Battalion 1944 Beta Preview

Is Battalion 1944 able to get it’s foot in the door of competitive shooters?

Over the weekend, I managed to have a go at the private test session for the new kid on the e-sports block. Battalion 1944 was a kickstarted project that is finally hitting steam, trying to put it’s trench gun and blow the door off of competitive shooters and I can see why from my time playing. It’s clear that Battalion is trying to take an easy to learn, hard to master route when it comes to the core gameplay systems. Counter-strike has had a hard to learn and hard to master type deal for a while based off of spray patterns and managing the economy between the teams. Battalion takes a stance and gameplay style based similar to older call of duty games focusing on fast gun fights and even faster movement. If you’ve ever played older call of duty games or quake, you’ll understand where I’m coming from but if you haven’t then this game will feel very different to what is currently available.

Let’s take a look at what Battalion does then we can look at how. The alpha build we got to play around with had two modes. Arcade which had modes like team deathmatch, capture the flag and so on and then there was Wartide which is the main competitive mode that takes the standard 5v5 bombsite game mode and kicks it up a notch. I felt right at home with the modes and the style that the developers have gone for. During the beta, we had access to a small range of weapons, each attached to a different “class.” Not really classes but just seems to be a design choice to give choice for weapons and grenades. You’ve got two sides, attacking and defending using either the allies or axis weapons which seem to share similar damage values but differ in terms of recoil and spray patterns. This is a game where snipers reign supreme, if you’re able to get the quickscoping down then you’ll be able to near dominate maps with long areas like they were a shooting gallery and that’s not really a bad thing as it fits the period and the style that they are going for. This is a game for the twitch shooter generation that fits in a time where games like counter-strike and PUBG are dominating the e-sports scene. Quickfire rounds with skilful players going at it makes Battalion a game with a future in the circuit.

As I mentioned, the game is focusing on small firefights over the map similar to the old days of quake and call of duty. You’re moving constantly even when defending the bomb on wartide. With Wartide specifically there are a couple things that differ compare to the other games in the genre. Firstly you’ve not go an economy to manage. Instead you’re managing the amount of times you can spawn with a specific loadout. Each loadout has a specific amount of respawns with them which you can update by picking tokens up from enemy players but you have to manage that time compared to actually playing the objective. The other thing is that the maps are very much close quarters based so positioning is key. Moving around the enemy team is more advantageous for you compared to taking on straight firefights unless you can use a sniper with a scope because then you’re going to dominate in a 1 on 1. I feel that the map pool needs a bit more variety but considering this is an alpha release and the devs have assured me and other players that they are working with people to make this game have that variety later on down the line. I’m pretty sure some e-sports orgs are already setting up teams so we shall see where that goes.

Overall I enjoyed my time with Battalion 1944. It’s got the pace that people have come to love more and more thanks to games like PUBG coming onto the scene but with an era that doesn’t really have much representation in a competitive circuit. The firefights keep games close and all the game needs are a couple more maps in it’s active pool for competitive then we should be golden. Games like league and DOTA can get away with only having one map based off it’s design but a fast pace shooter needs that variety otherwise the games will go stale. I’d say if you were a competitive player then keep your eye on this and pick it up when it releases on February 1^st. Start playing and let the devs know your thoughts as they are fairly active everywhere online and you can maybe even take them on in game. I’ll be picking it up and it’s something I plan on dedicating time to in order to get a lot better than I was during the beta as I only got a small amount of time to play due to server issues and other things going on. This is a game to watch this year.