Tonight marks a sad day for me as the Closed Beta for Wardogs, an incredibly fun mix of Milsim and Arcade FPS, has come to an end after a weekend of hours and hours spent in the field. I hadn’t known about this game until my roommate brought it up as something we could stream, and I then spent every hour I could mucking around in the huge maps with nearly 100 players in every server.
Wardogs is an upcoming FPS in the vein of Arma and Hell Let Loose, in that it is a more casual approach to full Milsim styled games of the genre but allowing for players to not only drop into the easy to understand combat between infantry, vehicles, and mounted weaponry — but also allowing for players to build, reinforce, and provide logistical support to the frontlines in an endless effort to gain funds to spend on progressively cooler unlocks for any playstyle. I spent easily 20+ hours over the closed beta weekend playing endless battles, and a good 12 hours was focused on logistics alone, ferrying resources, ammo, and people to the control zones, and I loved the menial nature of it.
It’s easy enough to grab a loadout, setting out and stalking the other players in this 33v33v33 game as each team fights over the zones in an effort to be first to 100 points scored, but the true difficulty I found was in supply chains, the ability to keep player-created FOBs loaded with fuel, ammo, meds, and endless building supplies, and it seems the game is incredibly well balanced for varied playstyles. Every game I saw a handful of taxi pilots, armoured vehicles, scouts and snipers, and mortar teams helping the assaulting players push in all directions to claim victory, and it all felt so well polished for a closed beta.
Everything from the shooting mechanics and time to kill to the building to the information gathering of scouting to the ever-satisfying booms of mortar shells dropping everywhere—this game felt incredibly smooth, with hardly any graphical issues beyond LOD pop-in. The only negative I can possibly say is driving the larger vehicles certainly felt off, as if the cargo truck had half a functioning front wheel drive, but everything else was incredibly enjoyable, to the point I would highly recommend anybody interested in the genre, or long-time fans of Arma looking for something new, to check out Wardogs coming out September 10th on Steam
