Civil Warfare: Another Bullet In The War Early Access Review

The Battle Royale mode has seen its creation from popular multiplayer games such as Minecraft and ARMA 2. Since PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds entered early access in March 2017 the mode has become a gaming phenomenon, with PUBG and other multiplayer games, like Fortnite, achieving high commercial figures and garnering high popularity. The mode has also caught the attention of many other major developers, with the recently announced Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 rumoured to adopt the mode for its own. Another, however, has come up with the decision to straight up copy this compelling concept to strengthen the popularity of its own identity. A significant game, going by the title of Civil Warfare: another bullet in the war.

Civil Warfare is a third-person shooter, played from two modes; Deathmatch tasks players with parachuting into an isolated region and surviving and killing other players as many times as possible to reach the top of the charts. The other mode; Battle Royale, is based on the last man standing foundation. Here, multiple players must parachute from a transport plane and land on points on the map. After landing, players must hide and search their surroundings for items and weapons in order to fight off other players, until only one of them is left alive.

The map players are dropped onto is filled with abandoned houses, farms, and remote grasslands. Players must Explore every building they come across to collect guns, backpacks, armour and gun mods, to increase their chances of survival and to exploit enemy movements and hiding spots. Players can pick up a variety of weapons including simple pistols, but also assault rifles, shotguns, and sniper rifles. Medkits and energy drinks provide remedies for injuries, and a number of modifications, like scopes, extended magazines, and silencers, help to improve the quality and efficiency of weapons. Players could also gain access to vehicles throughout the map, which is useful for getting around areas quickly, at the expense of silence, and remote-controlled drones, which could be used to spy on other players, without the player controlling it, having to move out.

The first sign of trouble comes from the excruciating wait times for other players to arrive. When players choose a match, they are first placed in a small, contained building to wait, while the servers search for players to take part in the match. This two-minute wait takes far too long, especially before the Battle Royale mode, where wait times are even extended by an additional two minutes every time. This issue comes from the complete absence of a player base and the servers, based on my experience, are completely empty. This major problem completely cripples the core of the game and players will most likely drop onto the battlefield by themselves with nothing to do, other than to shoot at the air and run around a lifeless area.

Throughout each match and even before then, the game is plagued by uninspired environments, an absence of natural sounds and many other technical flaws. It’s the worst on Ultra high resolutions and qualities, where the frame rate is so indescribably choppy, to the point where the game is almost unplayable. These adjustments also don’t help the fact that the game’s graphical fidelity is awful, with landscapes, buildings and character models severely lacking detail, especially when viewed from the sky whilst parachuting. Characters move and act like puppets on strings and often perform hilarious movements when punching or jumping near walls. There is also an absence of sound in the game in the game. Noises like wind and specific wild animals aren’t present when they could have added more liveliness to the maps. All that is present is gunfire, vehicle engines, and the repetitive crunching of footsteps on all surfaces. Lastly, the process of simply picking up items from the ground quickly becomes a pain as some items straight-up refuse to be picked up, even when your backpack isn’t empty. This process is also made more frustrating when the camera keeps getting in the way. All of these issues further compensate a great sense of emptiness within the game. The empty player base and lack of player activity also see to that.

Civil Warfare contains a compelling gameplay mode that while has some inconsistencies, provides a time-consuming and exhilarating gaming experience. Yet despite this, Civil Warfare falls completely flat in originality and depth. It does almost nothing to improve the mode and straight-up takes the ideas from other games to satisfy its own player base. The game is filled with technical difficulties, no new ideas, and the almost non-existent player base is the final layer in the coffin.

 

REVIEW CODE: A PC code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.

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