BATTALION 1944
The spirit of classic Call of Duty lives on in this throwback
Battalion 1944 is fast-paced and lethal, particularly in confined spaces
Almost ten years ago, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare ended World War II’s grip on the shooter genre. Its red dot sights and Clancy- ish attitude to the war on terror firmly established Call of Duty as the world’s premier mainstream FPS and ensured a decade of copycats.
Fond memories of classic CoD persist, however, and they form the basis of Battalion1944. Kickstarted to the tune of £300,000, Bulkhead’s throwback shooter promises to bring back what you loved about CallofDuty2 and MedalofHonor in a modern engine and with contemporary matchmaking tech.
In terms of today’s shooters, the most important touchstone for Battalion1944 is not CallofDuty, as it happens, but Counter-Strike: GlobalOffensive. Bulkhead aspires to a similar kind of focus, both in terms of the game’s scope—competitive through-andthrough, spread across multiple modes— but also in terms of how it’s played. Expect heavy emphasis on teamwork, quick kills, and dense maps that reward awareness and lethally punish mistakes.
The very early build I played pitted small teams against one another in a small but tightly packed slice of rural France. Playing team deathmatch necessarily limited the importance of teamwork or objective-focused play, but the demonstration was nonetheless effective at establishing what Battalion1944 is going for. Specifically, it’s shooting for the feeling of occupying a CallofDuty2 server for a full afternoon sometime in the mid-2000s, in an era before extensive unlocks, jetpacks, prestige, underslung grenade launchers, or Kevin Spacey.
Battalion1944 is fast-paced and highly lethal, particularly in confined spaces. Each faction in the alpha has the choice of two weapons—a bolt action rifle and a Thompson or MP-40 submachine gun—and my early attempts to use the former ended poorly. In the cramped confines, marksmanship wasn’t as important as getting the drop on the other team. Enemy locations flash up on the minimap when they’re sighted by your teammates, and planning and executing quick flanking maneuvers proved to be more effective than lurking in a corner with a long-range rifle.
Can’t beat them…?
That said, even this small map had a few areas with long sightlines where a decent player could pin down the enemy team by themselves. The CS comparison springs to mind again, here: Using a bolt-action rifle in Battalion felt like taking up the responsibility of an AWP in CS:GO. If you keep missing, you’d be better off grabbing a pistol and joining in. But if you’re accurate, a string of one-hit kills can be devastating. This was an extremely early build of the game, however. Janky animations and a paucity of weapons and modes speaks to the work yet to do as the game closes in on its first proper closed alpha later in the summer. Objective-based modes and a loadout system will add depth, with teams assembling ‘decks’ of gear that are unlocked as each match progresses—a hybrid of CS:GO’s gun shop and, of all things, Hearthstone. There’s also modern matchmaking to come, including dedicated solo and team-based ranked ladders to allow players to compete with a fixed roster of friends.
Beyond those features, however, the point and the appeal of Battalion1944 is its simplicity. It’s not promising the biggest battlefields or the most extensive timesinks, but the straightforward pleasure of competitive gunplay using the weapons that made World War II shooters so popular a decade or so ago. Chris Thursten