Having a Blast

First Experience of Wardogs: Last night, I formed up with a small squad and had an absolute blast. There were a few teething issues at first, but once the servers were up, they filled up quickly and games got underway.

For a closed playtest, the game felt really well polished, and personally, it keep me in one place for around 7 hours. I managed to play 3 full rounds, but got kicked out of 2 rounds due to server issues.

The sound voip service also didn’t connect in the last round I played, which led to the frustration of my squad who were trying to fortify an area, only to have other players misunderstand what they were doing and remove some of the placed items again.

Overall, I had a great time with adrenaline piling into hot LZs and taking fire from locations which was not always easy to pinpoint. Two of my squad clearly enjoyed the sniping and building elements and did this for 7 hours straight.

General Feedback Points: The pace of the game was great. Do not change this for CoD style play. There was a good balance of tactical play and action. The focus on working as a team was brilliant.

Tactical pings were helpful, but may need to last longer, especially for pilots or people playing a ground control role to have a more permanent way of marking their LZs. Maybe GPS or other tactical equipment like modern day military forces could allow this.

I loved the helicopters. The controls felt slightly different to other games and slightly sticky at times, but this wasn’t too much of an issue for me. The air frames were more durable than Arma, which was welcomed. I piloted for hours and had great fun doing it. The rewards for getting people to the LZ felt generous and was more than enough to cover the 7 or 8 choppers I flew for the evening, including unlocking the attack chopper and the Huey, as well as flying them a couple of times.

Using the small attack chopper was trickier with keyboard and mouse was not so easy, this was made harder by the field of view in first person being quite narrow. Turning was also not easy, but probably can be mastered for those playing with keyboard and mouse with practice.

I loved all of the rewards for any assistance given to teammates, including spotting when playing recon.

Keybindings probably need sub-menus for vehicles infantry etc. I did not like the fact that I could not have holster weapon and vehicle horn on the same button, yet other keybinds seem to be fine to duplicate.

I liked the local voip when it worked. I do wonder if pilots or people in support roles can have radios for global communication to discuss enemy locations or where to put troops on the ground. It was a little confusing that you could have global text chat but not radio.

The mini-map and radar was well implemented, but seeing 3D icons in the world was a little confusing. Teammate icons disappeared over a short distance, but marked enemies or tactical pings could be seen for kilometres, causing some minor orientation issues.

Final Thoughts: Other than the things above, which I really do think are minor, I love what Wardogs has brought to the table. The adrenaline, tactical gameplay and teamwork are exactly what I have been looking for in a game. The rewards and blood splatter were also great - I loved the more arcade feel to these elements - it just increases the feeling of reward.

I love the Arma series, but this is my new go to.