The first minute of action involves manning the resistance barricades, giving you a reasonable taste of the gunplay to come. That was fine, except the right control key isn't bound in Enemy Front's default configuration, whereas the respective console controls are. It later turned out that the keyboard controls to select options were the left and right control keys - mirroring the left and right triggers/bumpers. Annoyed, I disconnected the DS4 but the console prompts continued, even when I was asked to choose between two pathways. When I first loaded the game, I had a Dualshock 4 controller connected - a necessity for my review of Don Bradman Cricket 14 - so Enemy Front automatically replaced all the prompts with Xbox controls. Except for my jaw, as my brain was too busy processing the following: a) this is a game built on the latest version of the CryEngine and b) this is a game built in 2014, which apparently has lighting physics so bad they would have looked out of place in Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. A window was directly opposite the entrance, so I moved to the side, thinking there was some error in collusion between the player model and the source of light.īut the light never reappeared until I left the room entirely, at which point everything returned to normal. Upon entering the room, the lighting vanished entirely. In one instance, I walked into one of the very many empty, partially-lit, rooms scattered across Warsaw. You'd think the developers might have fixed that issue after, you know, releasing on Steam and asking for money, but apparently not.Īs I later discovered, poor coding was less of an aberration and more of a hallmark. Over the course of a whole week, Enemy Front crashed to desktop the first time, every time. Reloading the game, for whatever reason, resolved the issue, although the initial failure to start was never truly rectified. This was odd, I thought, only because I wasn't dealing with a pre-release version: this was the full retail copy and the game had already been out for at least a fortnight. The alarm bells began sounding when I first tried to open Enemy Front, only for the game to immediately crash to desktop. For not once throughout my miserable experience, did a single minute pass without me looking at a texture, listening to a sound, firing a weapon, reacting to the AI or just enduring the abomination of a plot and thinking, "There are so many better things I could be doing with my life." Whatever devilish combination of events transpired within the Polish studio? They would do well to ensure it never happens again. Enemy Front is not only the worst game I've played this year, but also the most dismal I've played over the last five years. In an era where the truly awful - one not worthy of the lowest corner of the bargain bin - is as rare as hen's teeth, CI Games have managed to provide. So instead of weathering truly atrocious products, gamers have enjoyed a solid decade filled with legions of derivative, but functional, releases.Įnemy Front doesn't even fall in that category. Programmers and designers are smarter and more brazen when it comes to borrowing mechanics and concepts from the competition. News and long-form features are more profitable pursuits for developers and PR firms to chase and more and more websites focus exclusively on this, either dropping features entirely or relying more on interviews and previews.Īnother, and more influential, factor is that games simply aren't as bad as they used to be. Major websites are often targeted, with commentators reasoning that disappointing releases receiving, say, a 6 or a 7 out of 10 would often be awarded a 3 or a 4 if writers weren't getting paid under the table. Fans of gaming forums will be no stranger to the conspiracy that refuses to die: the idea that reviews, are bought and paid for.
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