Another day, another military shooter. A revival probably of the oldest series, despite having absolutely nothing with the older identity, and is just a way of using the IP to get away doing all the things other military shooters have before. Originality truly be damned.
This game isn't a Battlefield competitor or working up against Modern Warfare either. It's like a hotch potch of those games, but like Michael Bay if he made an action film in China produced by Chinese. With some of the most exaggerated things I've experienced. Not to say I didn't have actual fun playing, I'd be remiss about not mentioning some of its core problems.
I also noticed it doesn't entirely run stable? Plus terrible Netcode it seems compared to modern FPS standard. I know my network can be really shoddy, but the entire game stuttering, and glitching out? Not a good way to tell problems from what end.
To start off, there is Warfare, Operations, and Black Hawk Down that is not released yet. Operations is A PvPvE mix extraction game, made for those who plays Warzone, Tarkov, and the loot extraction modes. It's definitely not a Battle Royale, but I wish some things just worked here.
You have a large map, killing enemies drop loot, which you'll spend minutes digging in because looting isn't easy if hovering over an item with a question mark means waiting till it gets revealed like loot box drops. Who has time for that? Yet it seems ok, because this mode isn't as nearly intense as the others. Designed easily works to scatter players, with PvE events.
From an intuitive standpoint, I've had issues. Like getting items to my inventory, and dropping them off. Though, it takes getting used to first. Still provides interaction with the items. Like, technical stuff you've heard from old Operation Flashpoint, and Ghost Recon games.
It's a 3-player party, and unfortunately, playing this with randoms didn't go well for me. I can tell there's so much to try out. The action sneaks up on you, the level design, and open map has plenty to give. You do missions to earn currency, and said currency is also needed at minimum to extract out of there. I mean, I'm carrying loot, I have to make it all pay off eventually.
Overall, I'd give this one a pass. This was the first mode I tried out, and outside the odd inventory management, loot scrounging, the gameplay is super fun. Weapons pack real punch, like you feel the heft, recoil is crazy but works if you know what you're doing. You have operator abilities while functioning in Assault, Recon, Engineer, and Support class.
Though, I didn't have extensions before. But after my match, I saw how easy it is to jack up my weapons, especially with so many of them to choose from. I sold the loot, I got credits, and yeah, earn credits to spend it. Got it. There's also the Auction House. You don't get real money, but it's player driven economy. To the extent that prices will change.
Now, let's talk about the real major component. Warfare has Attack and Defend, King of the Hill, and Blitz. There's more, but I need to level up to get access to few of them. Some allow 64 players on the map. Others like Blitz do 32. Most of the map designs are pretty familiar.
Of all those maps, I'd say Ascension, and Trenches are my preferred ones. Constantly engaging thanks to various choke points, shortcuts, versatile exploration, and vehicular combat coming into play. Laid out intricately. The game's audio design is crucial to the immersion factor they bring. The rest of the maps are hit, and miss, tho they're also kind of derivative.
There's nothing like spamming my abilities, and gadgets. My engineer uses a sonar distortion that effects enemy movements, and disorients visual a bit. Useful to stop aggression or provide opportunities for it. Recon scan enemies, but also sort of disorients enemies in their own way. I think I can speak for anyone when I say, Assault is ridiculously hyper aggressive. Everything about their kit says so. Then there's the medic, revival spamming has broken realistic combat immersion.
Understandably, this is a casual shooter, but it wears the DNA of so many known games pretty well. It's competently made, it doesn't have grating flaws like the aforementioned titles. But one can question whether this is something truly real or exists to satiate.
We all know how badly Battlefield has fumbled, and that Warzone is a slugfest for console bros, as well as being rampant with hackers, among other issues too. Don't get me started on Tarkov, the starter packs are priced absurdly high. I seriously think if Operations was serious enough to compete, it could rock the boat with Tencent's backing.
As for the in-game monetization, well it's a F2P game from China. All's fair long as there are people willing to fork out cash, the season pass is decent. Play long enough, you earn some boosters, new operators, and so on. But for the guys cashing in is where their situation gets uglier the more you scuttle through the amalgamation of pages to see multiple season passes.
The Netcode also needs work, it uses P2P and not in a good way. I've experienced packet losses just a tinge bit, and my entire game lags and stutters horribly. Taking away the fun.
So let's see, you got more than half a decent clone with crazy ability and gadget spamming, no limits weapons customization, intense gunplay, destructable environments (well not like Levolution), crazy variety of weapons at your disposal, and it can run almost on any system.
The audio design, and visuals are pretty phenomenal, I'm surprised it runs smoothly on its own considering it's a UE4 title, you can run this on a toaster PC as well. What I'm not a fan of is the background music, the character dialogues, and voice acting, like we're talking terrible mobile games quality of silly, but then again BF2042 tried the exact same thing.
I don't like the UI, and UX design, the anti-cheat is also kernel level despite launching from Steam. There are total of 8 operators to play, and I wish it had more to experiment and play around with. Their abilities have multi-function phases, and easy to learn too.
But it is stupid fun, and if you're looking for alternatives, there's plenty out there like Battlebit Remastered. I'm not exactly a fan of the playerbase based on how they communicate or lack thereof, no where's perfect, though. All I can think of few reasons for coming back.
Like the insane weapon's customization, good map design of the few around, smooth reward system, the fact that it's F2P and is embarrassing DICE these days considering they haven't gotten a shooter right after two BF titles in the past few years now. There's more coming on the way, and I'm interested to see where they take Operator mode at, as I'm not into its current state. Also, I'd keep an eye out for the Black Hawk Down mode, a remake with inspiration from the Ridley Scott film.
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