS 9k rapidly leaves any resemblance to Mad Max behind, if there’s even any of it at left that point.

Being more of a Thunderdome guy myself, this dynamic has been frustrating to me. I like the Mad Max thing, and that’s what I would rather play, but as I’m forced into higher PS brackets that is nearly impossible to do. I find I’m playing a lot less because of it, and looking for alternatives.

It’s not that I don’t like traditional Sci-fi (loving the TV series Andor), it’s more that I don’t enjoy Crossout’s version of Sci-fi. I’m trying to solve that by understanding it better, but I really don’t get it.

I think I would enjoy this game more if they pumped their sci-fi content with more flavor, and made this Oracle/Njeri thing more pronounced in the landscape. Right now it’s too ambiguous, IMO.

Has anybody even seen an alien? I’ve been begging for a crashed flying saucer for more than a year now, probably. Nothing in game reminds me of aliens, and even the Ravagers Stronghold isn’t very “Ravagers.” I would have expected something more like last year’s Red Eyed Halloween event to be decorating that map, but nerp.

I think they should add Flying saucer sightings to their new revelation of helicopters flying over. Since their maps are essentially dome shaped, maybe a map that is a gigantic wrecked saucer that we drive around in like the Crater would make their sci-fi more a part of the landscape, both literally and thematically.

I certainly would be for more of the A.I. horror theme of the Ravagers being more prevalent. I miss that Operation Red Eye map. That was solid sci-fi, IMO, but aliens? What aliens? Where? I’m not sure I even believe there are aliens. I want to believe, but it’s probably just a government conspiracy like the old man says.

62

Since the Njeri intended to terraform this planet to their taste, how about a map or three that reflects some success in that? I think it would help a lot in establishing this game as proper sci-fi if it looked more like it environmentally. It might open doors to more interactive landscapes if they did, too.

It’d make that little piece of lore more relevant.

1 Like