After putting in some 20 hours into the WARDOGS beta and another 20 in the early access, I can safely conclude that this is, indeed, one of my favorite first-person shooters of all time. However, despite the immense fun I’ve had with this game, one thing has to be noted: WARDOGS is horribly unbalanced, but that’s what the early access is for, I guess.
WARDOGS, even as an early access title, feels more complete and content-rich than most fully released games. It has dozens of weapons, multiple combat roles, and the depth and breadth of gameplay you could only expect to see in the biggest, most expensive AAA titles out there. For a $39.99 game, it’s really quite the package.
So far, I’ve managed to level my account up to Wardog 40 and brought every role to level nine except for Recon, which I now have at level 10 (Mosin Nagant time, baby). And even at that level, with so many things unlocked, there is still a very long way to go before I actually get access to everything the game has to offer. But that would involve my playing a lot as a delivery driver or a pilot, which, honestly, I have no clue how to do.
And that’s the best part about WARDOGS. Every playstyle is well-represented in each of its flexible roles, which you can embody at the same time. Want to be a builder and a support? Sure, you can be one, but you can also take a sniper rifle with you or carry around binoculars in your backpack to spot and scan enemies while taking a break from building your base to score some Recon XP on the side.
Furthermore, you can kit yourself out with an assault rifle while performing Recon tasks, racking up kills and Assault XP from your gun while ticking up your inner sniper bit by bit. Drivers, pilots, and every other role can also flex themselves into any other, which is something Battlefield 2042 wanted to do but failed, miserably, at doing it.
It all circles back to what I’ve said about WARDOGS during my beta impressions: this game is a combination of so many different genres and FPS games, where the best parts about those games are taken out and blended together into a comprehensive, massive, and cohesive whole. It’s actually quite surprising how well some of these mechanics work together, like the sandbox gameplay of ARMA combined with zones from PUBG and extraction shooter mechanics (via the money system) from Tarkov.
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Despite all the things it does extremely well, WARDOGS suffers from severe balance issues that have a significant detrimental effect on a good chunk of its gameplay. Mortars, for now, can be spammed ad nauseum, and shooting each one gives the player a third-person camera perspective of the mortar shell flying through the air (with free look enabled), meaning that any mortar player can easily determine the exact point where they need to shoot to take down something you’d just spent literal minutes building.
Artillery has the same perk, though it is much harder to unlock. Stingray drones, too, are just as powerful but can also be manually controlled and driven exactly where you want them to be, potentially undoing all of the other team’s effort in one fell swoop. On top of that, there are FOBs (forward operating bases) that can be built basically anywhere in the zone, allowing players to clandestinely bombard other bases with relative ease.
Guns, too, are severely unbalanced. Starting weapons and cheaper options are horribly disadvantaged compared to more advanced and expensive unlocks, and there is already a massive level disparity between players who have a bunch of great guns and low-level noobs. The game’s body part system also means that you will often laser an enemy but do no damage because your gun shot at their hands, whereas they will instantly kill you because they missed yours by a pixel or two.
These inconsistencies and disruptions are a massive problem and a huge barrier to enjoying WARDOGS to the fullest. They’re not cataclysmic to the point where the game’s unplayable, but I certainly hope this is the first thing the devs will address during the early access program (hopefully without any crunch involved).
Overall, though, WARDOGS remains a great game, and by far the best shooter money can buy at the moment. With time, I see it becoming even better, more consistent, and a lot more balanced, so I’m definitely sticking with it for the whole journey.
