Developer: Redstone Interactive
Publisher: Offworld Industries
Platform: PC
Beyond The Wire – Review
In the last couple of years, we saw a rise in the popularity of realistic shooters based on the First and Second World War. We were treated with titles such as Verdun and Hell Let Loose and while both titles hold a certain level of quality and immersion, both of them do come with some flaws. Not to say that a game can be 100% perfect, but Beyond The Wire sure comes close. Here you play with one of the five nations against the German war machine and relive the grim battles of early 1900s Europe.
Story
If you are looking for a game with an elaborate story then you aren’t at the right address with Beyond The Wire. The game is focused on playing battles and is not really interested in giving you a history lesson on the First World War. You can rest assured, however, that the maps, troops, and weapons found in-game are historically accurate. The lack of story isn’t a big problem, as the game is solely multiplayer and you can just jump into the action without any delay.
Graphics
Those who have played the more realistic World War games will remember the grimness of those times. This is well represented in Beyond The Wire but ofcourse that’s not all: visually the game looks stunning and the details in the animations are high quality. For starters, the characters handle their weapons realistically as a trained soldier would, this means manipulating the safety and reloading it like you would in real life and not like in a Call of Duty game. Secondly, the maps are large, and there is much to see, with points of interest that can be easily found to navigate. Lastly, the game is nicely optimized and will run fine on laptops (albeit on a lower graphical setting) or older gaming rigs. You won’t have too much information on your HUD and this really helps with the immersion when the explosions hit and the bullets fly around your ears.
Sound
Not only does the game look stunning, but it also sounds the part. Taking part in gunfights can be loud, even ear-deafening at times, and those who aren’t feeling comfortable can easily flinch when a teammate takes a shot at an enemy. All the soldiers have voice lines according to their country (French, German, British, etc) and the main way of communication with fellow teammates is through local VOIP. This adds an extra layer to the immersion as radios were not carried around by every soldier. During the fights, there isn’t any music playing, and you’ll solely hear the sounds of explosions, gunfire, whistles that sound the start of another charge attack, and the sound of tanks slowly making their way through the battlefield.
Gameplay
Beyond The Wire is a hardcore First Person Shooter that puts an emphasis on realism and the dread of what a soldier went through during the First World War. When you start up the game, you can immediately choose to deploy online or try out one of the few tutorial shooting ranges. That being said, these shooting ranges don’t give much of a tutorial in a general sense but are rather for you to get acquainted with the many roles and weapons of the different nations. This does give the game a somewhat more difficult learning curve, but once you have a few matches under your belt, all will be fine. However, you don’t have to fear that you get dropped into a game and are left to your own devices to figure things out. Just like in Hell Let Loose, the community is there to help and if you just ask your teammates in the general chat there is always someone there to answer your questions.
Getting into a game can be easy but also very hard. By this, we mean that this is a solely online multiplayer game, and thus you are always dependent on other players. This shouldn’t be all too bad on a popular game, but in our experience, there was only one server populated most of the time. The game would have fared better with the inclusion of bots for low or unpopulated servers so you can get some training in.
At its core, the game has several different game modes that you can enjoy. The Firefight mode is a quicker mode where you fight on a small field and try to hold three points to score. The larger battles take place in the Assault mode. Here, one side tries to push and conquer the fortifications of the enemy who are slowly getting pushed back. Lastly, there is a tug-of-war mode where the first team to reach the other side by taking over points wins. This means that you can still recover from a heavy assault, and not all is lost, like in the Assault mode. As earlier mentioned, you are at the mercy of other players, but what the game does well is that it doesn’t matter if you have a team of only three soldiers, or fight a war with each side having twenty soldiers, you will still have a lot of fun. This is mainly thanks to the battlefield taking place in somewhat smaller plains than in other titles, while also managing its spawn locations well (you will have to walk a bit, but it doesn’t turn into a walking simulator).
What makes the game unique is its well-refined class system. You have a bunch of different types of crews, such as snipers, riflemen, tanks, MG, and others. Each crew has a bunch of unique roles which are mostly limited to only one or two per style. As the roles are sparingly equipped, you must make the most out of your standard gear. However, playing good is greatly rewarded as you can temporally upgrade to a better role if you have enough match XP to purchase it. It feels like this is done so that bad or unsupportive players won’t have access to more powerful roles.
Conclusion
Beyond The Wire is one of the best realistic World War shooters we have played in a long time. It is made with a high-quality mindset and this is seen in the nice graphics, well-thought-out maps, and character animations, but also the sound is engineered to the point it feels like you are in the middle of this war. The shooting feels natural, and making your way to the objective goes smoothly and without many issues. What feels like the biggest downside of this amazing shooter is that you are at mercy of the popularity of this title, and when the core players might move on, it could die a slow death. Now, as long as at least one server is populated, you can find us in the trenches of Europe’s war-torn past.
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[…] the First World War. Many games have touched upon this scenario, like Battlefield One, Verdun, and Beyond the Wire. The latter was highly praised by us only a few months ago and we then thought that this would be […]