Up until a couple of days ago I’d never played XSHOT. To be fair, the free to play online shooter has only just recently opened up local, Australian servers. I’m not sure how long the game has been operating internationally, and what kind of content has been changed and added over its lifetime. But what I do know is that booting up the game locally welcomes me with an upbeat remix of Ode to Joy. What?
As mentioned, XSHOT is a free to play online shooter, locally (and I figure internationally) part of the same MOL supported catalogue as World of Tanks, Wakfu, Defiance, and other F2P micro-transaction titles built from studios all over the world. While the likes of World of Tanks coming from Belarus, and others coming from Asian regions such as China and Thailand, I’m not sure where exactly XSHOT originates, but it’s fairly obviously one of the latter.
The anime/manga stylisation is the first give away. The abundance of knock-off art and public domain music (as if that even matters) seals the deal.
At it’s core, XSHOT is presented as an arena shooter primarily against waves of AI opponents. From my experience blasting away the opposition, after creating my character to yet another Christmas themed remix (Away in a Manger), the scoring system is a fairly basic (them vs. us) and generally weighted in favour of the human team. Kind of like fighting “waves” of AI opponents in some other games, letting you chew through many enemies before you drop dead. During the rounds I played I was paired up with about three colourfully dressed companions (me stuck with the basic outfit), and together we chewed through armies of metal clad AI modelled and textured exactly like the T-101 endoskeleton from the Terminator franchise, while what I’m pretty sure was a poorly recomposed Metal Gear Solid 2 theme played in the background. Going by the screenshots and videos out there, you’ll also fight other types of enemies, but I couldn’t work out how (must be based on the server).
XSHOT is pretty simple in presentation, cluttered hud aside, and exactly what you’d expect for a game made on an economic budget and I’m guessing licensed middleware (like a lot of games), ultimately looking like something straight out of the Counter-Strike and PS2/Xbox/GCN generation of shooters. Simple animations, flat textures, and no evidence of modern shaders and advanced post processing. But I guess that’s the point. Games like this are built for international consumption, particularly in countries where the standard ‘gaming’ computer is hardly capable of crunching a millions of polygons and tessellated edges. So at least you know it’ll run well, and thus could probably get away with playing on your work computer.
Aforementioned monetisation wouldn’t work very well if XSHOT didn’t have something going on beyond “shoot the guy”, so the development team has lifted ideas from Borderlands and other loot RPGs by providing weapons with numerous statistics and damage values. Machine-guns that do special damage. Explosive rounds. Increased accuracy. Purple glowing pistols. You get the picture. That’s the hook of XSHOT, alongside cosmetics and other stuff. Weapons dropped by AI and other players cannot be kept, but are available for use within a round, giving you a taste of what can be purchased in the in-game store. A store that uses currency acquired during matches, or MOL points and other micro-transactions. I can’t remember if you’ll shop to a remixed version of Wish You A Merry Christmas or Jingle Bells, but it’s one of the two.
There’s also a wedding system, wherein you can “buy” wedding clothing and access to a church to “marry” other players, but I’m yet to explore that feature in-depth.
Overall the appeal of XSHOT is questionable in this day and age. It’s unashamedly a F2P shooter built with low production values and disposable gameplay. But it does work. Getting in and out of matches is quick enough, the shooting mechanics are basic as hell but satisfying given the F2P model, and the Borderlands-like weapons loot gives the formula that necessary carrot-on-a-stick to keep playing. It’s very Runescape era, circa early 2000s or something like that, which may not be applicable in a modern Western gaming environment where “free to play” includes such behemoths as DOTA, Team Fortress 2, and Planetside 2.
But those games are also pretty demanding technologically and, in some cases, require long term play to really understand the mechanics. XSHOT might be disposable, but the quick-and-dirty satisfaction will probably appeal to people who just want to shoot the guy without much fluff. If you’d like to know more, you can check out the XSHOT website here. It’s available to play right now, so you can make an account, download the client, and try it for yourself on Australian servers.
Oh, and I’m pretty sure the end-round logo image contains a traced over art of Resident Evil‘s Chris Redfield, maybe from The Mercenaries. Will require further investigation.
