Now that the NDA is lifted I can put out my thoughts about this game. As a lover of FPS games and competitive shooters I thought that maybe this would be the next big thing. Afterall everyone is hyping it up to be the next big FPS game that people should jump to. 2 of my favorite military-esque shooters of all time are BF3 and CS. Unfortunately I do not think this game lives up to the hype and I'll try to explain why.
Here's my assessment of Wardogs after a little time in the closed beta. This may feel like a UE5 hate fest and I didn't intend for it to be that way, but if you've played any UE5 shooters then this just fits right into that bucket unfortunately.
Look and Sound: B+
As a UE5 game of course this game looks and sounds pretty good. However, it also just feels generic and not very unique or any kind of wow factor. I'm not saying it's bad, it's actually decent, but for a new game that's being so hyped I was expecting more out of the graphics and sound design of the game. It just looks and sounds like another UE5 FPS game and for that reason I give it a B+. It's good but not great or amazing.
Player Design: B+
Again this is a UE5 FPS game and because of that the characters in the game all look and sound fairly generic compared to other shooters on the market. However, they aren't overly flawed or anything so a B+ is a fair rating. Players look and sound good but not great.Weapons: C+
The look, feel, weight, and variety of weapons are all middle of the road for a game like this. I had much higher expectations. Overall the weapons and the weapon systems, gear, tactical loadouts, etc... are just super generic to me. Even so, the variety feels lacking compared to games we've had for decades and the overall design of everything just looks and feels bland. The positioning, moving, and magnetism of crosshairs (even on MnK) is also extremely annoying making the weapons feel worse. The ammo and inventory management is also the worst I've seen in any FPS game I've played. I find myself spending too much time in my inventory and in vendor inventories trying to manage my guns, ammo, and equipment instead of just playing the game. This feels like they took the worst of extraction and battle royale games and combined it into the worst possible outcome. Overall the look, feel, design of weapons and the management of your ammo and inventory needs a major overhaul to convince me that this game is worth my time. Otherwise it just feels like another UE5 shooter.
Gameplay: B-
Gameplay has its ups and downs. I'm trying not to pull too many other categories into this one but there is certainly an impact on gameplay when other facets of the game aren't designed properly.
The biggest problem with gameplay is the look, feel, and movement of this game just doesn't feel good. I don't really feel like I'm in a FPS battlefield type game. I wanted that Warzone or BF1 type feeling too it.
1) Health and Death related: Time to kill is too fast, time to respawn is too slow, and health management is annoying to deal with. Along with all the other annoyances of managing my inventory, having to deal with revives and med packs is super annoying. I like how battlefield and cod solved this decades ago but people just have to be different. Also the revive mechanic without a resuscitating device is downright hilarious. You stand there for an entire 60 seconds just rubbing your hands together and then your teammate is magically revived.
2) Movement: Movement just doesn't feel great to me. Sprinting feels ok but most the movement in the game just feels slow and clunky. Want to strafe to the side? Sure your character suddenly has concrete blocks for feet and moves super slow. Want to crouch? Sure your guy takes his time like he's in a squat rack. Want to go prone? Sure your guy has to come to a complete stop, losing all momentum, crouch slowly first, then get onto the ground. Overall the movement system is just slow and clunky for a competitive FPS game. We need more speed and momentum to the movement. Also white boy can't jump is a reality. You get about 2" of hop.
3) Map Design: The map design feels ok. There's a large variety of buildings vs terrain but it also just feels like generic UE5 assets copied and pasted over and over. There's not a lot of detail here and everything just looks bland. The ability to shoot through and ricochet off things is great, but where is the detail? Where is the destruction? Where is the gore? The maps are just generic trees, grass, buildings, concrete copied and pasted over and over with no true feel to them.
4) Aim assist: I mentioned this earlier but want to mention it again. There's some weird shenanigans going on with aim assist, reticle stickiness, and overall gunplay. It just feels bad for some reason. I've had this issue in every UE5 FPS game though so it's not surprising.
5) Vehicles: the current vehicles system feels bad to me. I was excited for a battlefield type game but this system just doesn't feel right to me. You have to buy vehicles which you can only do with money which you only get if your team is winning which essentially just snowballs the winning team's chances of winning further. You also lose the vehicles, which is just odd. Basically this feels more like Battlefront or CoD kill streak awards instead of like Battlefield where you have a set of naturally spawning vehicles that anyone can go grab. The vehicles themselves also aren't that great but even BF6 couldn't get vehicles right so maybe it's a modern game design issue.
Objectives: The objectives don't necessarily feel immersive to me but I do like the system of a moving secondary hot zone that funnels players into a specific area of the map. Rewarding people for playing the objective is a gameplay decision I can support. I just would like to see more styles of objectives in a game like this, including some of the classic ones.
HUD: Not too many complaints for the HUD. It has a decent enough info and doesn't look or feel cluttery. There's also many other visual customization options in settings to help. I just think some things need to be moved around like money next to team score so you can watch both at the same time instead of in opposite corners which makes it impossible to see both at once.
User Interface: B-
The menu UI is ok and has all the settings and info you want but the player inventory and vendor UI are a mess. It's very difficult to understand where everything is and isn't intuitive at all. It's pretty clear the people working on this just slapped some inventory screens together like it was windows forms and called it good enough. I also hate playing tetris with my inventory for gear and ammo.
Monetization: TBD
Right now the game is buy to play with no cash shop or monetization beyond this. However, they are working on figuring out their live service monetization strategy. It feels unfair to rate this aspect right now but they did say they never want the game to be p2w so at least that's a win.
Overall Grade: C+
I was cautiously optimistic about this game. The hype felt too out of no where for a random game and studio nobody has heard about before. The gameplay footage at gaming conventions just made people think we're finally getting the Battlefield game we all wanted but after putting time into the closed beta this just feels like a UE5 diet version of Tarkov instead of Battlefield. Overall if you're a fan of a more mil-sim tactical cash based inventory management completive FPS game and you can get over the generic UE5 stuff, then you may like this game. If you're looking for the CoD or Battlefield experience you can easily skip this one.
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