Warface (PS4) Review

Warface is a F2P FPS produced by Crytek Kiev/ Blackwood Games and published by the russian company My.com. The developer is only a subsidiary of the famous Crytek studio, that created the FPS legends Far Cry and Crysis and shouldn't be confused with them. Crytek Kiev focuses mainly on Warface and has recently in 2019 split up with Crytek and therefore is now known as Blackwood Games. My.com is best known for their MMORPG games Allods Online, Revelation Online and Skyforge. The PC-version of Warface was already being released in 2013 and stood out of the crowd by being one of the bigger F2P FPS games. The PS4/Xbox One Version of Warface was introduced in late 2018 and I first noticed this game after playing a lot of Spec-Ops Missions in Modern Warfare 3 and hearing about a similar mode in Warface.

The different game modes in Warface can generally be divided into PVP and PVE modes. Warface features a variety of gamemodes in both categories and I will first take a look on the different PVP iterations. 

'Team Deathmatch' is the most classic Multiplayer mode. Two teams fight each other and the team, that either reaches the scorelimit or has the most kills after the timelimit ran out, obtains the victory. Team Deathmatch in Warface is very similar to all the other well-known Multiplayer FPS games.

There is also a 'Battle Royale' mode in Warface since 2017. It is a comparably smaller BR-mode, but it is quite atmospheric and entertaining. I have written a separate review-article on Warface Battle Royale, that I recommend reading to gather further information.

'Free for All' is a mode without teams, in which every player fights for himself. It obviously is more chaotic than Team Deathmatch, but also rewards highly skilled individuals more. 

'Bag and Tag' is a mix off Free for All and Dog Tag Collecting. On the right maps this can definitely be a lot of fun. Of course this mode can also be frustrating when players camp and steal dogtags from other players, but that is possible in every game and would only be a flaw of the players and not the mode itself. Bag and Tag was previously known as 'Hunt', but switched its name at some point along the way. 

'Plant the Bomb' is the Warface version of Bomb Defusion from Counterstrike. One team has to plant a bomb and make it explode. The other team has to prevent this by either defusing the bomb or killing all other players during the round. 

'Blitz' is a variation of Plant the bomb, in which the bomb at the start of the round has already been deployed. Different to Plant the Bomb there are also destructible walls, that need to be detonated through the attacking team to reach the Bomb. 

In 'Capture' one team has to capture a military warhead and escape with it, while the other team has to prevent this from happening. It plays a lot like Plant the Bomb, only with the twist to escape with the objective instead of having to defuse it. 

'Storm' is a mode, in which a defending team has to protect one command point per wave and there are three waves in a match. If the defending team fails to do so, they have to move back to the next command point. The attacking team wins, when they capture all three points before the 15 mins timelimit has run off. If both teams managed to capture all three points, the team that required less time wins.  

In 'Domination' there are three command points on the map and both teams have to try to capture them all. The more command points are being held, the more points are achieved. The team that reaches the scorelimit first obviously wins. 

The objective in 'Destruction' is for both teams to capture a command post in the middle of the map to call an airstrike on the enemy base. In reality, it is about holding the command post till the scorelimit has reached 1000. 

There is really a big variety of different PVP modes, that should be able to please all kinds of players. I especially like those modes, that rewarded good teamwork (Plant the Bomb/ Blitz/ Capture/ Storm). Battle Royale also has its own spin on the genre and deserves to be tried out.

The PVE part of Warface can generally be divided into the 'Co-Op' Missions and the 'Spec Ops' Operations. The Co-Op Missions are switching up daily and there are always 6 different ones available, usually offering missions for all three difficulty settings (Easy, Normal and Hard). These missions can have different objective targets like just reaching the endpoint of the level, seek and destroy or fighting of waves of enemies. The level-maps are usually designed quite well, but I found this missions to be a bit too generic and boring. The first two or three are entertaining, but after that I soon lost the motivation to play many more, since I got the feeling to have already seen everything important in these standard missions.

A totally different thing are the Operations in my opinion. I would even go as far as to identify them as the clear highlight of Warface. Even if the idea for this Spec-Ops missions may have been inspired by the Modern Warfare games, Warface expanded and may have even improved them. Operations usually last for around an hour of playtime and require real teamwork between the different classes to succeed. On the easy difficulty a player might be able to ignore the team-mechanic, but on normal and hard the matches will end in devastating defeats if the players don't corporate. I honestly appreciate this challenge and it always motivated me to get back to operations, that I haven't previously completed. The background story of the Operations is about the elite squad named Warface that is the last hope to stop the evil paramilitary organisation of Blackwood. The players take control over the different squad members and are sent to the various locations to foil Blackwoods plans. 

