by Joseph Luster

Originally released as a PC exclusive in 2012, Warface’s free-to-play action is finally making its way to consoles—Xbox 360, specifically—with a debut set for 2014. It remains to be seen how smooth of a transition Crytek Kiev’s FPS will make, but it certainly makes a good case for itself with the intensity and visual polish for which Crytek as a whole is known.

Set in the year 2023, Warface comes into focus in a world full of chaos and corruption; crumbled nations standing beneath the imposing shadow of a new world order. That order is Blackwood, a military force that takes control of the world’s resources and makes battlefields out of its cities. Thus, an elite force known as Warface is formed to take on Blackwood, and you have a solid impetus for plenty of combat on the frontlines.

Warface is another of many shooters that take war into the near future, doubling up on tech while sticking to real-world locations and a first-person perspective.
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Warface offers up four classes of soldiers to choose from, with Rifleman, Medic, Sniper, and Engineer options available to swap between at any time across locations ranging from the Balkans to South America. As with most games of its type, though, working together is optimal. While there are plenty of ways to take on the game’s scenarios as a solo war machine, special cooperative moves make playing together a much more enticing method.

Free-to-play games—typically bolstered with in-game transactions of some kind—have been doing their thing on PC for a while now, but it’s also something we’re seeing more on consoles across a variety of genres. World of Tanks blazed its way to a worldwide Xbox 360 release, and even fighting games have gotten in on the fun, with Namco Bandai testing the waters with free-to-play versions of Tekken and SoulCalibur. From the same publisher we have the upcoming dogfighter Ace Combat Infinity, which entered beta testing in Japan back in December. There’s also Killer Instinct, which returned to the arena with a similarly experimental pricing model on Xbox One, so the stage is more or less set for more games like Warface to take the console plunge.