WYP
News Guru
Port Report: Enemy Front
Today we have a look at Enemy Front, the new World War 2 shooter from Ci Games which is made using Crytek's CryEngine. If you are interested in some, now classic, WWII FPS action this is definitely worth a read.
Game Settings and Performance
As always, it is very important to assess the quality of the PC version of the title. I'll start by saying that all the menus are traverse-able by mouse and the in-game controls are pretty standard for an FPS, so there are no problems using mouse and keyboard.
If the stock controls are not your thing, they can easily be changed as all the in-game controls are fully rebindable.
Graphical settings are also highly configurable, with a basic menu offering the standard resolution, vsync, graphical options (low, medium, high, very high) and options of playing in DX9 or DX11.
For more advanced users a more highly configurable "Advanced" option is available where pretty much anything can be configured. Sadly missing from this list is Anti Aliasing, Anisotropic filtering and FOV options. The FOV can be edited using the config files, instructions for which can be found on the PC gaming wiki. AA and AF options could be under the post processing option, but there is no indication that there is, some users may like to add their own AA through either Nvidia or AMDs drivers.
Performance wise the game runs good, at maxed out setting at 1440p resolution the framerate is always around 52ish FPS, with occasional dips to 40 and maxing out at around 75 FPS. This is with my GPU running at stock settings while playing through the entire game. Which is great performance considering this games CryEngine roots and the massive 1440p resolution.
VRAM usage at 1440p was at the 2.4GB mark, with 1080p setting staying under 2GB at all times tested. So please bear this in mind before bumping up the texture resolution at higher resolutions.
I did fing one issue while playing the game which heavily affected the sound quality, which is in the video portion of this review at the bottom of this post. It caused the sound to just become a vague auto-tuned sounding mess, which required a system restart to fix. This happened twice during the 10 hours I have played so far of this game. As far as I'm aware nobody else has had this issue as when searching for it I found no sign of it, so perhaps this is a unique issue to my system.
Another issue some people have been complaining about is related to vsync which is known to cause framerate issues. Some people have had success by using Nvidia's adaptive sync instead if they experience visual tearing, but others only get system crashes trying this.
Apart from these issues the game has ran great, especially when compared to other big budget games, ahem Battlefield 4 ahem.
Gameplay
The game plays like most standard FPS', regenerating health, ammo boxes throughout the levels and pretty standard run and gun feel.
Your character as always is a bit of a bullet sponge, but when heavily outgunned you will always be quickly killed if your too daring. Against relatively few opponents, up to say around 4, you will pretty much always win that fight provided you have a fast firing weapon like the MP40.
I would advise most people to immediately try the hardest difficulty in this game, If only just to make the smaller battles more interesting.
The game plays through many locations where you play as a single combatant or as part of a larger force/ army, and the levels are a combination of very linear focused styles but also gives many levels which offer a great deal of variety in how you approach a situation and therefore providing replay-ability. Even the most linear of the levels offer replay options with options different starting weapon selections and even some levels where you chose how to approach several conflicts.
Exploration also can provide you with a different experience, which rewards you with different weapon, sometimes silenced, and potential ammo crates and more options to sneak past you opponents if you want to avoid conflict. Stealth and combat is almost always an option for tackling most portions of the game.
The Stealth system is, fairly well implemented. Loud weapons will attract enemies from larger distances with silenced weapons allowing you to kill enemies from a closer range unnoticed at the price of longer range damage. The throw stone and hide body mechanics I found mostly unneeded, so i would have preferred them to have had more active use in the campaign.
I will say that there is nothing unique about this shooter, with the before mentioned throw stone to distract guards and hide body mechanics being seen in many games before (Far Cry 3, Dishonored, need i go on?). This is by no means the end of the list, with the Breach mechanic of almost every modern FPS being included with the same time slows down so we can kill a room full of enemies and potentially save hostages. There is also the "follow the Bullet" replay visual from the many Sniper games on the market.
Even with all the cliche mechanics and standard gameplay, Enemy Front offers a great gameplay experience and hours of fun, especially if you miss WWII FPS.
