World War 3

Review

World War 3 is a modern-day conflict, fought in real-life cities, as the western and eastern factions battle for global dominance. Using modern day weaponry, vehicles with intense firefights, where team-work will bring you closer to victory, World War 3 is brought to you from The Farm 51.

You start the game by deciding which faction you’re going to play as, the West or East. The west and east are in battle for dominance of the world. This is to be played out over a season; I’m not sure when it starts or how long a season will run for. Winning a season, though, will reward your faction with the season’s reward; currently it’s a tactical nuke. You can donate supplies to chosen points of interest on a given region, and controlling these points of interest will grant you gameplay bonuses. The factions with the most points of interest in any region controls that region, and this will then contribute to the global score of your faction. It’s not just about how many kills you get in one game, it’s about how well your faction does in every game throughout a season. Every bullet fired, every kill, every point captured all goes towards the bigger picture of global dominance for your faction.

Once you’ve decided which faction to play with, its time to sort your character and their weaponry out. Clicking on Customise will open a screen showing your character in the centre, which you can zoom in and out on and turn around 360 degrees. To the right, you’ll see your Soldier Appearance, Banners (coming soon), Emblem, Flag, Sentence, Taunt (three taunts) and Voice Over. All of these can be set to your own preference when you customise your character.

On the left is where you do your customising; there is a default soldier with some default weaponry setups if you just want to jump into the game. Otherwise click on Soldier Appearance (Visuals) on the right to customise your uniform and visuals for your character. Here you’ll be able to change your appearance; there are a few uniforms and visuals already available to you but most of them will cost some pennies to unlock and use them. You are given 50,000 credits to start with for visuals and weaponry, which doesn’t go that far. It’s probably best to check everything out and then decide what to spend your pennies on. You do earn money after each game for kills etc so if you can’t afford a certain item, you’re able to save for it and buy it later. You can customise just about anything with your character, uniforms, camouflage, headwear, chest, gloves, face and body paints, and face wear; they have it all covered so you can create your perfect soldier look.

Next, it’s your equipment - there’s six slots currently which you can use to save your favourite loadouts; they have default loadouts to start with. There are currently seven assault rifles, two shotguns, three sniper rifles, three sub-machine guns, one special (RPG-7) and three light machine guns on offer. Each and every one of these weapons can be customised, almost every part of a gun can be replaced from the stock to barrel length, sights to ammo type. It doesn’t stop there, you can add a secondary sight, laser pointers, grips, bipods, different magazine capacity, all so you can own that perfect weapon for your style of game play. There’s lots of different looks to choose from for your weapons, with camouflage, colour sets, custom, different materials (Silver, Gold, Bronze, Chrome), patterns and solid colours all on offer to you.

You are also able to customise your Armour; there’s three types of helmet materials and four types of armour plating to choose from, all giving you varying amounts of protection. There are also four types of grenades and eight types of gadgets to choose from, like First aid Kit, Med Pack, Equipment Pack, Anti-Tank Mines, Semtex C4, Mini Drone s and UGV. You can rename your loadout, so you know what’s in each loadout. You also can customise some of the Kill Rewards; for example, on the UGV Leviathan, you can change the turret, cannon and secondary ammo and equipment.

Depending on your equipment, the effect on your movement will change.  For example, putting all attachments and body parts on your weapons, or using the most effective armour plating and helmet materials, will all add weight to your character. There are three weight levels: Light, Medium and Heavy. These are displayed in a bar at the bottom of the screen when you’re customising your loadout. Light takes up maybe four-fifths of this bar; going over this limit will move you into the medium limit, and if you completely fill the bar your loadout is classed as heavy. Finding the right combination of loadout is key; it’s no good being full loaded if you want to run about attacking, but if you’re a defender then it may help having that extra protection and equipment while you defend a site.

Now you’ve got your character and equipment sorted you can get in-game to spank some botty with your nice new loadout and look. Currently there are only three locations to play at: Berlin, Warsaw and Moscow, with Smolensk coming soon. These places can be chosen while you’re on the War Map by clicking on the location you want to play; then you can select the game type on offer. Berlin, Warsaw and Moscow all have the choice to play Warzone and Warzone Large, while Warsaw also offers you Team Deathmatch; just click the game type you wish to play and hit Deploy. If you can’t make up your mind, you can hit the Quick Join button to join a game, with either of game modes of Warzone or Team Deathmatch. More game modes will be added as the game goes through early access. Once deployed, and once the game loads, you’ll have the option of Attacker or Defender, using which ever loadout you wish too; the only thing that matters is winning.

Warzone consists of six points of interest, and each will try and be taken by both sides. The more points of interest you control the more game points you’ll get towards reaching the winning score target. Kills and objectives in the game will also aid you and your final scores, as well as going towards your global score for your factions. The more comrades taking a point, the faster that point will be captured, so you can get on to the next as you strive for domination.

The War Map is found on the main screen at the top centre, along with Community, Customise, Settings and Help (not available currently). In the community, you’ll find the Official Website, Discord, Twitter, Facebook, VK and You Tube links, so you can keep up to date with the latest news, or to help you find other players etc.

The war map shows the earth, and it can be viewed through two ways, either by Tactical or Satellite views. Satellite shows the earth as we’d normally see it, showing the deserts, mountains etc. In Tactical, the earth is more in a grid system. You can zoom in and out so far to view the earth; you can also spin the earth around on its axis, although currently there’s not much else to see, but this will change when more locations become available, I’m sure.

In the settings you’ll find options for Controls, Gameplay, Audio, Video and Bindings. In Controls there’s types of settings for you, Soldier, Vehicle and General. Here you can set look sensitivity to Soldier or Vehicle along with being able to set Toggle or Hold to certain actions, like Zoom, Crouch, Lean etc, depending on your preference. Audio will let you control the Volume of Master, Music, Voices, Radio and SFX. Auto detect your sound device (Enabled or Disabled), Audio Output choice of Headset, 2.0, 2.1, 5.1 or 7.1 options and Sound Device. You’re also able to select the voices of the Allies and Enemies in-game, to either Original, English, Russian or Polish, along with choosing to have subtitles on or off.

In video, you have the options of Basic, Advanced and Quality choices for you to set to your personal liking. In Basic, there’s Screen Mode, Monitor, Resolution, Brightness, V-Sync, Field of Depth etc. In Advanced, you’ll find Resolution Scale, Frame Rate lock, high dynamic range, framerate smoothing etc.  In Quality you’ll have options ranging from Low to Ultra for Textures, Meshes, Lighting, Effects etc so, there’s plenty of options you can play around with.

There are a couple of niggly things currently, like when you first start the game up, it can take anywhere between four and ten minutes to connect you to WW3 network and the main screen. This is being worked on and I believe a fix will possibly be released in the next big update. It is a pain currently, but start the game and go make a cuppa or sarnie and remember it is in Early Access. It can also be a bit laggy at times, but again, it’s Early Access and it is being worked on by the developers.

Overall, I’ve enjoyed playing the game so far - so much so that I dug deep down into the back of my sofa for a new graphics card. The graphics are very nice, and the customising of the equipment and character are great. I haven’t really seen any toxic players like in so many other fps games, which is a big bonus. I’m looking forward to what the future brings us in WW3.

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!