Verdun

Much like the conflict that the game shares its namesake with, Verdun is a ferocious and tense multiplayer shooter the likes of which we haven’t seen in a long time. Generously stuffed with player-made emergent moments on the battlefield and an incredible sense of place, Verdun is not just a great take on one of history’s more marginalised wars, it also happens to be a resoundingly solid shooter in its own right too.

A first-person multiplayer warfare game, taking place on the western front between the gruesome years of 1914 and 1918, brings the combat of fighting for trench power to consoles. Take turns in attack/defend gameplay, face off in an online free-for-all, or stand your ground and hold off waves of enemies alone or with friends. Everything you need to know about this game can be found right here!

Rampant server issues, poor performance, badly designed UI and a non-existent player base have crippled what should have been a really interesting change of pace for console shooters. Verdun may improve with time, but as it stands, is an absolute mess.

Verdun will be classed as something of an acquired taste. It’s a refreshing change from the rest of the first-person shooters and goes to great lengths to ground itself in the reality of what trench warfare would have been like. And while it has its moments, it is riddled with imperfections that can fatally damage the player’s experience. Hopefully in time, with a few patches and time to adjust, Verdun will offer a suitable title for those looking for a more authentic experience. But for now, it may be better holding the line and staying in the trenches.

Despite that problem, and the overall roughness of Verdun, I still find myself enjoying it. I can't stand to play it for more than an hour or two per night due to the default match length currently being thirty-minutes. Sometimes it can be a very boring or frustrating game -- one where I die much more often than not and barely get to engage with the enemy. Other times I can pull off a long distance shot to take down an enemy or make it through the enemy trench unscathed. Those moments are great, but it doesn't make the lack of a large player count or the lack of teaching its mechanics any easi...

Normally, I would say that a solid game not having a player base is very sad, but I can’t really do that here. That’s because the PS4 version of Verdun is a bit of a mess. It has the worst graphical pop-in I’ve seen on the system, with textures loading in while I’m just feet away from them. If that wasn’t bad enough, the game is even ugly once it finishes loading in. Verdun wasn’t really a technical showcase on PC, but it was never an eyesore like this.