Graphics
Being based on CryEngine, it is unsurprising that this game is pretty. While not as polished as larger AAA titles the games graphics are no doubt very impressive. Texture quality is to a high standard all around, but there is the occasional lower resolution texture here and there.
Lighting quality is also a place where this game shines, with realistic shadows, flashes from explosives or guns which all really immerse you in the experience.
The environments are very lovingly crafted, from the ruins or Warsaw to the bright and colourful french countryside. Towns and villages have an authentic look and feel and houses feel lived in, rather than just a box with furniture inside.
Weapon models, sounds and animations are all unique to the weapon, giving each gun their own personality and really shows the work the developers have put into the game to give such a faithful representation of the weapons.
Multiplayer
Multiplayer is not what you buy this game for, Single player is what this game is all about. The Multiplayer is bland and boring, with nothing that really separates it from any other FPS out there.
Throughout the whole time i played this title I have never seen more than 10 people playing this game online at once. While I have been able to play a few games it wasn't a good enough experience for me to want to play it again, never-mind recommend that anyone else give it a try.
One other issue online is the ping indicator, which gives you no real information and you have to judge if you have any lag yourself. Even so with so few players online just try to find another match if you have bad ping.
Conclusion
Enemy Front is a great single player experience which does a great job in providing a WWII shooter with modern graphics and mechanics but fails to offer anything unique apart from the lovingly and accurate crafting of WWII Europe which explores many of the events in WWII is is often not explored in games.
Multiplayer may as well not exist in this game, given the low numbers of players and almost inability to know ping. The PC version of the game is good and performs well but isn't without its issues.
So is this game Worth Purchasing? Yes, currently codes for this game are available online for as low as £11, which is great price for a good game. This is the title that you don't fork out Steams £30 price tag, but find reduced and say yeah this game is good and there make a purchase. At the lowest price of £11 on some sites it is definitely worth a purchase and a must for WWII shooter fans.
Video
Here is a video of some gameplay of Enemy Front, with my own personal commentary. Here I will talk about the many thing I say in this written review, Including PC port quality and will give a visual representation for those who require it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDf__t76GC0
Today we have a look at Enemy Front, the new World War 2 shooter from Ci Games which is made using Crytek's CryEngine. If you are interested in some, now classic, WWII FPS action this is definitely worth a read.
Game Settings and Performance
As always, it is very important to assess the quality of the PC version of the title. I'll start by saying that all the menus are traverse-able by mouse and the in-game controls are pretty standard for an FPS, so there are no problems using mouse and keyboard.
If the stock controls are not your thing, they can easily be changed as all the in-game controls are fully rebindable.
Graphical settings are also highly configurable, with a basic menu offering the standard resolution, vsync, graphical options (low, medium, high, very high) and options of playing in DX9 or DX11.
For more advanced users a more highly configurable "Advanced" option is available where pretty much anything can be configured. Sadly missing from this list is Anti Aliasing, Anisotropic filtering and FOV options. The FOV can be edited using the config files, instructions for which can be found on the PC gaming wiki. AA and AF options could be under the post processing option, but there is no indication that there is, some users may like to add their own AA through either Nvidia or AMDs drivers.
Performance wise the game runs good, at maxed out setting at 1440p resolution the framerate is always around 52ish FPS, with occasional dips to 40 and maxing out at around 75 FPS. This is with my GPU running at stock settings while playing through the entire game. Which is great performance considering this games CryEngine roots and the massive 1440p resolution.
VRAM usage at 1440p was at the 2.4GB mark, with 1080p setting staying under 2GB at all times tested. So please bear this in mind before bumping up the texture resolution at higher resolutions.
I did fing one issue while playing the game which heavily affected the sound quality, which is in the video portion of this review at the bottom of this post. It caused the sound to just become a vague auto-tuned sounding mess, which required a system restart to fix. This happened twice during the 10 hours I have played so far of this game. As far as I'm aware nobody else has had this issue as when searching for it I found no sign of it, so perhaps this is a unique issue to my system.
Another issue some people have been complaining about is related to vsync which is known to cause framerate issues. Some people have had success by using Nvidia's adaptive sync instead if they experience visual tearing, but others only get system crashes trying this.
Apart from these issues the game has ran great, especially when compared to other big budget games, ahem Battlefield 4 ahem.
