Officers can call in artillery attacks (awesome), but everyone else on the squad is limited to the uninspired combat or plopping out an occasional ammo crate. Matters aren’t helped by a curious lack of anything for the different squad roles to actually do. As such it often looks like an enemy has collapsed due to some long-term health condition, rather than because of anything you’re doing. Even the melee weapons offer little excitement – hacking off limbs with a sabre, bonking a bonce with binoculars or slugging a foe with a shovel all result in the same accidental and borderline embarrassing ‘flailing technique’. And not one of the good ones, one of the faulty packs with a dodgy sensor that means you never hit anyone.Īll of which makes the combat feel very samey and a bit boring. Often it feels like you’re wielding a ‘Laser Quest’ rifle. On one hand I’m impressed in the attempt at realism – forcing players to expend an entire ammo clip before they can manually reload is a bold choice – but there’s really no excuse for the lack of heft, weight and sense of impact that the guns provide. The historical weapons are, as you would expect considering the period the game is set in, an absolute chore to aim and reload.
Tannenberg has little running, nor indeed, gunning. This is an online shooter that actually has tactics then, rather than just running and gunning. If I could marry this mini-map I would it’s everything I ever wanted from one. You’ll be successfully initiating flanking manoeuvres and unleashing sneak attacks in no time. This simple mechanic means you can actually coordinate and carry out tactics with your teammates. You can even see the other squads direction of attack too. Even better is the fact that your suggested approach is marked with a big green arrow. What works far better is the mini-map, a tool that allows you to select points of attack or defence with ease. For the most part your team mates will be silent, other than the screaming of their death throes or the gruesome sound of the air leaking from their pierced lung – the sound design really is horribly effective. There’s also instructions, commands and observations to be yelled, though sadly these are selected by controls far too fiddly to be of any actual use. Tannenberg encourages teamwork by having squad spawns be by far the easiest and most effective method to return to battle. It’s vital that the squad works together, as just one or two shots are enough to put anyone down in Tannenberg, uttering some very convincing screams and moans as your avatar crumples to the ground. Each four player squad consists of complementary roles an officer to command, assault and long range specialists for combat, and a support to provide ammunition. In contrast to the predominantly ‘everyone for themselves’ chaos of an entry in the Battlefield series, Tannenberg attempts the Sisyphean task of getting people online to work together as a team. Sadly, the end result isn’t entirely successful. This is a game that attempts to bring movement and momentum to the Verdun formula, whilst also retaining the attempts at realism. Neither game is a fast-paced action fest, instead providing a slow and methodical combat experience, but whilst Verdun became bogged down in repetitive trench warfare, Tannenberg goes in the opposite direction. They also both take tremendous risks with their gameplay choices, attempting to offer a more historically ‘authentic’ experience than their genre rivals. Both games share a bleak colour palette, each hampered by antiquated visuals and elevated by killer sound design.
Tannenberg is the follow up to the earlier Verdun, and the similarities are clear to see. Vast distances had to be crossed by both forces, resulting in a conflict where the victor was often decided by decisive tactical manoeuvring, and it is this strategic element, of utilising tactics to out manoeuvre your enemy, that forms the gameplay foundations of Tannenberg. Unlike the static and relatively unmoving trench warfare on the Western Front, there was far more troop movement to the east. The Eastern Front of World War 1 is an ideal historical setting for an online tactical first person shooter.
0 kommentar(er)
