If you're not interested in my review of this game, click here to be taken to warrock.net for their site and download.
War Rock: A solid FPS... and large scale battle game... and getting there as an mmorpg too.
Large scale first person shooters have been around a while. The first one I can remember playing was Battlezone, a futuristic, human vs alien game. What makes a FPS "large scale" for me is it's inclusion of maps large enough that running across it instead of finding a vehicle is not practical, or generally a pain in the ass. Since Battlezone I've enjoyed Battlefield (including 1942, Vietnanm, Desert Combat, BF2) and Battlefront (concept works well in the Star Wars world, even if the game wasn't where it needed to be.)
The problem with these games was that conceptually they were incredible and fell apart a bit on the shooter side. Bullets never seemed to go where you wanted them. The large maps and huge scales created some strange lag issues, even when there was no real lag. People didn't move in a way that was convincing. Also if I move to slowly, despite the added realism, I tend to just get bored. Hell, if I wanted that much realism I'd join the armed forces. The vehicles can get you from place to place of course, and you can use some of them to blow the hell out of everybody, but when the game falls apart on the foot soldier side of things, it gets tiring.
Enter War Rock. Though only in open beta, I've sucked more enjoyment out of this game in the last two weeks than the months of playing BF2, or the several years playing various versions of Counter-Strike. That's a bold statement, I'm aware, and I might just be giddy about playing a game of this unique genre that really works, but I'm impressed. As I said, the game's in open beta now. It gets lag issues every now and then, and the translation of text breaks down a little bit (the developers appear to be German.) However it's mission seems to be in combining a solid FPS into a large scale vehicle driven environment with aspects of goal oriented games (blowing shit up) and perhaps oddest of all; MMORPG. As you play your character levels and unlocks new weapons and skills. There seems to be more of these aspects with each update.
When you fire your weapon at an enemy, it hits where it should. The nitty-gritty on this level feels as solid as CS:S. You can pilot a whole managery of vehicles, the sounds and graphical details of which are amazing. When you drive over a bump in the terrain, you can see the trek on your tank bend over it. If you fire your tanks cannon in the middle of a group of buildings, you can hear glass shatter all around you after the shots fired.
The war environment, and realistic feel of the FPS end is not interrupted by the RPG side. You still play in smallish servers at this point, it's not clear if the developers plan to change that to play in huge "persistent world" servers or not. What is clear is that this game is FREE FOREVER. Their FAQ is explicit in it's statement that the game will always be available for free. They do mention that the future might bring users the ability to pay for special benefits and features, which excites me further.
In close quarters, you'll swear your playing a game that is nothing but a good shooter. From a distance you're going to greatly appreciate the fact that you can watch an enemy running for a jeep a 1/2 mile away, while you try to snipe him. It was obvious to me that the creators of this game are players fed up with inherent flaws in big developer's games. Even if doesn't take you right over, War Rock will be a gaming household name soon enough. Highly recommended.
