Blackmill’s Verdun, a highly realistic World War I first person shooter developed with Unity, will be receiving a standalone expansion later this year with Tannneberg. Set in the Eastern Front from 1914 to 1918, the expansion will see the Russian Army, Austro Hungarian Empire and German Empire involved.

Tannenberg will have more open maps, thus necessitating a quicker pace as compared to the trench warfare and defense of the base game. It should be noted that Tannenberg will exist separately from Verdun and have its own modes to go with the new maps. Given Verdun’s current player base, it should be interesting to see how the response to Tannenberg is.

Verdun’s expansion will be out later this year on PC. There’s no word yet on a PS4 or Xbox One release so stay tuned for more details on that. What are your thoughts on Verdun offering a standalone experience with Tannenberg? Let us know in the comments below.

It’s into this environment that Verdun, created by developers Blackmill Games and M2H, is thrown. The game is based on the Battle of Verdun, one of the largest and longest battles of the First World War. The battle began in February of 1918 and lasted 10 months, leaving over 700,000 soldiers wounded, missing, or dead. As a multiplayer game, Verdun bravely attempts to capture the fear, and occasionally crushing boredom, of a war fought between trenches.

"You only have a certain amount of time to capture a trench, and your enemy’s entrenched position (no, I’m not sorry) means that they have a natural advantage, which makes each attack an uphill battle."

The main way to experience Verdun is in Frontlines mode. It’s a game of momentum. While attacking, you charge across the scarred craters and barbed wire of no man’s land in an attempt to seize your enemy’s trench, which the other team must protect. Capturing a trench requires you to maintain control of it for a set period of time. The more allies attempting to capture a trench, the faster the trench is taken. You only have a certain amount of time to capture a trench, and your enemy’s entrenched position (no, I’m not sorry) means that they have a natural advantage, which makes each attack an uphill battle.

Failing to capture a trench means that momentum shifts to the other team, and it’s their turn to attack. The ultimate goal is to capture enough trenches to reach and capture the enemy headquarters. Because of the inherent defensive advantage, the teams switch between offense and defense frequently, and outright victories are often difficult to obtain. Frequently, matches end in a draw.

You can also dip into Rifle Deathmatch, which is exactly what it sounds like, Attrition, aka Team Deathmatch with Verdun’s full arsenal at your disposal, or Squad Defence, a co-op wave defense where you attempt to hold a trench against wave after wave of enemies. Each of these is interesting enough, especially Squad Defence, which is a great place to learn Verdun’s mechanics as the tutorial does very little to teach you. Sadly, however, these playlists are significantly underpopulated (at the time of this writing, they boasted less than 50 players combined), so Frontlines and Squad Defence are really your only options.

"Defending your trench while under gas assault is legitimately scary, as your gas mask farther hampers your already gas-filled view, and the only sounds are that of your character breathing and the approaching gunfire of the enemy."

Both game modes place you in squads and asks you to fill a role. Some squads are standard attack units with riflemen, gunners, and grenadiers, while others are focused on recon or special weapons, such as flamethrowers. Depending on the squad, the squad’s leader – a non-commissioned officer, also known as a NCO – can call in artillery support, aircraft recon, or poison gas.

Playing in a squad, and with your squad, is essential, and the game rewards you for staying close to your NCO and following his orders. Over time, you and your squad will gain experience and career points. The former will level you up, granting new uniforms and squad buffs, while the latter allows you to unlock new tiers of weapons.

When everything works well, Verdun is an engaging game. Defending your trench while under gas assault is legitimately scary, as your gas mask farther hampers your already gas-filled view, and the only sounds are that of your character breathing and the approaching gunfire of the enemy. Tension builds as your team takes defensive positions in your trench, and all you can do is wait, hoping you’ll see them through the gas before a spray bullet cuts you down. Attacking is just as engaging, as your team charges into no man’s land, hoping to make it across to the enemy’s trench and get into the action before a concealed sniper takes you down.

" It can be especially frustrating when you’re trying to gain a better angle to defend your trench, or running from one part of the trench to another, only for your own soldier to bark some canned line about deserters and cowards being shot."

Yes, Verdun is excellent at capturing the tension of trench warfare. But it also shares its tedium. Matches run long – between 15 and 30 minutes – and most of them are spent doing nothing. If you’re on defense, you’ll have to deal with “dead zones,” areas that cordon off a majority of the map and force you to remain into your trench. A failed attack means that you’ll be forced to retreat into a safe area. Set just one toe over the line, even if the line is just a few centimeters outside of your trench, and the screen will fade to black and white, and a countdown timer to appear.

Fail to retreat far enough into your trench in the allotted time, and you’ll die. It can be especially frustrating when you’re trying to gain a better angle to defend your trench, or running from one part of the trench to another, only for your own soldier to bark some canned line about deserters and cowards being shot. Both of these things will frequently take you into the dead zone for at least a moment, even when it feels like they shouldn’t, which means that if you’re playing properly, it will happen a lot.

