First Impressions of War Inc. Battlezone Beta

If you are a PC gamer then you likely have Steam on your computer, at least I hope you do. Well, in the past couple of months Steam has begun releasing more and more free-to-play games with incentives for players who wish to be premium users. One of those games is War Inc. Battlezone, it is in the beta right now but after its release it will still be free-to-play.

War Inc. Battlezone would be best described as a third-person shooter with a hint of MMO. You start at level one and rank up through experience earned in game based on defensive score, offensive score, tactical score and winning bonus. Unlike other games that have a leveling system (MW2), the ranks have an actual purpose other than unlocking or rewarding gear. In War Inc. Battlezone your character gets skill points based on its level that go towards things like improving your sniper abilities by reducing sway when zoomed in and allowing you to hold your breath longer. There are also skill points that improve damage dealt, reduce damage taken, improve detection of enemies on the minimap, and increase maximum health. After 20 hours of play my skill tree is pretty messed up because I tried just about everything, but fortunately the developers had the presence of mind to include a way to reset your skill points through a relatively cheap premium offer. The skill points matter! And that is one of the first things that War Inc. Battlezone did that I found impressed me, they weren't just thrown in for the hell of it, they make a difference.

The gameplay:
 As I said before its a third person over the shoulder shooter. I can sometimes enjoy this style of play but if it isn't developed right it can be annoying, and in this case sometimes hindering. By that I mean that in War Inc. Battlezone you are unable to switch between which shoulder you look over, which means that the person approaching/turning right around a corner will always have an advantage because he can see around the corner more easily. If War Inc. Battlezone addresses this issue then it will likely improve balance on the maps a great deal as certain maps favor certain positions because of this issue and not because of things like altitude. The game play itself is fairly smooth though, the graphics remind me of an ramped up version of Counterstrike so they aren't top of the line but they still look good at the high settings. There are a few issues with collision that I came across but the game is still in fairly early beta so for now I will overlook them.

The maps range from being pretty large to being very tight and chaotic. The action is almost always fast paced and unlike other shooters out there you are actually shooting real bullets!!!!! I cannot stress this enough, in War Inc. Battlezone, you are NOT shooting rubber bullets, if you take 2 or 3 shots in the chest from an assault rifle or 1 from a sniper/shotgun you are probably going to die. I like this. I like the trend in recent games moving away from the bullets made of jello.

War Inc. Battlezone provides a huge array of weapons to choose from. From sub-machine guns to assault rifles to sniper rifles to shotguns and rpgs. The largest of those categories by far is the assault rifle with a ton of different options to choose from, many of which feel completely different than the other offers. Some have iron sights or holographic sights or red dots. They vary in accuracy and damage so your choice does make a big difference in your play style. The sub-machine guns feel a lot like the assault rifles but quieter and a little bit more accurate when zoomed in which brings me to my next topic for the automatic weapons. Zooming. Unfortunately in War Inc. Battlezone it seems as though accuracy in close to mid range situations drops as you zoom in which means your better off using the hip fire position. This of course does not include sniper rifles, in fact I would argue that sniper rifles are probably too accurate right now as I can usually pull about 80% hit rate on moving targets in any regular game right now and since the sniper rifle I use (the 50 cal) is a one hit kill on any body or better shot, it is a little over powered.  Shotguns are awesome. I really don't have to go into them. If you are close range and you get hit by an accurate shotgun blast you are probably going to die, this is in fact the case in War Inc. Battlezone. So to you developers, I thank you for the shotgun. The last group of weapons I want to comment on are the support ones. While that may sound like it's the heavy machine gun category, it is in actuality the explosive round category with weapons like RPGs. They are fun to use. They are not a viable weapon for a long game or life. War Inc. Battlezone gives you at most 6 shots in one of these guns and in some as few as 2 per life with no way to get more ammunition, add on to that the fact that you can hit someone with an rpg in the face and if your unlucky in your timing (in relation to their spawning) or if they used their skill points to take less damage from explosions it wont kill them in one shot, leaving you to reload for the next 5-14 seconds. Furthermore, War Inc. Battlezone doesn't have vehicles which reduces their potential to be effectively used even more.



Major complaints/concerns/things I hope to see in the future out of the game:

Sniper rifle going through a wall (hard to see here because of lighting)

Shot into cement wall from behind a wall

War Inc. Battlezone is still in beta, I understand and accept this. However there are a few things that concern me a great deal. The first of which is the way guns are fired, the character doesn't react to firing, it just stands there and flashes come out of the gun but accuracy changes as you fire longer so I would like to see some sort of movement from the character and the gun in the future. Bugs, bugs, bugs. I've found a number of them and submitted a couple, one of which was fixed within hours because it was quite literally ruining the game. However, there are others that I've submitted like being able to see and shoot through certain walls as a sniper while not being able to be hit yourself. VEHICLES!!!!!! I want to see them, even if it is some worthless little buggy that I can try to run people over with, it will make the support weapons in War Inc. Battlezone just a little bit more valuable hopefully. The last thing I want to see out of the game is a wider variety of maps, they have already made a Counterstrike dust like map which is cool, but as they release more maps they seem to be favoring the small chaotic map rather than the large and more strategically and tactically dependent maps. I would like to see them move away from the trend of small maps.


Final Impressions:

The developers of War Inc. Battlezone are updating the game almost every day which is fantastic and if they keep up this pace I see a promising future for the game but I fear the limitations of the game through things like graphics and vehicles will limit their ability to grab and more importantly hold onto the player. For now though, I will continue to watch it develop and enjoy my free game.

If you like what we do follow us on twitter @1UpNerd or find us on Facebook!! For questions or comments, post below or on either Twitter or Facebook.





As promised, images. They are kinda small because it was my first try but next time I will make sure to make them more clear