Quick Notes:

Voice acting is hit and miss.  “Mother” isn’t that appealing in terms of voice nor are some of the characters in the civil war.  It seems that some of the programmers stepped in rather than hiring professionals, I don’t know this for a fact but the dialog seems trite at times and like someone is reading from a piece of paper.  Dexter is the highlight and while I would have loved to hear R. Lee Ermey do the voice for Dexter, the actor they chose does a good job.

I can understand having accurate aim in a game like this with muskets but the hit zones seem to be inaccurate with a lot of the guns, classic or modern.  I can stand up have dead aim on the head of a guy behind a boulder and it won’t register the hit while I can nail 10 guys running in the open easily even when I don’t think I hit them.  I’ve also been right on top of (and behind) a soldier at a boulder and it won’t kill him. I can put several rounds in him and it’s as if I didn’t touch him.  So some of the hit zone physics are whacked.  On one occasion I had to walk right up to the guy and melee because a weapon wouldn’t kill him at point blank.  I had one situation where it looked like it was kicking up dirt in the first WWI battle when I was right by the mound of dirt but well above it on my firing.  Again, I can understand trajectory but not when I’m right behind the mound of dirt.

On the level “Onward to Frankenau” you run into a certain resistance that’s unavoidable where you take some heavy damage.  I make it to the portal, actually ran a bit past it, but when the load screen comes up it says I died. When I click to reload the last mission, it shows me back at the lab with no comment about me dying.  It seems that dying is dying and even spawning at the lab would mean I was dead so this appears to be a bug.

While it’s nice seeing a full screen without HUD overlays, it seems that things like sprinting still makes you run out of “gas” but there’s no indication to tell you this.

This is a game relating to history and they give it a Call of Duty feel with facts between loads.  Unfortunately the loads are so quick that the “Press Any Key to Continue” pops up well before you have the chance to read the history blurb.  This is unfortunate since, again, it’s a history based game.  People out to just shoot things up won’t care but reading a lot of forums it seems people interested in time travel and history will be disappointed with this, as I am.

The pace of the game is too slow.  I understand the weapons for the civil war are basically lock and load one round at a time but you never have that epic feel of the Normandy invasion from Medal of Honor or the highlight battles in the original Call of Duty games (which I also think is lacking in the last few of that series as well).  This covers the first 5 or 6 battles.  It’s also a lot of running or short bursts of fighting.

Graphically it’s not going to garner awards but I really don’t look at the graphics as much.  I’m using an ATI so I’m sure the developers would comment on me not having the “full potential” with using Ageia’s physics engine so I can’t comment on it with regards to Nvidia.  The graphics remind me much of an older Call of Duty engine.  As I said, I’m not concerned as much about graphics and especially with something in this category and it does a decent job of effects for me.

Statistics.  Early on you learn that you get more “upgrade statistics” like an RPG game by saving special soldiers in each mission.  It would be nice to see something more than you gained 2/3/4/etc. XP points to apply to a gun attribute.  How many of the “blue aura” soldiers did I actually save and how many died?  How am I doing with specific weapons?  Am I better to choose one thing over the other (weapons or XP points)?  Give me something other than the end of a mission and thank you for finishing it.  It’s either you finish it or you die and reload the map point until you finish with no knowledge on how you did.

The premise of the game is there I’m just not sure it has much lasting appeal and a large percentage of hardened FPS players are going to hate it.  They made a game that I think will be more for niche people and less for the FPS community.