Anyone remember when the first Call of Duty came out? When you were thrown into the opening moments of the D-Day campaign and the battle for Stalingrad? Remember that thrill of it just being you pitched against the world? Well. Battalion 1944 may just be the antidote we have been looking for.
In today’s market, many FPS’ are thrusting themselves towards the future. Call of Duty Black Ops 9, or whatever edition they have released now, has you fighting far into the future where robots and humans have merged into one in order to create a far superior class of soldier. This, for some of us, has little to no appeal. What we really want is to be storming Omaha beach or capturing Pegasus Bridge or gearing up for the final assault on the Reichstag.
World War 2 has been done to death by pretty much everybody. It is a subject that both fascinates and bores us. We have had a surfeit of TV series’, books and movies, not to mention video games on the subject, which may have contributed to developers and gamers alike looking elsewhere for their virtual thrills. However, Bulkhead Interactive may have something that could just have us playing WW2 shooters all over again.
What we have here is a classic WW2 shooter gloriously depicted for next generation consoles and PCs. What the developers at Bulkhead are pushing is that Battalion 1944 will rely solely on the player’s skills in the game. No power ups or exosuits; just you against the other guy brought together in gritty close combat by the Unreal Engine 4.
From the videos on YouTube and the descriptions on the developer’s Kickstarter website: The scenery, buildings, weapons and character models have all had a lot of work done to them. They have taken the time to make sure that the environments we will be playing in will look like what they did in 1944. One of the things that caught my eye about this game was the character customization that you can go through when you level up. It’s not going to be as game changing as adding an extra arm so that you can reload faster but more like unlocking visual upgrades for your character like getting something engraved on your favourite weapon but ultimately defining your character and getting them to look how you want them to.
Since this game will be a multi-player experience (with hopefully a single player mode as well if the developers’ backing goals are reached), the developers have introduced ‘BattleRank’ or the ‘Global Competition System’. This means that if you are part of a Platoon or Battalion then any scores you earn through most knife kills etc will earn the whole team more points. Your hard work will in turn help everyone else on the battlefield. So you can either go it alone or you can team up with a platoon and thus earn more XP and more customizable features.
This looks like a game made by people who appreciate how good games like the Medal of Honor series and Call of Duty were. They are putting a lot of effort and time to make Battalion 1944 look amazing and the way in which gameplay unfolds before us on YouTube makes me want to play it even more. They are giving us a game in which everyone is evenly matched, you are given accurate historical locations, beautiful character models, detailed weapons and authentic weapon sounds. Here’s hoping that they reach their backing goals sooner rather than later so that we can all bask in the magnificence of Battalion 1944.
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