Crossout Remastered Is Out: A Free Graphics Overhaul for the Wasteland Car Combat Game

Crossout, Gaijin and Targem’s build-a-death-machine car combat game, has had a full graphics overhaul and now goes by Crossout Remastered. It isn’t a new game or a separate download. It’s the same free-to-play Crossout, patched in place, and it’s out now.

When and where

• PC and most consoles: live since 22 October.
• PS4: live since 23 October, after technical problems held it up.
• It was delayed. The October update was pushed back to 22 October for “technical reasons”, and players got a login gift by way of apology: seven days of premium, plus a couple of season and event levels.
• Platforms: PC (Steam and the Xbox app), PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.
• Price: free. The game is still free-to-play, and Steam DLC packs run from NZ$16.99 to NZ$119 if you want to spend.

What’s actually changed

• Terrain: now processed on the GPU with adaptive tessellation and higher-resolution textures. The collision geometry is smoother than the terrain you see, so vehicles should get stuck less. Gaijin says routes and driving lines on existing maps haven’t changed.
• Grass and foliage: denser, GPU-rendered grass with wind and bush physics. Plants bend and get flattened under your wheels and tracks.
• Lighting: redesigned, with hybrid deferred rendering, physically based fog, a new atmospheric scattering model, local reflections and longer-range voxel global illumination. XeGTAO replaces HBAO+.
• Effects: a reworked particle system with better smoke, fire and explosions.
• Water: new water with two wave layers, tessellation and interactive ripples, across rivers, swamps and puddles.
• Upscaling:
  • DLSS 4.5 with Dynamic Multi-Frame Generation, plus Reflex and DLAA.
  • FSR 3.1, which can switch to FSR 4 on supported AMD cards. There’s no AMD frame generation.
  • FXAA has been removed as “outdated”.
• PC specs: Steam now lists DirectX 12 for both the minimum and recommended specs. The minimum is a GTX 950 or RX 460 with 4GB of RAM. The recommended spec is an RTX 2070 or RX 5700 XT with 16GB.

Also in the update

• Whispers of the Wasteland event: runs until 18 November.
• Halloween event: runs until 4 November.
• Clan wars: reworked, with season 1 starting on 26 October.
• Brawls: reworked.
• UI tweaks: these include cross-viewing the Exhibition between PC and consoles.

There are no new maps or vehicles. This one is about the visuals. Gaijin hasn’t said whether consoles get every visual upgrade PC does, or given any resolution or frame-rate targets for them. It’s the same game and the same accounts, so your builds and progress stay put.

Our take

Crossout has always been a better game than it looks. The Lego-with-miniguns building is still unmatched, but it was starting to look every bit its nine years, and the visuals were a turn-off for new players. Shiny grass you can flatten and smoke that looks like smoke won’t fix the grind or the monetisation. Steam reviews are sitting at “Mixed” for a reason. But it’s a free, decent excuse to bolt a rocket pod to a bathtub again.

Just be aware that “Remastered” is doing a lot of marketing work here. It’s a big graphics patch, not a remaster in the way the word usually gets used.

Still building cursed death machines in Crossout? Show us your build in the comments, or in the GetRekt Discord.

Sources

• Crossout: Crossout Remastered, new graphics (patch notes, 22 Oct)
• Crossout: PS4 version of the Remastered update is available (23 Oct)
• Crossout: October update rescheduled for 22 October
• Crossout: delay compensation
• Gaijin press release: Crossout Remastered transforms the Wasteland
• Steam: Crossout Remastered (specs, reviews, NZ pricing)
• IGN (YouTube): Crossout Remastered, official gameplay trailer