Armistice Day Special: Verdun & Tannenberg
This 11/11, let's review two of my favorite shooters and discuss what makes them so incredible compared to other, similar games on the market.
The first time I played Verdun was in June 2013. It was a free download off some remote corner of the internet, intriguing to me as the first time I'd ever heard of a World War I shooter. At that point it was early on in development. The player picked up a K98 or SMLE bolt action rifle and ran around in a small arena made out of an era-appropriate trench. It was a very simple deathmatch shooter but I played it for hours and hours before getting bored. The graphics were terrible, yet some combination of simplicity and historicity made it infinitely replayable.
The best part? It was still in development. Much more was yet to come.
Two years later, an official version of Verdun was released on Steam. It focused on trench-based squad combat on the Western Front during the first World War, 32 players versus 32 players. Unlike the forthcoming Battlefield One, Verdun was about history, about primarily using bolt action rifles, about every detail matching reality. In design it was highly reminiscent of the first two Battlefield games.
Although I didn't know it at the time, this release marked the beginning of a trilogy: four years later Tannenberg, a similar game about the Eastern Front, released on Steam. Another game will be released at some point in the nearish future called Isonzo, about the Italian Front. These two sequels use the same engine and feature the same gameplay, but change the trench warfare into a different signature game mode and swap out the squads and weapons available.
I love these games. For years now they've been the shooters I launch whenever I have a podcast to listen to or an hour to kill--and they're tragically underpopulated. I meant to write this post last year for Armistice Day but ran out of time; this year, I thought, what better way to celebrate 11/11? Here follows an overview on Verdun and Tannenberg, and a few reasons why I think anyone with even the slightest interest in World War I should check them out.
Verdun
In Verdun, you take control of a single member in any one of eight squads on either the Central or Entente Powers. Each squad has four players. Each player has a specific role. The role varies by squad; in general the top role will always be a sergeant, who usually has an automatic pistol and/or grenades. He gives orders and can call in support. Next is the rifleman, then the machinegunner, then finally a grenadier or assault-specialist.
Roles receive different passive abilities. Sprinting speed, reload time, etc. More significant are their differences in equipment. Each role has three loadouts of three different grenades/weapon combinations. The assault in a German Pioneer squad, for example, receives a loadout with an MP18--the only submachinegun in the game. These roles are rigid; there is always one and only one per squad.
Because there can only be one assault Pioneer per squad, and because there can only be eight squads per team, there can consequently only be eight MP18s on the field of battle at any given time--and that's presuming that EVERY squad is Pioneers. In fact there are a huge variety to choose from. From the Entente perspective, squads can be British Tommies, Scottish Highlanders, Canadians, American Doughboys, US Marines, Australians, Algerian levies, French infantry, or Belgian soldiery. These squads, as expected, have roles which wield vastly different equipment. Thus squad is vitally important: an Australian machinegunner uses a Lewis gun, while an American has a BAR. These weapons look different, sound different, and must be used differently in play. Some of the weapons available to roles get very funky and very fun, and they're always historically accurate.
As something of an aside, I must mention that Verdun is perhaps the only FPS ever made to feature reload times that are not only realistic, but that are longer than reality. If you fire off all shots in your Reichsrevolver, be prepared to sit around and wait while six more are loaded in. This only makes the game more exciting and more unique--and, of course, more authentic to the time period. Arthur Morgan leave!
Already you can see the differences with more mainstream Great War shooters such as Battlefield One. This squad/role structure forces most players in a full match of 64 players to use fairly standard weapons. This means bolt-action rifles. Consequently this game is not World War I in which everyone is running around with SMGs or weird prototypes that hardly existed in real life. It's World War I--admittedly a pastiche of late World War I--as it really was. Thus, if you're like me and you're interested in military and firearms history, but not especially interested in hardcore military simulation, it doesn't get better than Verdun.
There are a few gamemodes. The only one worth discussing here is Frontlines.
In Frontlines, Entente and Central Powers meet head-to-head. The map has a selection of trenches, and the sides engage in a tug-of-war as they battle for each trench's control, all the way up to the opposing side's headquarters (if you make it there in time). I would characterize the mode as some mixture of king-of-the-hill and Rush from Battlefield. It's very much like a trench-based Rush, with the key difference that both sides take turns on offense--and progress can always be lost.
As you might expect from a realistic-ish World War I game, offense involves dying constantly, while defense means racking up kills. It isn't quite as stark as that in play because the trench is more fluid than you might expect, but it's a good general characterization.
Squad leaders can call down artillery, gas, or smoke. This covers the approach and allows each squad to make it to the trench. Once in the trench, clear it out, hold it for a certain amount of time, and capture it. If you do manage to capture it, the sides immediately flip: you're now on defense, the other side is on offense. They have a chance to recapture. If they fail, the whole field moves on up to the next, and the process repeats.
