WWII squad shooter risks being another unknown soldier
United 1944 was bleeding out before my eyes. The first day I played this WWII-themed squad shooter, there were barely enough players to fill a single server. Each day, the number has dwindled. The life draining out of a young, promising game, barely days into Early Access.
As it stands, United 1944is two surprisingly different games sharing a set of mechanics. One, a 16v16 team shooter that draws equal inspiration from DayOf Defeat, Battlefield, Fortniteand survival sandboxes. The other, a low-stakes take on the extraction shooter formula that doesn’t feel nearly as well thought out as its big-team counterpart.
Between them, agame with a lot of potential, at least when there’s enough players to fill a match.
In the primary team-play mode, Domination, Axis and Allied teams fight to oust each other from a ruined battlefield. Both teams start with almost nothing, just a crafting hammer and a knife each, and a single shared spawn point. Each player gets to pick a couple of crafting recipes to start with, including their choice of a makeshift pistol, rifle or shotgun. They’re rubbish, but better than your knife.
SCRAPHEAD CHALLENGE
With shooting discouraged, both teams scramble for position. The ruins are jam-packed with respawning resources (used to craft equipment and build structures) and intel (used to create new bases at fixed control points), so the early game is a dash for wood and intel documents, plus gunpowder and metal for weaponry. EscapeFromTarkovthis ain’t –this is fast and aggressive resource gathering, hoovering up piles of highlighted, glowing assets to fuel your team’s expansion. Each part of the map has different resource nodes, giving some weight to where you expand towards, but it’s never too hard to find what’s needed.
WITH SHOOTING DISCOURAGED, BOTH TEAMS SCRAMBLE FOR POSITION
It’s a handsome-looking game too. Not technically amazing, but the maps are detailed, the accelerated day/night cycle gives them interestingly varied lighting, and the weapons and reload animations aren’t shabby either. Character models are a bit bland, however, with limited cosmetic customisation options, but more unlocked through extensive play, but very few players had anything but the starting items, in the matches I was able to play.
As the match plays out, the teams level up, giving each player the option to define their class and role from a tech tree of perks and crafting options, creating interesting strategic choices. Building skills and more inventory space will help you upgrade your bases with metal walls, which shrug off most bullet-based weaponry. Or you can focus on demolitions, crafting Molotovs and grenades to break wooden and metal fortifications specifically. With good voice comms, there’s real room for team a
