War Mongrels Review (pipi long stocking)
I've finished the game, at about 45 hours.
first, let me say that i'm a pc gaming veteran and played commandos since it was Behind Enemy Lines (still have the big retail box and CD). So i am no slouch to this type of game.
I played most of this game (except last mission) using my old commandos strategy , which was to be as stealthy as possible so I pretty much hid every single body when it was possible. I killed many many enemies. even ones i could've slipped by unnoticed. so this added to the time of playing .
I would recommend this game to someone with patience to go prone , ALOT. i found out that alot of people move through this game rather fast when they simply use the enemies field of view as their own best friend, and you just have to magically go prone in the striped section of their view cone. this was cheesy in commandos, and cheesy in War Mongrels. One huge change i would love to see in this game would be a little bit more longer realistic field of view for enemies , but hey. it is what it is.
this game reminded me alot of commandos, with the thrown cigarettes, question marks over enemies when they're confused, even some of the character animations look like from a commandos title. this game is admittedly inspired by commandos and i see no problem.
another good thing is that the game didn't feel as linear as sometimes some missions in this game feel. and i cleared entire areas before realizing that it wasn't necessary, but that was and is my commandos playstyle.
now for the bad:
1. i feel a sequel was shot in the foot since day one, at least regarding one in world war II. the devs could probably make a cold war sequel though.
2. since all the characters "met" during the game, there was very little belief in camaraderie and it brings the notion of why would total strangers to each other even help each other. it brings the credibility of the relationships between characters down. they have the charisma of a flea and dog in love.
3. the bugs.. the bugs. the bugs. from chapter 7 and on, the rushed design decisions are more prevalent, almost like if they were running out of ideas from that point. i didn't enjoy chapters 7 through 12 as much as i did the first 6. the sometimes poor save system that would save right in the middle of getting bit by a dog and dying two seconds after restarting was tedious. they could do a lot better.
4. i felt , that some of the missions had way too much map clutter that really did not help the visuals or the gameflow much.
5. probably my biggest complaint is that this is more of a resistance/partisan/desertion game than a true sabotage game like the commandos games. as i said in point one, the timeline this game takes place in, makes it impossible to involve the characters in anything before the time period set in the game.
6. a sequel within the same time frame would be useless , since by late 1944 the germans were surrendering everywhere and honestly playing a character that helps defeat an easily defeatable foe is not a good idea IMO.
7. some outright terrible design decisions. poor explaining of some enemy behavior, and some outright dumb enemy behavior. right, because they're always cool seeing their dead comrades on the ground as long as it didn't happen in their view, correct? lol
8. the characters are outright stupid (coding of course) when climbing ladders and running to the next spot you marked for them. when there's clearly straight identifiable line to the next mark, the character decides to go straight into where an enemy CAN see them.. and the ladders. ladders suck. some characters are soon weakling sand cant climb up certain types of ledges etc. these are grown men, not young pricess ladies. Greta cant co prone? pfft...
i rate this game 8+ or so.