The time comes when playing shooter games such as Call of Duty or Counter Strike can become quite boring. Not giving up your hopes on the shooter genre, you may find yourself desperate enough to consider going for a free-to-play title. After overcoming the abysses of an endless list of considered free-to-play trash, you actually might end up finding something interesting—something named Warface.
A friend and me accepted this challenge and started our Warface journey a few hours after discovering the game. What initially caught our attention was the pure fact that this title was developed by Crytek, a developer studio which is responsible for video gaming treasures such as Far Cry and Crisis. From what we had seen, the graphics seemed quite nice and the overall first impression after looking at some gameplay footage was very good. Unfortunately, we were not aware that the game is available on Steam, so we ended up downloading it by using the publisher's own gaming launcher. While that does not change much in the way things work, it is always more pleasant to get progression on your main Steam account—so just in case you are considering to take a look at Warface, get it on Steam!
Upon starting the game you have to choose a character which you cannot change afterwards, before being thrown into a short tutorial that explains all the essentials for the first two classes, the Rifleman and the Sniper; by progression you can unlock two more: the Engineer and the Medic. There are several weapon types and gadgets in the game which are split among the four classes, so for example: a Rifleman can wield assault rifles, light machine guns, and ammunition bags, while a Medic can wield shotguns, medikits, and a defibrillator. Whereas that feels a bit restrictive in the beginning, it actually adds a lot to class balancing. Being able to revive a fallen teammate in a search and destroy match can cause a lot of trouble for the enemy team, and is quite a powerful tool—being able to combine that with a highly effective weapon on all distances, well, that would be somewhat unfair, or could simply lead to other classes being less viable in a competitive environment.
There are three different core game modes: Co-op, Versus, and Special Operations; Co-op and Special Operations are PvE story missions you can play through with your friends, or randomly selected teammates. They differ in setting, difficulty, and rewards—we were rather surprised about them since we did not expect to see PvE missions with actual story, at least not in a free-to-play title. While we enjoyed playing these, we were more interested in facing real opponents on the battlefield, so Versus it was.
Versus comes with all the standard modes you would expect in a shooter game such as TDM, Domination, or Defuse the Bomb—I think you get it. However, the mode Storm was different and somehow a mix-up of different game mechanics. In principle, it is just about getting to a marked point in the center of the map and capturing or defending it, depending on which team you are. After a successful capture, a new part of the map becomes accessible with another point to capture, and after successfully capturing that one, the final capture point in the last part of the map is revealed. There is a time limit for capturing/defending the points and whichever team performs better after being attacker and defender once—there are always two rounds—wins the match. If both teams are equally skilled, you will end up having a huge war about these capture points, and a ton of kills as well.
Now let us talk about something very important: is it free-to-play or pay-to-win. First things first: yes, you can spend your real money for a premium currency and buy weapon cases which may contain a permanent weapon, a golden and permanent one, or just a weapon that expires after some time. On the other side, there is a progression system which unlocks weapons, attachments, and armors permanently for playing the game. Important note: attachments are always permanent and can only be unlocked by playing, and additionally, you can change them during a match at anytime—which is by the way a pretty cool feature.
My friend and me were truly lucky. Both of us bought the starter package for around five euros. It contains VIP membership for 30 days, two permanent weapons with skins, and some premium ingame currency. After that, we went for some weapon cases and received two permanent assault rifles almost right away. So either we were not only truly but extremely lucky, or the drop chances are quite decent. I felt like I had to find it out, so I contacted Warface's PR Management and asked for two press accounts.
The Warface team immediately armed us with two full equipped accounts which had access to both: premium and standard items. In all honesty, it almost felt like cheating since we were running around with fancy armors and guns while the accounts had basically no playtime at all—it was like taking a huge shortcut; from nothing to everything. Unfortunately, the awesome looking armor was a disappointment in particular. It had such a cool design but no passive health and armor regeneration, so it was easily outperformed by one of the standard armors with these effects. For example: being less effected by a flash grenade is nice, but being able to regenerate health and armor is simply nicer!
Interestingly, we had a similar experience with weapons. The premium ones looked cooler and some of them had better stats on paper compared to the normal ones, but overall that did not result in any huge noticeable unfair advantages. However, having a gun with high range combined with a high damage stat, can make live a bit easier in case you are able to perform headshots on longer distances—that is almost always a one hit kill.
In conclusion, skill easily surpasses money spent and you will be perfectly fine without spending any money at all, as long as you invest some playtime. We had full premium accounts and ended up having worse stats compared to our own accounts—though, I have to admit that this may be the case because we were experimenting around quite a lot. Our weapon case luck did not leave us on the press accounts, though you will likely end up spending a lot more money in case you are going for golden weapons.
To put it straight: Warface plays like a mixture of Counter Strike, Call of Duty, and Battlefield. While it is not substantially better than any of these titles, it is interesting to see some of their elements being combined with Crytek's own style; it was a refreshing experience compared to other free-to-play shooter titles. Considering that you can access all that content for free, and without the need to worry about not being able to compete with someone who invested real money, it may definitely be worth to take a look at the game. However, there is one more thing to say: just in case you are an experienced shooter player who usually performs very well in that genre, you will have an easy time crushing your opponents until you reach higher ranks in competitive.
