Rock, Paper, Shotgun

We’ve heard back from the people behind the Western release of Cross Fire – the online multiplayer game that bears a striking similarity to Counter-Strike. A similarity that appeared a little too striking when readers found videos of the game containing at least one map lifted directly from Counter-Strike.

Clever Communications, providing the PR for G4BOX (a Canadian company apparently nothing to do with G4TV), got back to us today with a statement to say that the map was included in the Asian version, but will not be present in September’s US/UK release. Statement below.

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I mentioned this in a throwaway bit below, but it seems it might be worthy of further enquiry. The forthcoming Cross Fire, which today released its first batch of screenshots for this Autumn’s UK release, at first glance looks similar to Counter-Strike. Look closely and you’ll see the models, textures, etc, are all different. But it’s obviously a similar game.

It began with the Asian version (only works in IE). After launching in Vietnam, it’s been out for about a year and has picked up, they claim, over a million players in Korea. But things get weird when you look at the video below, claiming to be from the Chinese Cross Fire: it’s clearly de_dust2. It seems completely improbable that the game would contain maps from another game, and most likely this is a user mod, importing a favourite map into Cross Fire’s engine.

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