There are a vast amount of shooters now for everyone to get their hands on. Killzone, Call of Duty and Battlefield just to name a few main ones. The key thing with the three mentioned are that they are all present on next-gen consoles, and rightly so. However, City Interactive have brought their latest shooter, Enemy Front, to the last crop of consoles, powered by the powerful Cry Engine 3. Can Enemy Front still stand up with the rest? Or will it simply slip under the radar? Read on to find out!.
Game: Enemy Front
Developer: City Interactive Games
Publisher: City Interactive Games
Reviewed on:
STORY
Set in World War II, Enemy Front sees you take on the role of American journalist, Robert Hawkins. Throughout the game, Hawkins revisits his time in which he fought against the Nazis who are aiming to take control of Europe, including countries such as France, Germany, Norway. To be honest with you, I quickly got bored of the story. It felt like the developers have took ideas from other games in the same genre and come up with a story that can only be described as quite lackluster. It lacks any depth really, and even times when the game tries to keep the story interesting, I felt quite underwhelmed with what it was trying to deliver. World War II was such a historic event in time, and I was just disappointed that more couldn’t of been made to turn Enemy Front into a great story-teller.
GRAPHICS
City Interactive state that Enemy Front is powered by the powerful Cry Engine 3 but unfortunately, the visuals suggest that you would be hard to notice it. It offers quite disappointing visuals, with environments coming across quite bland. It all seems just a mess really visually. Maybe I am being harsh, but nothing visually really caught my eye. I also found the lighting that was on offer a real disappointment, finding myself trying to turn up the brightness on my TV a hell of a lot just to see properly in dark spots. As I said in the story, you visit some a various amount of countries that feature in Hawkins memories, but sadly all of the missions look and act out basically the same.
SOUND
The sound in Enemy Front is decent enough, but could of been a lot more, especially in the voice acting department. Most, if not all of the narration used in the game is pretty much soul-less, giving out an underwhelming feeling when going through the main campaign on offer. There is some decent back sound that does accompany the gameplay however, but it all comes in fazes, where I would of preferred the game to go along with the same audio tone the right way through.
GAMEPLAY
For every first-person shooter out there, developers always seem to come with more and more ideas to keep the genre fresh, hence why games such as Call of Duty and Battlefield are so popular these days. Enemy Front, powered by the CryEngine 3 had the potential to invite players in with innovation at every corner. Notice I used the word ‘had’. I particularly used the word on purpose because quite simply, there is no innovation at all. The core gameplay mechanics are all what we have seen in previous shooters, and on top of that, mostly do not improve on these ideas either. Enemy Front offers to players an open experience, allowing players to go through the game how they like. I was excited by that statement, and whilst it is true to an extent, the game is also very linear, at times forcing you to follow a certain strategy in order to complete the mission you are on.
The aiming system in Enemy Front is also one that I thought should of had more work put into it. For example, unless your using a Sniper Rifle, I never rarely felt totally in control of where I wanted to aim the shot I was using. Fortunately for me however, ammo is rarely hard to get in Enemy Front, with unlimited ammo cases scattered around missions at every turn. Speaking of the missions, the campaign can get very, very repetitive at such a rapid pace as well. Each mission tries to differentiate from its predecessor, but rarely does so without any conviction. Walk, Kill loads of Nazi’s, get to the waypoint set out for you… Yeah, you get the picture.
LONGEVITY
On the easiest difficulty, Enemy Front’s main campaign took me around 6 hours to complete. Of course, there is the option to bump up the difficulty for a more brutal challenge, but with all the gameplay shortcomings, I can’t seem to think of a single reason why you should do so. Perhaps the saving grace, and what many players will primarily buy the game for is the online play. Games are always fun with friends and other real players around the word, so Enemy Front may offer a bit more longevity in that aspect.
VERDICT
I may have seemed to continuously giving out a negative vibe with Enemy Front, but that is only because I really did want the game to do so well. With the vast amount of next-gen shooters available, Enemy Front had the chance to prove that a very good game can still be made on a console with less power than its big brother. However, there is too much here to criticize, and with that I can’t recommend a purchase for Enemy Front. There is a lot of work to do, if indeed a sequel was to made, but I highly recommend to the developers that they leave it as that.
