Disappointing experience. I like games that mix a single player perspective with a wider tactical or strategic element. I also prefer games that focus on a satisfying core gameplay loop over graphics, "realism", etc. And of course, I want my games to give me as many options as possible to engage with it the way I want. Unfortunately, the game fell flat for me.
I have basically two major gripes. The first is that the game both looks and plays pretty subpar. It's the kind of thing that's hard to put your finger on, but the game just feels clunky and janky. CoD 2 came out 20+ years ago and the movement and gunplay feels ten time as satisfying as this. It has all these different mechanics, which is admirable, but none of them are unique or polished, so they all just end up feeling very forgettable. In particular, the AI feels very simplistic and dated. The battlefield doesn't feel organic or alive. Again, compare this to CoD 2, which had allied and enemy AI which was way more immersive than this - taking cover realistically, calling out the specific locations of enemies, maintaining spacing and moving organically instead of just running in straight lines everywhere. And while it doesn't look terrible, it doesn't really look good either. The assets and environments feel very generic and flat. This wouldn't even really be an issue for me if the gameplay was good, but it isn't, so the weak graphics and the "baby's first Unity UI" quality just make the game feel even more cheap.
The biggest issue, however, is found in the options menu. For a game of this scope, there is a stunning lack of options and customizability. When I played the flying tutorial for the first time, my immediate feeling was that the handling was hot garbage. The mechanics of the handling themselves are pretty weirdly bad - why does the plane turn in spurts, and not smoothly, when you try to yaw? - but part of the reason I was having trouble is because the default control scheme has you controlling the pitch and roll with the mouse and the yaw with A and D, and the flight controls are inverted. Personally I prefer to control pitch and yaw with the mouse and leave rolling to A+D, without pitch inverted, because that's how you control your aim in first person shooters which is what I'm used to, so there isn't a steep learning curve. Well, no problem - plenty of games use this as the default control scheme, and it's usually no big deal to change it to my preference.
Womp womp. As far as I could discern in my short time with the game before I quit in disgust, there IS no way to change the control scheme. You just gotta figure it out or kick rocks. Well, I could maybe push through some janky mechanics and some ugly assets, IF there was some satisfying, unique core gameplay somewhere in the mix. But I draw the line at a game in 2020, let alone 2026, that won't let me choose to control the game the way I want. Refunded.