So you wait, but even when you get into combat, the tedium is compounded by long respawn times, which can run more than 20 seconds. Worse still, you’re just as likely to respawn out in the open, right in the line of sight of an opportune sniper, as you are in the safety of your trench.

"When Verdun works, when all of its disparate elements combine properly, the mixture of tension and uniqueness it provides is unlike anything else and utterly engaging. Too often, however, the game gets in its own way, either due to technical issues or poor design decisions."

The game’s visual design doesn’t do it any favors. Verdun is an ugly game. No man’s land probably wasn’t pretty, and that’s understandable, but there’s little excuse for how visually bland the levels are, and how technically unimpressive they are, to boot. I could deal with the game’s color palette, which seems to deal almost exclusively in varying shades of brown with the odd smattering of green if the levels were at least well-presented, but they aren’t.

There’s also a number of niggling gameplay issues. The game will often lose your bullets, meaning that you’ll spend a lot of time lining up your shots only for nothing to happen. This would be fine (and would probably mean that you’d missed) if it only happened during long-range rifle shootouts, but I’ve fired into enemies at point-blank range, both human players and AI enemies, shots that couldn’t possibly be missed, and nothing has happened. Team balancing is also poor, and the only way to fix significantly unbalanced teams is for player to switch of their own accord. Verdun seems to lack the ability to balance itself. It’s also quite easy to get stuck on objects in the environment for no discernable reason.

When Verdun works, when all of its disparate elements combine properly, the mixture of tension and uniqueness it provides is unlike anything else and utterly engaging. Too often, however, the game gets in its own way, either due to technical issues or poor design decisions. There’s sparks of glory to be found in these trenches, yes; but at this moment it is largely unrealized, like a great soldier who misses the cry to attack, and sits in his trench as his brothers charge a field, waiting for an order that may never come again.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 4.

GamingBolt spoke to M2H co-founder Mike Hergaarden, also one of the three creators of the game, to discuss its inspiration, changes made to the game since its initial launch and more more.

"We’ve released several big updates, did a really cool Christmas Truce event, gave out several free expansions and have been working simultaneously on the console version of the game."

Verdun has been around for quite a while, having gone into open beta in June 2013 and releasing last year in April. What served as the motivation to make a World War 1 shooter, especially one focusing on the 1916 Battle of Verdun?

One of the Verdun creators visited the Verdun region when he was a child, leaving a great impression, also friends (who happen to do some archaeology there) own a house near Verdun which we sometimes visit. At Verdun the remnants of the battle (rifles, grenades and even bones!) are still sticking out of the ground in the many forests that surround the town so it is not hard being impressed by interacting with a history which may be 100 years ago but still very much part of the environment there.

When we met via (tech)university, the idea was formed soon after to create a game with Verdun as its central theme. Being big fps players ourselves we choose this platform because it gives us the biggest opportunity to fully immerse the players into the action.

How much has the game changed in the past one year? What new features and content have been added in the meantime?

Pff, we’ve done a lot with the game the past year. We’ve released several big updates, did a really cool Christmas Truce event, gave out several free expansions and have been working simultaneously on the console version of the game. In short, all of the art, weapons, characters and animations have been replaced by higher quality and more detailed versions. And we’ve added a huge amount of content, like weapons, maps, squads and game modes.

Verdun focuses quite a bit on squad play and teamwork across its game modes (with the exception of Rifle Deathmatch). How was this approach received, especially compared to other military shooters, and how has it shaped the design philosophy going forward?

The choice we made was to focus on a squad-based game where we were able to put into the field (matches) a number of different squad types as could be found on the real front. Such as infantry, jaeger, stosstruppen ,Canadians etc. and within those units specific roles to represent these (for instance the jaeger would get recon snipers, the infantry a machine gunner as a playable role). The focus of the game as a whole therefore is mostly in cooperation with other players.

"We hope to reveal our plans soon, right now we are concentrating on the console release, but interested players should follow our social media channels for more news soon."

The core reason for the choice to integrate squad mechanics into the game is to make it easier for players to actually mount an effective assault on the enemy trenches. You’d often see some role division in a unit storming a specific position (one would flank, one would throw grenades) so the choice to have these units which each have their own style of play and capture the enemy trench is very much rooted in history.

Also in Verdun you are able to level a squad together (by gaining co-op points), which has never been done with this kind of integration in any other FPS. When you level your squad you are upgrading the weapons and uniforms you fight with, where you start as 1914 squad (with the iconic pickelhaube pointy helmets, red trousers for the French) and evolve in a squad as one would find on the front in 1918, with camouflaged stahlhelms, flamethrowers and light machine guns. The squads allow us to represent a lot of historical information into one game. As the transition of the warfare was changing rapidly a lot of times you would find different unit types in uniforms fighting side-by-side. It also a way for us to represent the dramatic change in warfare that occurred during 1914 – 1918 in visual manner.

