Tannenberg Review (PC)

Shooters have invaded the market nowadays with titles like Battlefield V or FPS-derivative games such as all the Battle-Royale titles like Fortnite, PUBG or Apex Legends.
However, once in a while you may want to prefer a slower and more tactical approach towards the FPS genre, and what better way to do this than with a historical FPS set in the Eastern Front during World War I.

A historical title without a history lesson

It's a common trope that most games have a bit of a backstory to them so that you may feel closer to the characters you are playing, or more involved in the story you are going through. This goes double when talking about a title that is supposed to take place in one of the most iconic moments in modern history. Alas, (and to our great surprise), Tannenberg doesn't have a singleplayer Campaign, which is quite embarrassing. Now, some of you may argue "well if you want to know the story, just pick up a book about Europe's Eastern Front during World War I and you have it all there!" While in theory, you may be right to think that way, given that sometimes real history is more impressive (or shocking ) than fiction, no one in their right mind will first shovel down a few volumes worth of history about some countries they may not even belong to, just to play an online FPS with a better understanding.

A treat for history geeks

Some of you may owe whatever knowledge they have about the World Wars to FPS games, but unfortunately, most of them have their story focused on the big players (USA, Britain, Germany, France, you know, the countries that are vast and have money). That is why Tannenberg will surely appeal to history aficionados since it will try to tell the story of the lesser-known protagonists. Currently, the game supports squads from two superpowers: the Entente Powers and the Central Powers. The Entente Powers are made up of the Frontovik, the Cossacks and the Romanians, while the Central Powers are made up of the K.U.K. TRUPP, the Infanterie and the Bulgarians. Reading the details about each squad type alone should get any history fan (or native patriot) all giddy, as long as they overlook the occasional funny translations and names or the incompatibility of fonts when used to write letters from the non-latin alphabet.

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The mechanics

As far as flavor text goes, each squad seems different enough for you to try them all, but as far as mechanics go, not so much. Once you've played a bit and are no longer impressed by the historical setting and all you're interested in is the frags, then you'll start choosing your squad based on their role (support, assault, and infantry) as well as the gear they come with. Combat realism is a thing worth praising about the game since you're no longer an unstoppable killing machine that can soak up bullets, get healed and then soak up some more bullets. In this game, one or two shots are enough to take you or your opponents down. The only problem is that this attempt at realism creates a situation that is rather unrealistic since as far as the game hitbox is concerned, a bullet to the head is the same thing as a bullet to the leg or shoulder.

Not enough players for you to test out all game modes

I was sad to see that the gaming community within the game is rather thin, as I never managed to get to play the large 64-player maps with a full lobby. My most crowded match so far had 16 human players in it, with the rest of the map filled in by AI-controlled bots so that the match won't seem too empty. While the idea itself of supplementing the lack of players with bots is excellent, the fact that the bots are rather dumb makes it more of a hindrance. This is because they can't aim accurately even if their AI's life depended on it, and shooting them down felt like having a shotgun and a barrel full of fish. The game tries to mask the name's of all players with historically accurate names based on the chosen faction, but it's easy to tell apart which are the bots and which are the players, since the ones that know how to duck or the ones getting frags on you are players 80% of the time.

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Graphics are a bit dated

With plenty of AAA titles hitting the markets that boast impressive graphics, some of them even being F2P, Tannenberg feels as if it's a bit behind the curve when it comes to visuals.  The models, as well as their animations, seem very stiff, and you don't have to zoom in on the environment details to see the pixels and the seams between textures. The animations seem very robotic, and you don't even have separate movement animations when going up and down hills.  Speaking of terrain elevation, don't even get me started on how awkward the animation looks in first person mode when you go up and down hills while crouching. More so, most maps boast plenty of vegetation to make everything look more detailed, but the game engine isn't capable of rendering everything the camera is looking at, even with great PC systems. For example, even if all your video settings are set to max, a lot of the vegetation and sometimes significant objects disappear as if they were no longer rendered, even within close range. More so, quickly turning around (a thing you commonly do in FPS games), will make some objects briefly disappear and appear again (think of that moment when you log into Minecraft for the first time, and the game world is loading.)

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Audio worth praising

Whenever you think of Eastern Europe (maybe Hollywood's to blame), you probably think of some Russian-like city where the colors are all greyed out, and there's usually a powerful men's chorus playing the background.  This is a cliche that Tannenberg embraced with opened arms, but I'm not saying it as if it were a bad thing since we are talking about a warzone and armies that were historically supplied by Russia. The pageant towards historical authenticity and the game's OST are some of the only genuinely redeeming factors of the game, as well as the voice-acting that changes based on what faction you're playing as. Those of you that also know the languages spoken can even vouch that as far as the pronunciation and phrasing go, things are flawless.

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The Good

The Bad

Conclusion