10.4 hours played
Written 11 days ago
I really don't recommend this game. The feeling overall is that of a prototype- it needs a balance pass, there's numerous bugs (some minor, like enemy pathing issues; some major, like softlocks), unexplained or poorly implemented mechanics, and insufficient breadcrumbing/reminders for quest objectives.
To its credit, it does try some bold things, especially for a WWII shooter in 2014; the map design is also a strong point.
[h2]Missions and Level Design[/h2]
+ Levels are large and fun to explore, encounter design is fun, and there is good variety in missions and environments. The environments are attractive and the variety between each mission provides a welcome change of pace.
- Levels [i]stop[/i] being fun to explore when you realize they're mostly empty and meaningless. Interior spaces like houses are explorable, which helps sell the "play it your way" attitude that the game advertises, but these spaces are not populated with anything meaningful- usually just props, so there's no point in exploring.
- There's no mission indicator on the HUD or pause screen, and sometimes I don't know what I'm doing there. Yes, I'm there to kill Nazis and chew bubblegum, and that's usually reliable enough, but typically the NPC briefing dialogue only tells you once, and if I'm being honest, I'm not always engaged enough in the story to hang on to every word.
- Some side objectives seem bugged or impossible to complete. Notable example: There's an optional objective for helping some resistance members under siege in a house, but seems impossible or unrealistically difficult to complete, as the objective fails (presumably for taking too long) before I can reach the enemies. This objective is also not stated to be timed, nor is there any indication of a timer (diegetic or otherwise). In this case, I restarted the checkpoint at least seven times before giving up.
[h2]Graphics and Art Direction[/h2]
[s]I had no issues running this game at 60fps on a 1070Ti.[/s]
I don't give "negative points" for bad graphics unless they're really so awful that they take me out of the game or cause gameplay issues.
[s]+ No performance issues.[/s] I played some more and came back to say that this game crashed three times, one of which was a hard system crash.
+ The art style and direction of the game is fine overall. It's fairly colorful and avoids the drab, grungy, and boring monotone newspaper palette of other modern shooters.
[h2]General Gameplay and Misc.[/h2]
Stealth is optional and usually pretty fun, but sometimes falls prey to how frustrating it is to deal with certain stealth mechanics.
The difficulty level on Medium was fine. Experienced gamers will have no trouble on this difficulty level. I don't know how it's balanced on easy or hard (or whatever the difficulties were named), and I'm not going to play it again to find out.
- Stealth mechanics are often frustrating. Stealth takedowns and moving bodies both take an extremely long time (~8 second animation for a takedown, and what feels like a 90% move speed penalty while carrying bodies), during which you can also be spotted, to the point that they're not fun to engage with. Enemy corpses also despawn at random, which makes you question why you bothered hiding them in the first place.
- Rock throwing distraction mechanic is interesting, but often frustrating to try to handle. Sometimes, enemies will hear the rock throw, immediately become aggressive, and also know where you are and open fire instantly.
+ Collectibles are present and grant an achievement, but it's pretty flavorless. There is no in-game tracker for how many you have or are missing, except for a brief pop-up that appears when you pick one up.
- Enemy AI is okay but very buggy at times. Sometimes they'll become stuck on dynamic physics objects, move off of their patrol paths and glitch-glide up sheer cliffs to get back on their routes, or take a very long and circuitous route to get to you.
- Several times during fights, I watched an enemy try to path to me, briefly get stuck, and then fall over dead for no apparent reason.
+ My play experience was stable, and I have experienced [s]no[/s] three crashes so far.
[h2]Weapons and Weapon Balance[/h2]
With the state of the game's balance, the game is [i]playable[/i], but sometimes not fun.
+ The variety of weapons is satisfactory.
- Some weapons feel like they were zeroed or calibrated incorrectly, and bullets feel like they're not going where I'm aiming.
[h2]Sound Design[/h2]
Sound design is overall very lacking.
- Voice acting is definitely not good, but also not bad enough to be funny. The main character's delivery is completely off like they weren't given any direction. The side characters' voice acting is fine, but I don't understand Polish or German so I can't speak for the delivery of those lines.
- Weapon sounds are passable in [i]most[/i] cases but not satisfying.
- There is extremely little variation in enemy voice lines, and often times dialogue has no variation at all and little to no delay between triggers, which is [i]extraordinarily[/i] grating, particularly when you're trying to explore or look for collectibles.
[h2]Story and Writing[/h2]
The story is underwhelming but passable for what it is.
- Ostensibly the story is centered around the Polish resistance, but you play as an [i]American journalist[/i] who comes in to do all the work and save the day, which strikes me as a really weird choice. Not some professional badass, just some regular dude with his camera. Who takes down hundreds of Nazis, their tanks, gun emplacements, bunkers and buildings, all by his lonesome.
[hr][/hr]
Overall, I get the impression that this game was made with half of the budget/manpower it deserved given the scope of the gameplay experiments it attempts.
[h1]Verdict:[/h1]
4/10. Maybe get it on sale if you enjoy solidly mediocre shooters or are just looking to kill some time, but I don't recommend this game to people who really pay attention to their games.
