Personally, I have always been a little bit of a history buff, especially wars from revolutions to a coup, and war games have a special place in my heart. But Enemy Front will not be there and only deserves to be in your garbage bin. Better yet, left on the shelf at your local store to rot. Enemy Front starts Robert Hawkins, an American war correspondent AKA generic straggly unshaved guy #1, who becomes to find himself fighting in the resistance groups around Europe and particularly, Warsaw as the game takes place roughly before and during the Warsaw Uprising. Sounds interesting right? But what makes this game horrid and utterly not worth your money? Sit down and let me tell you.
Firstly, let's start off with the bandaid issues. Voice acting in this game is cringe worthy at best; main cast members feature relatively unknowns in voice acting, let alone TV or movies whereas the extras range from well known to animated movies. Voices are flat, monotone and carry very little emotional depth, failing to make a connection to player or other characters. Personally, I couldn't even care about the death of a character when they have 10 second cameos in three second scenes.
Speaking of which, scenery is a mix of small cutscenes edited down to bite sizes of 20-50 seconds and even these are torture to endure. In-game scenes tend to stick to small amounts of dialogue, or very minuscule choices such as weapon or task, which turn up rarely and often make little difference. Enjoyable, but too little too late. This brings me to the worst atrocity: gameplay.
To summarise the game is one word is incredibly easy: generic. Little/no tutorials were given in game other than throwing rocks or attaching bombs to items, personally I didn't discover the second weapon slot until the end of the game, which lead to me missing a lot of achievements! Controls float and character AI drift when stationary, weapons have little to no difference other than bolt action/automatic or silenced/unsilenced weapons as they deal the same amount of damage on all enemies, which limits down to three: generic shooters, snipers and commanders who hide with a pistol. While there are many weapons to enjoy, the few promoted the most was the sniper rifles. Advertised to have state of the art realism, their slo mo is a cheap rip-off of 505 Games' Sniper Elite mechanic without the gorey payoff. The only truly enjoyable gameplay moments is taking enemies hostage and using them as meat shields. Commanders can be captured to force enemies to surrender (With an achievement attached to that perk) while low level enemies will fire, and players will still take damage regardless. The injury meter is also misleading as blood will line the outside of the screen but enemies can die depending on where they're shot. However approaching an enemy will faze them through your body and make their damage to you minimal.
Each 16 levels have large maps but bigger isn't always better: textures are bland or never fully load while enemies literally camouflage into the bushes or buildings due to bad lighting. Each map also feels unfinished as enemies can also shoot through walls, walkways, boxes ect, despite the game not offering this feature, the only answer being these areas overlooked during creation. Maps continue to render as you approach them but at least they never stop to load midgame at least, but checkpoints are also a hassle. 20-30 minutes of sneaking and accidentally dying will set you back to the start of the mission, causing much rage quit moments. One or two more would have been appreciated. A small factor I'd like to mention also is the grenade system: grenades have a small explosive area whereas molotovs, a burning bottle of liqour, doesn't set enemies on fire. Instead it only destroys vehicles (even tanks!) and blows back enemies.
I can go on, but I'll stop here.
Graphics do look beautiful in parts but because of the slow rendering during maps tend to stay bland and uninteresting, reducing the gameplay a lot. The game also fails in lore, explanation and very little character development in our protagonist, quickly changing his mind from "This'll be an interesting story" to "I've gotta fight then Nazis." with little other reason than fighting itself, each mission present or not usually featuring another gruff, unshaven generic fighter alongside Hawkins. Musical score offers little enjoyment to the game but enjoyment nonetheless, whereas sound effects are dull, bland and almost muffled. Storyline is historically accurate but only barely, with many fantasy moments also thrown into the game, with little explanation or lore involved other than "I decided to go to back to Warsaw.". Why? When? How? Nothing is explained.
I would also like to mention that the multiplayer is barren of players. Personally I've sat on the menu screen looking for players for a decent amount of time and not found a single player. I have seen the Multiplayer via videos but since I did not experience it, I shall not hold that to the final score.
Enemy Front makes its moves to try and tie you down to our protagonist, with little emotional depth and "saddening" death scenes for characters I can barely name, as the only difference between male or female characters is the colour of their hair or clothing or the rarity of a beard, as stubble seems to be the rage. Wonky, irritating controls, dissatisfying gameplay, utterly terrible voice cast, the list goes on. Perhaps the game will be fix with patches in time but as all games, I review at their presented state.
I can say in confidence, stay far away from this game. $70 for an unfinished, unpolished game is not worth your time by a long shot, at best wait for a price drop but I only recommend to those who wish to hammer out 10-15 hours of pure hell.
Out of 10, I give Enemy Front my lowest score to date: 2/10
+ Musical score/achievements are decent at least
+ Taking enemies hostage is satisfying
- But the rest of the game is filled with bugs/glitches
- Bare minimal tutorials
- Controls slide/player AI moves on their own.
- Maps never fully render
- Graphics decompose quickly
- Voice acting is cringe worthy
- Not a clear enough distinction in all weaponry, especially explosives
- Sniping slo-mo = cheap Sniper Elite ripoff with no payoff
- No lore, minimal storyline, extremely hard to follow
- Checkpoints are painstakingly few
- 16 missions of long and utter boredom
- Collectables have only achievement value
- Enemies faze through player AI when close enough
- Breaching slo-mo glitchy and repeats same cutscene animation each time
- 10-15 hours of my life I'll never get back
I can go on but I'll stop here.
God forbid you buy this, but Enemy Front is out now for the standard price of $70
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