Super Trench Attack!

Comic WWI

Some of us are aware, that there's been a few games about Word War I. Let it be strategy games or FPS games. There's not too many of them and I seem to have a personal leader, Verdun. However, usually games depicting WWI focus on grim reality surrounding the legends and stories about that day and age. This "special" game however, changes that look. And so far there's been only one that turned WW I into a comical parody (Toy Soldiers).

Theme,story, mechanics

Theme of the game is very simple (I will try to keep it without spoilers). It is just about doing missions given by your sexy general. However, it is not necessary o do them. As far as you have unlocked certain areas, you can choose where to go and free-roam these areas. Beware! Enemies do respawn! 

There's actually a point in doing so. By exploring the areas and going through dozens of enemies, you collect gold which is your main currency in the game (more about it a bit later). You can also explore certain areas for "secrets". They're not hidden that well and you may not get lots of bonuses besides collecting a badge (that does completely nothing). Ocassionaly enemies may drop some items but don't be afraid- they usually won't be better than whatever you currently have. Their purpose is to be sold for gold.

What is quite interesting, after doing missions you get gold and experience points, so you can level up, buy new gear etc. There are only four stats: 

• Damage with pistols, 
• health, 
• damage with rifles 
• damage with grenades.

This does not work very well, as it forces players to pick which weapon they want to master. Of course you can invest in both skilltress, or three, or all of them but there's no point in doing so. If you invest more, in say, rifle skills, you will deal considerably more dps than say with a pistol, at the end of the game with best gun that you can buy. This is a huge issue, as pistols have reduced damage compared to rifles, and do not shoot through enemies or certain objects, while rifles do so (so it's even possible to kill 2 enemies with one shot - granted that's a headshot).

 There's also a few interesting moments, where you're going into a contained/closed area, and your character pulls out a pistol (doesn't matter if you don't have it) and you shoot your way through, just like in ol' Virtua Cop.

So technically mechanics for it aren't great and I would recommend you to cherrish only one type of a gun (there's only pistols and rifles, the only difference between them is damage) throughout the whole game, or you will end up like me - having some trouble right at the endgame.

And, on the end of the day, pistol has 12 bullets in a magazine whilist rifle has 8 per clip. No big deal you think? Well the big deal is, if you max out dmg on pistols, you usually still have to shoot enemies (headshots) twice to get rid of them. Yet, maxxed out rifle dmg will take enemies out with one shot to the head. 8 bullets, but still superior. That's quite a problem.

There are also traps but most of the don't seem to work properly. Basically the idea of a trap is to make enemies fire at it (fake soldier) and it takes dmg instead of you. I really havent found them that necessary yet. They also have "traps" which obviously are mines. Enemies (and allies) don't mind getting their legs blown off from time to time....

As for items and upgrades, well, there's just basically "defence" so you take less damage, HP items give you more health and at almost endgame you can get a medal that gives a certain % of damage say with rifles or pistols etc. I don't really see a point in it, as you're buying items that look the same, do the same thing but by having higher numbers not different enchantments/bonuses.

Options

If you've been worrying if this game will run on Your PC, don't worry! It's almost certain it will run, unless you have less than 1gb ram with any Windows newer from XP. However, there's nothing impressive about the menu.

Sound has just 2 basic options, music and game SFX. Decent enough, works, I did not expect more than that.

However, keys are not rebindable. You have only 3 presets to choose from.

Where enter (pause) space (knife) and h (medkit) never change. Never. Only walking keys and grenade throw button.

Display offers only 4:3 5:3 8:5 16:9 however probably it's possible to scale it on your own in some files, however it's not guaranteed the game will work properly. Of course you can play the game in a window (no borderless window!).

So yes, in general, options menu is lacking (of course you can pick between 16-32 bit colors etc) but it's an indie game.

A true nightmare for some people.

Short and comical

Although the game is quite comical, it's relatively short. It's just about 5-6 hours (or even less) of written comedy. I really like the asthetics of the game, and it's design overall, reminds me of games on slot machines, just a bit more polished than they were visually.

However, there is no replay value to it, and it costs about 4.99 euros. Summing it all up: It's not a bad game, if you have a chance to buy it for less than 2 euros/dollars, then I highly recommend it.