Remember Hatred? But let's go, that controversial 2015 title that he saw as the protagonist on homicidal misanthrope with the only goal of killing as many human beings as possible. What has Hatred in common with ♪? Yeah, sure. Destructive Creations is the study behind both titles, but to join the two games there is also a community that concerns the protagonists: even in War Mongrels we will have to deal with murderous mysanthropes with the aim of killing as many possible people, in this case however we do not talk about the madness of a human case, but of the members of one of the most infamous and bloody dictatorial regimes that modern history has "onregalato".
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Miniature Nazis
♪ is a game strategic in real time in isometric visuals, set during the Second World War, in particular on the Eastern Front, often unjustly "ignored" by the video industry. It's 1944 and Manfred and Ewald are two Wermacht soldiers, shipped to a suicide mission as members of a Penal Military Unit. They are basically two criminals, employed as slaughtered meat by a German army increasingly on the ropes. Surrounded by death and atrocities, the two exploit an enemy bombing to escape from the first line and desert. Thus begins the story of War Mongrels, strongly inspired by historical facts really happenedWhat's going on? 12 single-player and cooperative missions with a friend. The two former soldiers, now guerrillas, will be acquainted with other characters who will join our team, providing their knowledge and skills, all for the sake of the Resistance cause.
The plot, however very linear, is appreciable and well narrated, with animated interludes between one mission and the other and dialogues between the characters during the missions, not always well written and sometimes frankly irritating. Killing Nazis, even if from a certain distance seen the isometric view, is always a pleasure, especially if we do it by impersonating former German soldiers in our turn.
Tacticism and frustration
During the first steps on War Mongrels it was impossible not to rethink titles of my youth videoludic like Commandos or Desperados, gaming experiences that at an early age proved to me quite complex and frustrating. Well at the venerable age of 26 I can confirm that little has changed: as a player mainly of shooter I do extremely hard to adapt to the style of game required by RTS stealth as War Mongrels, where to get out of the hottest situations not enough a rifle with ammunition, but serve calm, cold blood and reasoning. If to my personal difficulty we also add a brief and concise all-in-one tutorial, and a system of unnecessarily complex and brain controls, well the frittata is made.
Every mission will see us immersed in a wide "quadro" sprinkled by unaware Nazis of our presence. We will then have to complete the assigned targets trying to keep our presence completely hidden from enemy troops that, in case of alarm, could easily overwhelm us in a few moments. The use of firearms, of which we will be equipped, represents in the end the extrema ratio to remove us from trouble, and never the first choice to approach the enemy. Instead, the silent executions are to be preferred, perhaps after distracting enemies by throwing a stone or a bottle. A tactic that we will be obliged to repeat often during the missions, and that in the long run also becomes a little ridiculous to the 50th Nazi that we will distract by mysteriously making him appear a bottle in front of the eyes.
Important will be to evaluate the field of vision of the enemies, divided into a continuous portion and a "lined": if you stumble into the cone of continuous vision you will be identified regardless; the area instead covered by the cone of viewing strips will allow you to pass unnoticed only by crawling on the ground. There are also hiding places like bushes and tall grass that can hide you independently that enemies have a vision about you or not, and inside them you can also hide the corpses that you will leave behind, and that could blow up your mission if they are discovered by a patrol.
The timing of your actions is often fundamental, and for this reason the developers have thought of a tactical mode in which we can slow down time and select an action for each character of our team; then pressing "Send" all the characters will perform the task assigned simultaneously: very convenient when you have 3 or more characters available and you will have to eliminate numerous patrols without alerting the other soldiers. As further support to your operations there will also be the special skills of the various characters: Ewald, for example, can disguise itself as an officer, going unnoticed to the sight of simple soldiers (but not of other officers, who are however immune to distractions), or climbing using climbing plants grown on the outer walls of some buildings; Lukas, a Lithuanian soldier of resistance, can instead climb by exploiting a ramp, and place cutlery on the path of the enemy patrols in order to make the unfortunate ones who will walk through the trap. In this sense the reaction of the IA, which instead of helping the shady companion trapped, will observe him die bleeding without blinking.
Artificial intelligence is also one of the main sources of frustration from playing War Mongrels: at times myopic and absolutely non-reactive, at times almost inconceivably cunning and reactive, it is difficult to take the IA measures programmed by Destructive Creations, and to this is added also the aforementioned complexity of the commands, which often led to tragic errors of execution of commands and actions with subsequent and inevitable game-over. Fortunately the developers have thought to provide us with the possibility to quickly save during the mission, so as to preserve our progress in case we are discovered: sin that there is the car-save, that more than once framed me in a mission failure loop forcing me then to start again from the mission itself.
Beauty lies in the details
If from the point of view of the gameplay there are definitely big pieces, nothing can be said instead of the level design. The 12 game maps are rich in details and "live", also merit a really good graphics quality for a title in isometric visual. Unfortunately, despite the size of the maps, the tactical possibilities offered by the setting seemed too limited, almost as if for each step the developers wanted to make the player proceed in the manner they thought. Pore freedom of action therefore or, better to say, freedom of fictitious action, which fortunately expands a little by proceeding with the missions and enriching the cast of characters at our disposal. The game interface is clean and neat, except for the pop ups of the tutorial, which appearing in real time make it difficult to consult them, as well as often jeopardize the mission's progress.
We particularly appreciated the quality of animations and the fact that the protagonists interact and dialogue with each other when left "in peace", maybe while thinking about how to do it. Too bad for the dialogues a bit too much "pacchiani", or edgy to better say.
Technically speaking
We tested ♪ on the following configuration:
AMD Ryzen 7 3700x @ 3.60 GHz
Gigabyte RTX AORUS Master 3080 Ti 12Gb
Kingston Hyper x FURY (2x8Gb) DDR4
Resolution 3440x1440 (21:9)
The developers definitely did a great job from the graphic point of view, making War Mongrels a beautiful and fulfilling game to the view. Unfortunately, however, the presence of numerous bugs and the random deficiency of AI undermine the overall enjoyment of the gaming experience. There is to be said that since the day of launch, the boys of Destructive Creations have worked tirelessly releasing more than a corrective patch that has definitely put a patch on some of the game-breaking bugs reported by the community, as missions impossible to continue or save deleted. Two words also on the sound, with an English dubbing that sees the German soldiers speak in perfect American English and some members of the resistance show an extremely posh british accent, not to mention the German harpedo affbbiato to some Nazi NPCs. No, we're not. The texts are however entirely translated into Italian, and we have not noticed particular translation errors.
Conclusion
War Mongrels is a controversial title (not in the same sense as Hatred): on the one hand it features a very enjoyable plot and an excellent graphic compartment for the genre of belonging, the fun leashes in the gameplay when we manage to realize what we imagined in our minds; on the other it is lost due to technical uncertainties really annoying and frustrating. It is impossible not to see the commitment and passion put in place by Destructive Games, and surely the title will satisfy the need for RTS stealth of the most assiduous fans of the genre. But the challenging price (37.99€) and the undeniable defects mentioned above do not allow me to fully recommend the title to the present state.
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