Days of War Preview

Things aren’t off to a good start, as much as I’d like to offer praise to Driven Arts and their release of Days of War, I, unfortunately, cannot. Despite being released on Steam’s Early Access, the so-called beta hasn’t had a worthwhile impactful first impression. Now, this is not because it’s a terrible game, but due to its high entry price, lack of players and the feeling that this game was released, even by some Early Access standards, too early - it’s a beta and yet feels more like an alpha.

With other big name developers taking their franchises in different directions like the first World War, and rumors sparking of others going back to their roots. It’s clear that the yearning for a classic World War shooter is back on the rise. The PC gaming scene is no stranger to the setting with popular releases such as Day of Defeat and Red Orchestra, but those, while still played, are considered outdated.

Using the power of crowdfunding, Driven Arts have brought us Days of War. It isn’t the first to bring the World War 2 shooter back this year, Day of Infamy from Insurgency developers, New World Interactive, released last year (also in Early Access) and garnered large successful. But while that was a WW2 version of their popular Insurgency series, Days of War is essentially a modern version of Day of Defeat.

With that, we’ve got a more tactical, old-school style of gameplay. Gameplay wise as of now, you can only choose between the Americans and the Germans, but there are nine different classes to choose from. Classes are varied with twenty different weapons from bolt-action rifles, submachine guns to rocket launchers. There is plenty of variety but the issue I’ve had is how the weapons handle. The high recoil can be brutal meaning you can’t just run and gun like an arcade shooter. It’s also pretty over the top, but by design and it’s more so than similar competitive shooters. Many times it felt like you weren’t even playing as a trained soldier as weapon fire would spread very high upwards, control is important, but it doesn’t feel realistic at all. It also doesn’t help that many of the hitboxes against players feel off, even if you do feel you’re directly aiming for the chest and head.

Currently, there are four maps: Carentan, Kaysersberg, Omaha and Foy. They’re not the most original designed maps, but with the game being trying to be historically accurate if you’re going to make a second world war shooter, you got to have the some of the most iconic and ferocious battlegrounds. Besides Omaha which sees players storm the beaches, with the Germans menace in towering bunkers above in the cliffs, each map focuses on village or town close-quarter matches. With access to buildings and upper floors, you’ll either be cautiously moving towards the objective or take an advantage point above from a window.

Supporting 32-players (that’s if you could find a server with enough players) the objective is to capture the points within the map, with each capture point you push the enemy back. The team with the most captured points wins the game. The developers have promised on their roadmap the plan for 100-player battles, which would certainly be interesting to see, although in its current state I’ll have to see it in action to ever believe it will make fruition.

Visually, despite being built on Epic’s Unreal Engine 4, Days of War is already looking ruff. Weapon and character models are fine, but not exactly most detailed, animations are good, though. It’s the environments, although having daytime and nighttime variants, they are pretty bland and dated, with dull lighting and overall lacking in detail. On top of that, the game lacks music, ambient sounds, and has placeholder voices (Germans with American voices) and lackluster gun audio. The game isn’t well optimized either, nonetheless, the performance can be rectified in time, but it should still be pointed out.

As it stands, I can not recommend Days of War in its current state, but I don’t deny the potential. A lot of work is still needed for the game to succeed, but in turn, it still needs the player base to have any chance of success. The biggest reason for taking so long in writing this preview was the lack of players. With an all-time peak of around 800 players, this number has consistently dropped to the point where it is now almost impossible to join a match with a full team of players. Connection wasn’t an issue, as there is dedicated and custom servers available, so the real problem is the player base.

Despite this, I still believe there is still a lot of potential here, historical shooters are back on the rise and Days of War is another that is worth keeping eye an out, just not right now. The developers are active and working on bringing further updates to the game. WIth further polish, additional features, and improvements to how the weapons handle we could very well a great Day of Defeat successor. For now though, if you’re looking at a more polished hardcore, World War 2 tactical shooter, then take a look at the recently released Day of Infamy or the upcoming Battalion 1944.