New World Interactive’s Day of Infamy, the FPS released in March of 2017 and marketed as a spiritual successor to old-school FPS games like Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, and most of all, Day of Defeat, has enjoyed a good reception by the PC gaming community due to its particularly unique blend of arcade and realistic gameplay mechanics that have rarely been seen before. To make matters even better, it has enjoyed a steady supply of updates that have delivered, at no additional monetary cost to the playerbase, more unlockable units (skins); fixes; and whole news maps, ranging from flak towers like Flakturm to Dunkirk itself, launched in sync with Christopher Nolan’s latest movie. At the time this article is being written, NWI has added four new maps since it abandoned its Early Access status.
Unfortunately, the simple deliverance of these updates has not always been well received by the playerbase. The NWI development team increasingly appears to deliver hit-and-miss changes to the game. These include: maps that in their public beta stages had notable balance issues and were implemented anyways; maps that turn into an explosive/grenade spamfest with highly predictable outcomes; the removal of the most popular gamemode from certain maps, condemning the latter to rarely being played and in turn causing a substantial level of repetition in map rotations; changes in gameplay mechanics that, in addition of being unwarranted, received a strong negative feedback and have not been reversed (as is the latest case, with the loss of the option for players to select the playable faction in the game’s cooperative game mode).
These problems appear to point to a development team more concerned with pumping out updates and map content than with the quality of what they add and the overall quality of the game itself. Day of Infamy has still not achieved some of the claims made by NWI back in May, such as the correct displays of ranks and their inclusion to player models, and it has left halfway done other features like player cards and the tags system, which have no purpose whatsoever aside from your own amusement, as other players cannot even see your profile (not that it would change much as the cards are not even customizable).
It’s only logical that the indie studio has decided to focus the majority of its resources on the upcoming Insurgency: Sandstorm, the sequel to Insurgency itself, another highly praised FPS by the same studio. But without a good explanation, the false promises and small but rough edges that exist within DoI can only point to an internal problem in prioritization. The maps with easily abusable features that have taken months to fix — as was the case with Brittany — or the newest grenade spam, allowing a single player to easily throw nine grenades in 30 seconds (possible thanks to the newest ammo drop feature), should not be considered valid excuses that explain the lack of polishing in other areas.
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That being said, the overall gameplay itself still outshines that of studios with triple-A budgets and is further enhanced by crisp and clear sound design. Players looking for a World War 2-themed FPS should give it a try in spite of the aforementioned issues. If you disagree or agree with any of the points raised, please leave a comment below.
