Verdun (PC) Review

Through the history of video and PC gaming, there have been numerous WW theme shooter games in the industry. And why not?!! It’s always been a huge interest for the history lovers as well as FPS gamers. And now the M2H and Blackmill Games studio has also set there foot with its Verdun title.

Verdun is the multiplayer FPS game set in a realistic First World War setting. Verdun is inspired by the infamous 1916 “Battle of Verdun” in France from which it takes its name. The game includes historically accurate WW1 weapons, authentic uniforms, trench warfare and many more. Verdun is available to all the gamers on Steam as well as on PS4.

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THE GOOD 🙂

Gameplay:

Unlike many FPS game, Verdun is a slow paced, strategic shooter game. You need to be patient and skilful with your weapons while working in a squad.

Verdun offer four modes of gameplay set in historical battlefields on the Western Front:

• Frontlines:

  The core essence of Verdun gameplay lies in the frontline mode. This mode features a team battle over trench warfare. Each team has four squads of four men battling to dominate over trenches.

  The more time you gain foothold in the enemy trench, the faster you capture it. If the attack fails you need to fall back and defend from enemies counter attack.

  While working in squad each player has to fulfill one of the many roles: corporal, bomber, Gunner, rifleman. NCO is the leader of the squad who can call artillery, gas support to start chemical warfare. In Verdun you can create squad & work on growing the squad level as well as your own level.

  

• Squad Defense:

  My Second favourite mode right after frontlines. Squad defense is a co-op mode where 4 players hold a trench against endless waves of AI. If enemy gains foothold in your trench your defense is lost.

  Squad defense is the most chilling, relaxed mode where you can have fun & hone your shooting skills. If you are a beginner, I would suggest this mode for practice.

• Rifle Deathmatch:

  Name itself gives out the info. It is a skill-based, rifles only game mode. The player may only choose a bolt action rifle, and there are no teams. You get points for killing other players.

• Attrition:

  In this mode players are splits into two teams. Each team start with a number of tickets. Every time a player is killed and respawns, a ticket is deducted from the side he belongs to. The goal of the game is to diminish the opposing side’s tickets before losing all the tickets on your side.

Presentation:

Verdun is absolutely immersive – typical WW1 grim atmosphere, gloomy clouded skies, artillery sounds and long battlefield with barbed wires. It all looks so natural.

The development team has surely done extensive field research to recreate the tiniest details. The realistic weapons with details like holding the breath to improve the aim is nice touch. A single bullet is enough to put you or your enemies down, and the long reload times of the weapons add a realistic feel to the experience and make shooting somebody a matter of skill, not luck. There are no red dot sights or any other type of aim indicators, so it’s all up to the player.

The game has huge meta with 12 squads, 21 weapons & 9 maps. The maps use realistic World War 1 props and terrain layouts including my favorite map The Fort Douaumont.

The music is also good and suits with overall tone of the game pretty well.

The Bad 🙁

Verdun surely proposes a unique frontline mode ideas, but it is at its technical execution and following points where Verdun falls back.

• Takes a hell lot of time to get used to:

As I said early, Verdun is a slow paced, strategic shooter game. You need to be patient and skilful with your weapons while working in a squad.

So if you are habitual of faster face games like me then the first few hours of the game will definitely give you a hard time. My first 2 days were miserable & frustrating. I was struggling to figure out weapon handing. I had problem telling enemies from friends. It could be a part of game design but it is frustrating.

• No servers for other Game modes:

Except the frontline mode, there are not much of servers for other modes as nobody is playing it online. So if you want to go for a change with other game modes, chances are you will be disappointed with emptier servers then not.

• Whatever you unlock in a mode stays in that mode:

Verdun lacks in explaining the game to the players and many times it left to player to do fair amount of reading through internet search or finding out hard way through hours of gameplay.

One of the shocking features is that everything you unlock in a mode is limited to that mode. E.g. if you unlock a high level rifle in Frontline mode it will not be available in any other four mode. This leaves player to either grind too much to earn points and unlock weapons in all modes or simply get shot down seldom by other high level players.

• PS4 version is technically a mess:

Though the PC version is as promising as trailer but unfortunately it’s not the same case with PS4 version.

The PS4 game is technically a mess. Game has serious distortion issues as sometimes the not very pretty looking textures don’t load until the player is inches away from them.

There are constant frame rate drops and crashes with need to boot the PS4’s system menu more than once, which is totally unacceptable when you’re trying to play an online war game.

• Strange Movement Mechanics:

Moving forward and backward is perfectly fine but moving side to side is noticeably slower and simply feels wrong.

Credits:

PS4 Contribution: Martin Segarra

PC Contribution: Shrikant Jahagirdar