Offense can be fun with the right role, but it's also a slog. Expect to die. A lot. Defense is where you rack up the kills, and in general it's what makes the game enjoyable overall. Frequent death is a necessary price to pay to make the whole gamemode work.
When I play Verdun, most of my time is spent swapping between sides and squads in search of the weirdest, most fun gun. The game has a good balance overall between wacky and mundane, but the MP18 is so much better than the K98 (for example) that it can feel distressingly inefficient to run around with a manually-operated rifle.
Still, when it comes to core gameplay, Verdun is extremely compelling. It's all action. You never wander around looking for someone to shoot. The enemy always lies straight ahead. Combat is non-stop. The only downside is that playing offense can sometimes, on some maps, be so miserable that it's not worth pressing on.
This is a small criticism overall. As far as I'm concerned, this game is the second best historical FPS on the market. I can't recommend it highly enough.
With one caveat: playercount.
This issue will be discussed more later on, but in general Verdun never has more than 100 players online at any given time. The remaining player slots will be automatically filled with bots. On some level this is a benefit, because the bots are inept and your opportunity to rack up kills on offense is heightened.
On another level, the bots are inept, and the game isn't as enjoyable when there are only two or three other real people in the match.
Verdun runs on Unity and it's a very simple in terms of mechanics. It's a basic shooter, a lot like a Battlefield game but lacking squad specialties like a medic's ability to revive or an engineer's ability to repair. It has as much as it needs and no more. And it doesn't matter. The game accomplishes what it sets out to do, and it does so splendidly. I love this game.
Tannenberg
Next comes Tannenberg. The basic premise of this sequel: the same mechanics as Verdun, but everything is swapped out to the Eastern Front, and a new primary gamemode called Maneuver takes Frontlines' place.
Maneuver is the most significant difference. Rather than trench-based tug-of-war, this new type of combat is more or less identical to Domination from Battlefield. In play, however, this game feels nothing like Battlefield One, because there are no BARs, MP18s, or RSC rifles: nearly every weapon on the field is manually operated.
My favorite weapons in Tannenberg are the breechloaders. These are, as you might expect, slow to fire but highly accurate. They kill in one hit at any range. Engagements in Maneuver happen at extreme distances, which makes the Martini a demon on the field. There is nothing as satisfying in any other shooter as landing a kill at 200 meters with the plunk and recoil of this rifle. Just don't miss!
Stripper-clip loaded bolt-action rifles are more usual. Almost everyone gets one. There aren't even any light machineguns; if you want a full-auto rifle, find one on the map. Otherwise you're doing this Old West style.
My favorite part of this game relative to Verdun are the weird pistols. On the Western Front you have Lugers and Mausers and lame-as-heck M1911s. In other words, you have pistols that actually work.
Not so on the Eastern Front. Here, each pistol has its own quirks. Many of these early self-loaders aren't even magazine fed, which makes them far more interesting to use. Want to reload a Roth-Steyr after a single shot? You can't. It's loaded by stripper clip. You have to ditch your entire magazine first.
Having to obsess over reloads wouldn't matter in Verdun, but Tannenberg restricts ammo to a far greater extent, which makes conserving supplies significantly more important. The more spread-out map also means that sticking with your squad is harder and more vital for victory.
Tannenberg is significantly more fun than Verdun. It's less of a slog because you're always on the move. Contrary to what Dice must think, a lack of automatic weapons and a greater degree of uniformity between squads makes the combat more enjoyable, not less. Operating a breechloader is simply more fun than reloading the magazine in your BAR.
Unfortunately, Tannenberg suffers terribly from a low playercount. It's not rare for me to log on and find literally no one online. More usually it has 5-10 players, the rest being bots.
It's a testament to how well the game is designed that I play it all the time anyway. Even if all I get to do is blast bots, there's some combination of history, firearms, and systems that makes Tannenberg my favorite shooter on the market. This is especially impressive due to my comparative lack of knowledge on the Eastern Front of World War I--although I'm admittedly a huge nerd over weird early pistols.
Please Buy These Games
I can't wait for Isonzo. I know nothing whatsoever about the Italian front, but it doesn't matter. I can guarantee it'll be fantastic. If you're at all interested in military history or firearms development, this is the series for you. It blows Battlefield out of the water, and its relative simplicity is far superior, in my opinion, to the complexity and atmosphere of more recent World War I shooters (like Beyond the Wire, which I have nothing to say about).
So please. Buy these games. They're available for $20 each on Steam. They capture a degree of historical authenticity greater than any other FPS I've ever played. They are beautifully animated, well-researched, and competently designed shooters. I'd take either one over Battlefield 2042 any day of the week.