A friend and me accepted this challenge and started our Warface journey a few hours after discovering the game. What initially caught our attention was the pure fact that this title was developed by Crytek, a developer studio which is responsible for video gaming treasures such as Far Cry and Crisis. From what we had seen, the graphics seemed quite nice and the overall first impression after looking at some gameplay footage was very good. Unfortunately, we were not aware that the game is available on Steam, so we ended up downloading it by using the publisher's own gaming launcher. While that does not change much in the way things work, it is always more pleasant to get progression on your main Steam account—so just in case you are considering to take a look at Warface, get it on Steam!
Upon starting the game you have to choose a character which you cannot change afterwards, before being thrown into a short tutorial that explains all the essentials for the first two classes, the Rifleman and the Sniper; by progression you can unlock two more: the Engineer and the Medic. There are several weapon types and gadgets in the game which are split among the four classes, so for example: a Rifleman can wield assault rifles, light machine guns, and ammunition bags, while a Medic can wield shotguns, medikits, and a defibrillator. Whereas that feels a bit restrictive in the beginning, it actually adds a lot to class balancing. Being able to revive a fallen teammate in a search and destroy match can cause a lot of trouble for the enemy team, and is quite a powerful tool—being able to combine that with a highly effective weapon on all distances, well, that would be somewhat unfair, or could simply lead to other classes being less viable in a competitive environment.
There are three different core game modes: Co-op, Versus, and Special Operations; Co-op and Special Operations are PvE story missions you can play through with your friends, or randomly selected teammates. They differ in setting, difficulty, and rewards—we were rather surprised about them since we did not expect to see PvE missions with actual story, at least not in a free-to-play title. While we enjoyed playing these, we were more interested in facing real opponents on the battlefield, so Versus it was.
Versus comes with all the standard modes you would expect in a shooter game such as TDM, Domination, or Defuse the Bomb—I think you get it. However, the mode Storm was different and somehow a mix-up of different game mechanics. In principle, it is just about getting to a marked point in the center of the map and capturing or defending it, depending on which team you are. After a successful capture, a new part of the map becomes accessible with another point to capture, and after successfully capturing that one, the final capture point in the last part of the map is revealed. There is a time limit for capturing/defending the points and whichever team performs better after being attacker and defender once—there are always two rounds—wins the match. If both teams are equally skilled, you will end up having a huge war about these capture points, and a ton of kills as well.
Now let us talk about something very important: is it free-to-play or pay-to-win. First things first: yes, you can spend your real money for a premium currency and buy weapon cases which may contain a permanent weapon, a golden and permanent one, or just a weapon that expires after some time. On the other side, there is a progression system which unlocks weapons, attachments, and armors permanently for playing the game. Important note: attachments are always permanent and can only be unlocked by playing, and additionally, you can change them during a match at anytime—which is by the way a pretty cool feature.
My friend and me were truly lucky. Both of us bought the starter package for around five euros. It contains VIP membership for 30 days, two permanent weapons with skins, and some premium ingame currency. After that, we went for some weapon cases and received two permanent assault rifles almost right away. So either we were not only truly but extremely lucky, or the drop chances are quite decent. I felt like I had to find it out, so I contacted Warface's PR Management and asked for two press accounts.
The Warface team immediately armed us with two full equipped accounts which had access to both: premium and standard items. In all honesty, it almost felt like cheating since we were running around with fancy armors and guns while the accounts had basically no playtime at all—it was like taking a huge shortcut; from nothing to everything. Unfortunately, the awesome looking armor was a disappointment in particular. It had such a cool design but no passive health and armor regeneration, so it was easily outperformed by one of the standard armors with these effects. For example: being less effected by a flash grenade is nice, but being able to regenerate health and armor is simply nicer!
Interestingly, we had a similar experience with weapons. The premium ones looked cooler and some of them had better stats on paper compared to the normal ones, but overall that did not result in any huge noticeable unfair advantages. However, having a gun with high range combined with a high damage stat, can make live a bit easier in case you are able to perform headshots on longer distances—that is almost always a one hit kill.
In conclusion, skill easily surpasses money spent and you will be perfectly fine without spending any money at all, as long as you invest some playtime. We had full premium accounts and ended up having worse stats compared to our own accounts—though, I have to admit that this may be the case because we were experimenting around quite a lot. Our weapon case luck did not leave us on the press accounts, though you will likely end up spending a lot more money in case you are going for golden weapons.
To put it straight: Warface plays like a mixture of Counter Strike, Call of Duty, and Battlefield. While it is not substantially better than any of these titles, it is interesting to see some of their elements being combined with Crytek's own style; it was a refreshing experience compared to other free-to-play shooter titles. Considering that you can access all that content for free, and without the need to worry about not being able to compete with someone who invested real money, it may definitely be worth to take a look at the game. However, there is one more thing to say: just in case you are an experienced shooter player who usually performs very well in that genre, you will have an easy time crushing your opponents until you reach higher ranks in competitive.
