You bring up a map of the warzone and paint a strafing run across the parchment moments later, biplanes materialize on the horizon to drop payloads of hellfire and rack up your score. Most of the six classes are designed for firefights, but my favorite ended up being the Officer, who is able to use a telephone behind friendly lines to summon the full brunt of 20th-century mechanization. Players who want to stay away from the action as much as possible are also able to find a role. It is always possible to dominate the competition in Isonzo you're never helpless grist in a cold, continent-spanning death machine. After a while you might forget that you're playing a World War One game at all.īut that thematic flexibility has allowed Blackmill to let us feel righteously powerful on the battlefield. That keeps the pace of the action up, while also making the kills feel less meaningful. Isonzo, meanwhile, celebrates every one of your headshots with a scorecard in the bottom of the screen, like you just tagged someone with a Bullpup on De_Dust.

In Beyond The Wire, another recent Great War game, the realism of the conflict is reproduced in exacting detail, to the point that you need to screw on your own bayonet. These wrinkles make Isonzo easy to pick up for those who haven't logged time in an Arma squad, but they do make it a little less authentic and immersive than some of its counterparts. Even better, a pair of binoculars allows you to place waypoints over the heads of your rival soldiers, while green dots hover on your friendlies, as if the conscripts of 1917 suddenly had access to 21st-century augmented reality. The weapons are period appropriate - single-shot rifles with lengthy reload times are the norm - but your soldier can equip battle perks, as if they're dropping into Verdansk, that might improve their bandaging speed or reduce their weapon sway.

But unlike other, more simulation-heavy World War One games, Isonzo is very much a modern first-person shooter that combines the brutal aesthetics of the period with a whole slew of Call of Duty-ish design ideas.

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