Go Over The Top in The Great War
The Battle of Verdun was the largest and longest battle of the First World War fought on the Western Front primarily between the French and German armies. In this delayed release compared with the PS4 version, developers M2H and Blackmill Games have tried to make a first person shooter that accurately reflects the real life battle. The ambition shown is certainly admirable but whether they have got anywhere near that goal is a moot point.
This game isn’t a shooter that anyone could call ‘action-packed’, but it much more a game where you need to bide your time, keep your head down, and keep your nerve to take out your opponent.
Because it’s a WW1 shooter, its obvious that there will be comparisons with Battlefield 1, and whereas that game goes all out for action, Verdun strives for a more realistic experience, and because of that is much slower paced. The action focuses on the infantry and trench warfare, with the game having you either peeking out from your own trenches ready to defend your position, or going over the top into no-mans land on the attack to take the enemies positions. A major problem from the start is that the real battle was on an epic scale involving thousands of combatants, whereas in this game is seems that only a few soldiers in each army have bothered to turn up. You inevitably spawn a fair distance away from the front line, and run through a maze of empty trenches to get where the action is, only to find out there’s very little action happening when you get there! I spent the first 15 minutes of gameplay without firing a shot as I couldn’t find or see an enemy to shoot at, and when I did venture out of the trenches I was usually picked off by a sniper, and with no kill cam there was no indication as to where the lethal shot had come for. The rifles and machine guns on the whole give you a one shot kill every time, which is satisfying for the sniper lying in wait, but very frustrating when you’re getting killed again and again as you try and find your feet in the game.
Visually the game isn’t what you’d call cutting edge. I was impressed by the scenery, and the developers must have studied a lot of pictures of the real battlefield to get the look right. The uniforms on the combatants is spot on too, with each nations troops having their own disticnt look. Having said that, the whole look is let down by the sub-standard animations, collision detection and graphical glitches that pop up often enough to leave you feeling like youre playing an early beta version of the game and not the finished product.
The main focus of this game is on multiplayer, but without any AI opponents thrown into the mix, it all sinks or swims on the amount of people playing, and the numbers just aren’t good enough in this respect. The PC version of Verdun has a big fan base, but this hasn’t transferred to the consoles, so you find yourself in games that are underpopulated, which in a game that is slow paced in the first place, this could be a bit of a death sentence. There is one single player game mode, where you fend off waves of attackers trying to take your trench, but the AI is so unintelligent that you can just hide in a little bunker while they continually run into the side of it instead of walking round to the door.
The game plays with a squad based system, with you and 3 friends making up a small squad, each with a specific role. There are different classes with their own perks, and you earn experience to upgrade your loadout, getting you better weapons and kit. When most of the guns can kill with a single shot anyway, the upgrades are only giving you quicker reloading times, improved accuracy, or increased range. One member of the squad gets to be the NCO, giving the orders on where to go and when to attack or defend. Sticking together as a team and following orders will gain you more experience as a team, but you only really discover all this by accident as you play, as there are very little instructions given as to how upgrades, loadouts and squad play works.
The default settings for the controller are poor and you need to do a bit of fiddling about to get the sensitivity right so it becomes less jerky. You can make improvements this way but it never feels entirely comfortable or instinctive like other better shooters.
Verdun is certainly a different experience in first person shooters, but very much feels like poor port from a PC game. The slow paced action would be ok normally but with a low player base ends up boring and frustrating, and I don’t see a bright future for this game on consoles.
Developer: M2H, Blackmill Games
Publisher: M2H, Blackmill Games
Price: £15.99
Twitter: @VerdunGame
Website: www.vurdungame.com
Huge Thanks to M2H and Blackmill Games for the review copy