Gameplay
The game plays like most standard FPS', regenerating health, ammo boxes throughout the levels and pretty standard run and gun feel.
Your character as always is a bit of a bullet sponge, but when heavily outgunned you will always be quickly killed if your too daring. Against relatively few opponents, up to say around 4, you will pretty much always win that fight provided you have a fast firing weapon like the MP40.
I would advise most people to immediately try the hardest difficulty in this game, If only just to make the smaller battles more interesting.
The game plays through many locations where you play as a single combatant or as part of a larger force/ army, and the levels are a combination of very linear focused styles but also gives many levels which offer a great deal of variety in how you approach a situation and therefore providing replay-ability. Even the most linear of the levels offer replay options with options different starting weapon selections and even some levels where you chose how to approach several conflicts.
Exploration also can provide you with a different experience, which rewards you with different weapon, sometimes silenced, and potential ammo crates and more options to sneak past you opponents if you want to avoid conflict. Stealth and combat is almost always an option for tackling most portions of the game.
The Stealth system is, fairly well implemented. Loud weapons will attract enemies from larger distances with silenced weapons allowing you to kill enemies from a closer range unnoticed at the price of longer range damage. The throw stone and hide body mechanics I found mostly unneeded, so i would have preferred them to have had more active use in the campaign.
I will say that there is nothing unique about this shooter, with the before mentioned throw stone to distract guards and hide body mechanics being seen in many games before (Far Cry 3, Dishonored, need i go on?). This is by no means the end of the list, with the Breach mechanic of almost every modern FPS being included with the same time slows down so we can kill a room full of enemies and potentially save hostages. There is also the "follow the Bullet" replay visual from the many Sniper games on the market.
Even with all the cliche mechanics and standard gameplay, Enemy Front offers a great gameplay experience and hours of fun, especially if you miss WWII FPS.
Graphics
Being based on CryEngine, it is unsurprising that this game is pretty. While not as polished as larger AAA titles the games graphics are no doubt very impressive. Texture quality is to a high standard all around, but there is the occasional lower resolution texture here and there.
Lighting quality is also a place where this game shines, with realistic shadows, flashes from explosives or guns which all really immerse you in the experience.
The environments are very lovingly crafted, from the ruins or Warsaw to the bright and colourful french countryside. Towns and villages have an authentic look and feel and houses feel lived in, rather than just a box with furniture inside.
Weapon models, sounds and animations are all unique to the weapon, giving each gun their own personality and really shows the work the developers have put into the game to give such a faithful representation of the weapons.
Multiplayer
Multiplayer is not what you buy this game for, Single player is what this game is all about. The Multiplayer is bland and boring, with nothing that really separates it from any other FPS out there.
Throughout the whole time i played this title I have never seen more than 10 people playing this game online at once. While I have been able to play a few games it wasn't a good enough experience for me to want to play it again, never-mind recommend that anyone else give it a try.
One other issue online is the ping indicator, which gives you no real information and you have to judge if you have any lag yourself. Even so with so few players online just try to find another match if you have bad ping.
Conclusion
Enemy Front is a great single player experience which does a great job in providing a WWII shooter with modern graphics and mechanics but fails to offer anything unique apart from the lovingly and accurate crafting of WWII Europe which explores many of the events in WWII is is often not explored in games.
Multiplayer may as well not exist in this game, given the low numbers of players and almost inability to know ping. The PC version of the game is good and performs well but isn't without its issues.
So is this game Worth Purchasing? Yes, currently codes for this game are available online for as low as £11, which is great price for a good game. This is the title that you don't fork out Steams £30 price tag, but find reduced and say yeah this game is good and there make a purchase. At the lowest price of £11 on some sites it is definitely worth a purchase and a must for WWII shooter fans.
Video
Here is a video of some gameplay of Enemy Front, with my own personal commentary. Here I will talk about the many thing I say in this written review, Including PC port quality and will give a visual representation for those who require it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDf__t76GC0
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but to be honest it's not bad at all, Yeah I have to push down maybe a feathers touch more but nothing extreme that strains my fingers plus I'm not a pussy 
, Think of it as a workout for your fingers 
