Soldner: Secret Wars Hands-On

Generally speaking, I like my job. If you play things by the book, you can have a great time as a game journalist. There is sort of an unspoken agreement between the publishers and gaming press that you never slam on unreleased games. Also remember to mind the NDA's. Publishers will give your publication the benefit of the doubt and they will send you a very rough draft of their game, hoping to get some additional coverage for it, and in turn, that will give you a chance to offer the online community what they want - a first glimpse into the game they've all been dying to play. As a rule, this concept works fine, but every now and then you are faced with a moral dilemma: You receive preview code for a game that's "less than stellar," so you really have no clue how you can put a positive spin on it without some... let's call it creative writing. Usually, when such a moral dilemma arises, I do some "creative writing." Well, I try to anyway. So here goes, people. Brace yourself.

Dang, I’m always the last one up!

How do you shift gears in this thing?

Encore and developer Wing Simulations were kind enough to send us the latest beta build of the Soldner multiplayer. Over the past several days I've had the chance to spend some time with the game and learn more about this exciting new project.

Soldner: Secret Wars is Wing's valiant attempt at creating a vehicular combat action title that borrows concepts from games like BF 1942, Counter-Strike, Operation Flashpoint and others.

I've tested several huge maps that will allow you to buy and drive many vehicles, including sports cars, Russian "Lada" and tractors.

At the outset, every player is required to customize his/her character. Much to my delight, the character creation process was very detailed and it gave me a chance to be really creative with my mannequin. Your player model can look like a freak Village People accident or a genuine NSA operative. It's all a matter of taste and preference really.

After creating my character, it was time to join an online match. Apparently, the only game type available was one slightly resembling "Conquest" from BF 1942. Sadly, there weren't many players online (ever), and the only server where I found some people playing was the Wing Simulations test server. Obviously, the developers were honing their Soldner skills and I decided to join in.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised with how Soldner looks. The game is played from a third-person perspective by default, but you can switch to first person at any time. The controls were easy to use and familiar, so it didn't take me long to get in the groove of things. Regarding the visuals, I especially enjoyed the use of pixel shaders and the relatively detailed environments. The characters are mostly well animated, and the objects in the background (like buildings, trees and such) are destructible, looking devastated and blackened after a fierce gunfight. The use of a great number of vehicles that you drive or fly across large forest and snow covered areas, including helicopters and various armored vehicles will create an atmosphere that distantly resembles a mix of Battlefield 1942 and Operation: Flashpoint.

Sadly, the multiplayer beta is missing a LAN or a single-player component, which means I wasn't able to properly test the game. And there simply weren't enough people playing online. Those that were there, however, seemed to know what they were doing, which led me to believe that they've been coming back to Soldner for a while, and that is surely a good sign.

Keeping an eye out for birdies.

All this gear makes me feel a bit woozy...

However, as far as the positive aspects of this game go, that's pretty much all I could come up with, even with all my "creative writing." At first, the game does look all right, but that's about as far as it goes. Bear in mind though that this is only a multiplayer beta, and it just may well be that this one will shine in single-player. Wings Simulations has till May to make that happen; unless they delay the game of course. For some reason, I don't think that would be such a bad move, as Soldner looks far from finished. The GUI is not yet in place and plenty of animation is still missing. The doors open and slam shut in two frames, you don't exit the vehicle - you simply spawn next to it when you get out. The sound effects are amateurish to say the least and the only good thing about it is the positional audio, which does work well. At one point, I turned to Dex (our code guru) who was sitting next to me and asked where those chopper sounds are coming from; so at least they got the chopper sounds right.

Finally, even though I played with an average ping of 18, the game still lagged quite a bit. Granted, the version of the beta I played is far from the final build, so let's hope Wings Simulations can see to all the technical drawbacks, too.

With any luck, you can find a way to remain positive about Soldner; if you really want to for some reason. As far as I'm concerned, the fact that they want to ship this one in May is rather irresponsible - if the multiplayer component is any indication of the full game. On the upside, die hard fans of Soldner can hope that Wings can miraculously turn this one around before it ships. On my end, I wish them the best of luck. They're going to need it.