1944 in 2005
DoD: Source accentuates the claustrophobic nature of urban warfare, where almost every corner of a building and every door presented an imminent danger. It is a brand of gameplay that departs somewhat from other WWII FPS games that exhibit wide open terrains and vehicles. Nevertheless, owing to the closed nature of maps, the gameplay found in DoD: Source remains visceral, and the pace of the game can get very hectic. A player can easily lose his bearings while exploring any of the four maps included, and first time experiences can be jarring especially if you are not acquainted with DoD. Soon enough, you would be able to navigate the maps without any kind of problem, and be able to use various types of cover and secluded locations to play the game at your own preferred pace. The design of the maps, while allowing different playing styles, also do not hesitate to shift your position as a camping stalker to a sitting duck with a bulls-eye painted on your helmet, since they are chock full of objects and materials that not only realistically obstruct and confuse your viewing area, but are interactive, showing the trail of destruction as they it rolls by literally tattooing the map. So when you chance upon a room with uproot furniture, unhinged picture frames, broken windows, and blood stains everywhere, one would do well to heed these visual cues and plot your next movement more warily. Even though the environment is not fully destructive, they are more than enough to get your blood pumping.
DoD: Source features a class based system where each class is differentiated by the weapons allotted. These classes are mirrored closely between the Allies and the Wermarcht, but there are subtleties between the respective classes, while end up being well balanced. For example, the German issued Stg44 has attributes that are more evenly spaced whereas it’s American equivalent, Bar, favors accuracy and stopping power while foregoing a bit of control. Comparatively speaking, the Stg44 would provide players a bit more mobility and range as the recoil would be less, whereas Bar would limit movement but enhance its close range effectiveness. Each class serves a particular role that is either defensively or offensively oriented, or both, whenever needs may arise. For example, assault and support classes are more or less the mainstay in any offensive effort. The varied role the classes play makes each of them unique for their intended purpose. The strengths of each class become integral to forming a balanced squad, and not one seems to be an afterthought thrown in just to balance out the gameplay. You certainly will have a favorite class over time, but that would not make other classes any less enjoyable to play. At first I shunned the bazooka class, but some of the most fun to be had was with this class, with misfired rockets bouncing like a grenade and an indispensable carbine sidearm to assist you to hold your own when things get hairy. It would also have been nice to have a separate function for melee combat for all classes involved though, especially for the rifleman class.
DoD: Source provides realistic action that does not stray from the line between realism and fun. For example, you can shoot your automatic weapons from the hip, but from aside the very first shot, the recoil will render any further fire useless. This is not any more apparent than with a machine gun, where by the time you can squeeze off a second shot, the muzzle will point to the sky from the recoil. You also can crouch, lay prone, or even crawl. There is a sprint function (great for evading sniper fire in open spaces) where you can cover great distances for a short time, with a fatigue meter prominently displayed on the bottom that tells you how tired you are. Fatigue may be related with some other aspects of your movement, given the meter and all, but I could not really figure out what it was. A glaring omission here is the ability to peek out from cover. Not that it hampers any flow to the game, and in fact this may slow down the game considerably. Perhaps it is a limitation of the Source engine, but I do not think so, but the lack of it is quite left wanting in certain situations. Because, in DoD: Source, one or two clean shots are all it takes to bring you down. Automatic weapons may require more sustained fire, but they are all extremely deadly. Were it not for the fact that you can re-spawn as reinforcements within ten seconds on the timer, the experience would have been rather frustrating. The ability to transition between cover and being exposed, in addition to the ability to fire weapons indiscriminately around cover (much like Gears of War but with a more limited perspective) would have added much to help reinforce the realism of the game.
Another point to make is that of collision detection. When you collide with other players, it is equivalent of hitting an object with infinite mass. Your inertia and direction from movement do not register upon other players. For example, when you come across a live grenade and want to backtrack and your passage of escape is blocked by a teammate whose vision is obscured by you, well then, it is time to use that use the 'use' button to try to pick it up and throw it back in vain hope. Yes, you can use this function, but this occurrence is very rare. There are also nagging issues such as players getting stuck, almost dragging each other. It would also be nice, like in Call of Duty, if there is a handy ‘tooltip’ to notify players of the option to change their primary weapons or sidearm with those on the ground.
The graphics of DoD: Source is very nice. The game is awash in high resolution textures, and all the visual trappings of the Source engine are showcased in the game. With the addition of HDR (high dynamic range lightning; a sort of bloom effect that seems to accentuate contrast, most noticeable when one goes out of dark environment to well lit outside), the game sports the newest graphics technology at a minimal cost of performance (I experienced around 5 to 10 fps drop with HDR enabled). The physics modeling adds considerably to the graphics and realism of the action, and bodies fling about in every direction (with detachable helmets!) and grenades obey simple rules of geometry and gravity. The character models are all rendered in detail and even display damage location; their animations, however, are a bit flippant, seemingly not making solid contact with the environment around them, even suffering from clipping (especially around the sandboxes). All the eye candy does not detract from the actual gameplay as it is almost never distracting. The scalability of the Source engine is one of the best in the industry, to say the least.
The sound seems quite authentic, and the players call out each other using a wealth of voice commands in respective native language. You can identify the weapons being used nearby just by the sound, and that alone is a testament to the sound aspect augmenting that suspension of disbelief if nothing else. It is everything you could ask for in a game geared for competition; you will be able to ascertain the source of sound and track it to a general direction. There is little to no music, aside from the opening of any session or when the victory was achieved. As with Counterstrike, DoD: Source supports in-game voice communication and it seems to work quite well at least from my experience having heard it in the game.
The number of maps only number at four, which is a bit disconcerting given that this is a full fledged retail game (albeit sold at budget title price). All maps feature the tried and true formula of point capturing, in which players engage in holding down some area without enemy intervention for some predetermined time until it becomes designated as having been ‘owned’ by the side that last captured it. The numbers of points captured confer points to the overall team score, but do not serve as anything other than the progress of the match; it does not serve as any kind of spawn point like in Battlefield 1942. The reinforcement pretext gives players who are out of the match chance to return to the match in regular intervals, and the matches are usually very heavily contested (as seen in most public matches) like an ebb and flow, sometimes punctuated by an eerie lull where only campers await. The map layout emphasizes teamwork, especially telling when a capture point (usually the ones that are at the midpoint between spawn sites, therefore the most risky) requires two personnel to hold down the area for a certain time before the capture occurs. With varied amount of classes, in addition to respective assigned specialized roles and cooperative teamwork they foster, which are required to have any breakthrough, make DoD: Source one of the hardest games to attain success when ‘soloing’.
With the Source engine being what it is, here is hoping that it will only be a short wait before either fan modded maps or new official maps will be released. The omission of the British side is not as sorely wanting as first expected, but adding a few more major players of the conflict as playable would not certainly hurt, particularly the Russians. Also there have been some stability issues experienced by players in the form of intermittent crashes and sound looping / stuttering issues.
DoD: Source is basically what Half-Life 2 was to Half-Life; it is an update that is evolution in graphics, with the already sound gameplay remaining relatively intact. Although it does not feature any of the designs introduced and further evolved in modern multiplayer FPS such as vehicular combat and commander system, by holding its own close combat gameplay and honing it some more, it has achieved something that no shooter fans should overlook without giving it a try. Although giving it a try means that one would have to purchase the game first and not be able to go back as easily on their decision, the game will provide perhaps many hours of enjoyable WWII action with more content to follow.