“Are you out in the open, or do you have some cover?” I asked my girlfriend as she got picked off by a sniper when we were approaching the hot zone. “I’m by a wall, so I have some cover, but not a lot,” she replied. “I’ll throw down a smoke and drag you around the corner to revive you. Mike, can you cover me?” I asked our friend. “Sure,” he said. “I’ve got an AK, but I can lay down suppressing fire.” I lobbed two smokes, then pulled Erin’s body around the corner, so the only people who had eyes on the resurrection were our fellow green teammates, all methodically pushing towards the objective.
In that match of Wardogs, I think I only had one kill after 20 minutes, but despite the lack of combat, I was having a blast. I was playing primarily as a spotter, tagging enemies with a monocular from afar, so their location was tracked on the minimap for everyone on my team, but I was also kitted out with medical equipment to revive any allies who needed it in my vicinity. In the following game, I spent most of my time with a hammer in hand, building a huge fortified base made up of Hesco blocks and barbed wire around a colossal tower that my team had secured.
Developed by Bulkhead and released this month on Steam in early access, Wardogs is a first-person shooter, but its beauty lies in the fact that you don’t have to be competent with any sort of weapon to contribute to your team’s efforts, and more importantly, to enjoy yourself. In the same way you can focus solely on exploration or base-building in No Man’s Sky — or how in Old School RuneScape, you can focus entirely on one particular skill such as woodcutting, fishing, or combat — Wardogs caters to players who may not want to engage with the other disciplines.
As a result, this is a truly one-of-a-kind shooter that lives for those memorable moments. When I was constructing the defenses for our FOB, a teammate set up a few mortars — I hadn’t reached a high enough support level to unlock them yet — so I hopped into one once I’d finished building. On my second monitor, I opened my browser to use a third-party artillery calculator, so I could figure out exactly where to aim. In-game, I positioned my mortar accurately, then fired shell after shell, bombarding the enemy team. Every time I watched the shell fly through the air then plummet towards the ground, landing directly on top of enemies camping another tower halfway across the map, I jumped for joy; it was so satisfying. I was killing enemies without putting myself in any danger whatsoever, although it required considerable set up.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m also capable with a gun in my hands. I’ve spent many a Wardogs match over the last week on the frontline, mowing down enemies with the AK-74, while also sometimes opting for the SKS marksman rifle to pick foes off from a little further away. The gun play in this game is remarkably impressive: weapons feel weighty, the variety of attachments has noticeable effects on how each gun behaves, and while there isn’t a huge catalog to choose from (just 33 weapons are in Wardogs right now, including sidearms and launchers), each one has its place.
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