Developer: Driven Arts
Publisher: Driven Arts
Platform: PC
Reviewed On: PC
Days of War – Preview
Fans of online shooters have long been waiting for a modern, WW2 era shooter to help fend off the Nazi killing urges. Now developer Driven Arts is aiming to give us just that, a true WW2 shooter that is toted as the spiritual successor of the Day of Defeat series: Days of War. So grab your rifle, load your trench-gun and get ready to enter the war zone.
Set in the midst of the second world war, with a huge selection of weapons at your disposal, you are tasked with taking land and destroying your enemies. As a purely multiplayer shooter, there isn’t much in the way of story, but that’s ok. We’re here to shoot Germans after all, not for the story. Currently, you can play as either the united states or Germany, with plans to add in the commonwealth and red army as playable factions in the future.
Graphically Days of War looks very good for an early access title. It rocks its own photo-realistic style, and the lighting is fantastic. The player animations are generally smooth and the guns look absolutely fantastic. There is something incredibly satisfying from reloading and seeing the reload animations for these old WW2 era weapons.
The sound overall is decent, although the reload sound effects for some weapons in particular could do with reworking or having their volume adjusted. You can generally hear footsteps when enemies are close to you, but it is often difficult to hear them when in the heat of battle. To say that this title has only just been released on Early Access, you might expect the sound to be somewhat neglected, yet generally it seems to be up to standard already.
Days of War is a fast-paced 32 player shooter. You can join either the US or Germany and pick from nine classes, with over twenty weapons. Choose everything from sniper rifles to rocket launchers, gather your team-mates and destroy the enemy. Combat in Days of War is designed to be very team based, fast paced and arcade-like, in a similar vein to the old Day of Defeat games.
The main game-mode revolves around capturing points for your faction, where capturing them all results in victory for your team. Fighting in this manner really helps to simulate taking ground and the strategic advance of your allied forces, which definitely adds to the realism.
As a multiplayer shooter, one of the most important elements was always going to be the gun-play. Thankfully Days of War does not disappoint in this regard. The gun play is excellent with each weapon having realistic feeling accuracy and recoil, resulting in hard fought, nail biting engagements at every turn.
The map design is likewise fantastic, although having only been in Early Access for just over six weeks, there are only a handful of maps that have currently been released. The developers are currently working on creating more, as well as a map editor so that players can design their own battlegrounds at will.
There are a few issues with optimization, where some players have been experiencing frame rate drops, but this is to be expected and the devs have been quick to fix it. Optimization is something that they will be constantly improving all of the time. The only real issue with this title, is the current lack of players. Possibly due to the somewhat hefty Early Access price tag of £19.99, or small amount of content, the player base is currently quite small.
As a result, there are usually only a couple of busy servers, even during peak times. Some players have suggested having a free weekend or something similar to get more people playing the game, but the developers have decided that they would rather do something like that later on in the Early Access process when they have more content to show off and the game is more polished. The game has only been in Early Access for about 6 weeks after all.
Conclusion
If you are expecting to play a polished, final WW2 online shooter, then you are much better off waiting until the title’s final release. If, however you are willing to battle through the bugs and lack of maps, then you can really have an impact and help the developers create an even better game. There is still a long way to go, but with more maps, more factions and more weapons in the works, Days of War looks to have a very exciting future.
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