The Operations feature a big variety of different scenarios and environments. Some of my favorites are 'Anubis', 'Blackout', 'Prypjat' and 'Operation Mars'. In Anubis you travel to a Pyramid in Egypt to stop the production of a Blackwood Cyborg Facility. Blackout is special, since it is extremely blacked out and you can only see a few meters ahead. If you get separated from the path or your group, the Cyborgs will hunt you down immediately. The map is very atmospheric and a direct continuation of the previous Anubis map. Prypjat as the name suggests plays in Chernobyl and captures the ghost city vibe very well. Operation Mars is the newest mission on console and it is not only special for happening on Mars, but also because you switch between playing the Warface squad and taking control of Cyborgs that operate Laser weapons. The only Operation I found a little disappointing was 'Cyber Horde', because it felt shorter than the other missions and guarding a tank for the majority of the playtime was a bit bland. All the other operations were generally thought through and quite entertaining. 'Icebreaker' and 'Cold Peak' are Operations that feature snowy regions of ice and coldness. Cold Peak being somewhat remarkable since it was divided into three shorter Mini-Operations, that could also be completed in one extra challenging 3-in-1 run. 'Earth Shaker' featured a big maze of different deadly rooms filled of dozens of MG-robots. 'Sunrise' plays on a hidden Asian island and 'Black Shark' and 'Specialist HQ' are all about climbing many levels of giant towers in order to stop Blackwood plans. I would have liked if they found a way to connect the missions more, like Anubis and Blackout did, to give the players the feeling of a real connected Story-mode. But as I already mentioned I anyhow enjoyed this part of Warface certainly the most.

The general gameplay of Warface reminded me very much of COD, Battlefield and CS. The movement speed is a bit slower and more tactical like in CS and classes play an important role in the matches like in Battlefield. There are four different classes in total and all can contribute something to their teams. The rifleman is the standard shooter with rifles and SMGs, who can provide teammates with additional ammunition. The engineer uses comparable weapons, but he has the ability to restore the armour of teammates and himself. The medic is the classic healer, who restores healthpoints and who can revive teammates (Can be a big advantage in gamemodes without spawns). Medics usually arm themselves with a shotgun. The last class is the sniper and as the names suggests, he is an expert for long distance gun-fights. 

A nice feature of the game is the ability to practice on a shooting range during matchmaking of any gamemode in Warface. Most games are usually just losing time during loading screens, but in Warface waiting-time can at least be spent in useful way. I appreciated this feature. 

You can not do a Warface review without talking about its biggest problem: The P2W elements. Warface consists of a couple of different ingame currencies/collectibles. For one there is the ingame money ('Warface Dollars'), that players gain after every match played and that is being utilized in order to rent weapons and gear for a limited time, or to repair them. Then there are crowns, which enable users to buy elite gear from the ingame-store. Crowns will be rewarded after performing extremely well in PVE missions. Furthermore there are Kredits, which is a premium-currency available for real life money, with which XP-boosters, resurrection coins, loot boxes and skins can be purchased. 

One of the XP-Boosts is the VIP-Player status, which I got from the PSN-Store for free, that gave me without time restrictions additional XP after every game. This VIP-Status was originally only sold for real life money and I think it is still being purchasable. But that somehow wasn't enough and the developers also included a Premium-VIP XP-Boost (What a name...), that gives an even bigger amount of bonus XP after every game. Resurrection coins are important for the PVE missions, since dead players can within 10 seconds after their passing rebuy themselves with these coins into the game. I am not quite sure how it works, but they seem to reload automatically, since I personally never ran out of them while playing matches and occasionally using them. Another thing are the access tokens for the operations. This is a quite useless feature in my opinion, but they are being used to enter operations. Every player gets 10 tokens per day and every match that starts takes one of the coins away. I never ran out of tokens and it very likely will only happen if you either play the whole day or die multiple times within the first minutes. Operations can take around one hour to complete, so 99% of players will not require more than 10 on a day. Developers should just remove this feature. A Battle Pass was also introduced in 2018/2019, that rewards players with additional items for completing its ranks. The first 10 ranks seem to be free for everybody and the rest of the Battle Pass will need to be purchased.

For one these are just way too many different coins, tokens, currencies and so on. And more importantly these Kredits can be used to get the very best weapons and gear from lootboxes, which is the definition of P2W. Premium VIP-Bosters may be paying for convenience, but paying players can take more hits and kill easier with their superior equipment. In the majority of matches I had a good time nonetheless, but sometimes I saw players taking more bullets than they should be able to and then killing way faster than other players. Most of this advanced equipment is also only rentable, so that regular players are supposed to continuously invest money only to keep their gear. This whole time-limited access to weapons and gear is in my opinion quite disturbing.

Warface partially uses a levelbased matchmaking, so that new players, advanced and expert players are mostly being separated from each other. The difference was quite noticeable. During my first 10 levels I did extremely well, but immediately got back to earth after passing that point. Matches with high level players and ranked games will be nearly impossible to play in a competitive fashion without investing money, which is a real shame. On the other hand if you are only interested in causally playing Warface without reaching a high level or ranked games, than Warface can still be good fun.  

The visual presentation of Warface is on a level that is best described by the terms average or okay. The game doesn't look beautiful, but is also not hurting the human eye to watch. There isn't much of a soundtrack during the matches (which is not a negative point at all) and the sound effects all do a decent job. The Controls of Warface on PS4 are very standardized and if you ever played any COD or Battlefield games, you will feel right at home. It might not win any innovation-awards, but it works well.    

Pro:

-PVE (Operations escpecially) are great

-Large variety of different PVP game modes

-Teamplay is strongly encouraged

Contra:

-Many P2W elements

-No really innovative elements (Good copy of CS, COD and Battlefield games)

Result:

Warface is a good game for casual F2P fun in a PVP FPS game with its variety of different modes and classes. It is a very good game for PVE fun in a F2P shooter with the Operations. Sadly it is a huge disappointment for competitive PVP players, which (rightfully!) don't want to invest money into ingame equipment. I do recommend Warface for the entertaining Operations, but indeed approach with caution.

6/10