This approach was received pretty well, the players and community really like the way we deal with the historical aspects and we have a lot of fans who really know their history. It’s hard to compare this with other shooters, since there aren’t really WW1 competitors. With the recent announcement and gameplay footage from BF1, we’ve heard loads of players praising the historical accuracy Verdun has to offer compared with the more ‘modern’ take from BF1.

Are there any other intriguing modes currently in mind for the game, perhaps some with interesting rules like Rifle Deathmatch?

We have some future plans in mind, but can’t share these yet. Hope you understand.

With Verdun releasing on Xbox One and PS4 next month, what changes can we look forward to in current game modes?

Besides the normal tweaks and small fixes there won’t be big changes in the game modes. We did look at the console gamers and made some tweaks to have an optimized console experience, since games tend to play a bit different on console.

"It turns out there is quite a demand for it and a huge online community that knows a lot about the WW1."

Are there any interesting new items, weapons or new maps in the pipeline? If so, when players expect them?
A question that many ask. We hope to reveal our plans soon, right now we are concentrating on the console release, but interested players should follow our social media channels for more news soon.

How difficult was it to translate Verdun to the current gen consoles with regards to controls, network infrastructure, etc?

Major challenges are always: GUI, controls, networking, performance, platform specific implementations (friends, error codes etc.). We completely redid the GUI, so that was a big topic. Networking is also hard: while it worked out of the box, meeting all the console requirements takes a long time. Lastly maybe the biggest challenge is the always ongoing performance optimization. Since this is our first console title we were new to these console specific challenges.

Will PS4 and Xbox One versions receive patches and updates at the same time as the PC version?

Pushing patches and updates on the PC differs from both consoles and the development for these platforms is also done differently. However, we have the intention to push our new patches and updates on to all platforms.

What are your thoughts on the popularity of World War 1 as a setting, especially with Battlefield 1 coming up?

As gamers ourselves we missed the WW1 theme, there are plenty good WW2 games out there and we hoped to show that it’s also possible to develop a good WW1 FPS game.

It turns out there is quite a demand for it and a huge online community that knows a lot about the WW1. We hope that Verdun inspires people and that the game gives a bit of an impression of the war. We do get feedback from players, press and other developers saying that, which makes it totally worth it in our opinion.

What does the future hold for Verdun after the console release?

We see a bright future for Verdun and aren’t done developing on both PC and console! Hmm..I might just give have given a hint here.

"On the Unity engine we’re mostly CPU bound. So for us the CPU seems to be all that matters for performance, it’s unclear if Scorpio has a better CPU."

Will the game run at 1080p and 60fps on both the PS4 and Xbox One?

The game will run on 1080p on both consoles. As for the FPS, we are continuously optimizing the game so can’t give you an answer yet.

I am sure you must have heard about the upcoming PS4 NEO and Xbox One SCORPIO. From a development perspective what kind of advantages will these new and upgraded consoles bring to games development due to their additional power?

Ultimately nothing will change: because of the new power everyone will expect 4K support and then we’ll still be optimizing games just as hard as today.

Microsoft certainly seems to be pushing 4K gaming with their upcoming Scorpio launch next year. As someone who is been developing games for a long time, will you push for 1080p/60fps or 4K/30fps on the new Scorpio?

If we need to choose, 1080p/60fps. Smooth gameplay is more important on the long run.

On the other hand we have Sony, whose NEO reportedly has a weaker hardware compared to Scorpio. Given the current trend of better performing games on PS4, do you think Microsoft will finally have a one up on Sony in the performance/resolution department when the NEO and Scorpio launch?

On the Unity engine we’re mostly CPU bound. So for us the CPU seems to be all that matters for performance, it’s unclear if Scorpio has a better CPU. So we’re not sure just yet…but it might not differ so much.

Will you support the platforms (with games) when they launch?            

We have no plans for games specific to these platforms. We’ll keep making the games we envision and then check the suited platforms.

If you’re enjoying the Battlefield 1 beta and want a meatier World War 1 shooting experience, then it wouldn’t hurt to try out Black Mill Games’ Verdun which is out now for the PlayStation 4. It’s been available on PC since April 2015 after spending a considerable amount of time in Steam Early Access and features realistic, squad-based WW1 combat.

Verdun releases with four game modes – Frontlines, Squad Defense, Rifle Deathmatch and Attrition Warfare – while supporting up to 32 players at once. Inspired by the Battle of Verdun at France in 1916, the game emphasizes trench warface and realistic shooting with a variety of weapons, realistic maps and settings and more.

The digital version retails for $20 on the PlayStation 4 and will arrive on the Xbox One later following a short delay. What are your thoughts on Verdun and will you be picking it up? Let us know in the comments below and stay tuned for updates on the Xbox One version’s release date.

The PlayStation 4 NEO and the Xbox One Scorpio are almost here (or at least one of them is), and they promise a very interesting change for the console gaming market. Since they are so different conceptually from everything we have had before, we love to muse on just how they will change things on the developer and consumer side.

So when we got the chance to chat with Mike Hergaarden, co-founder of M2H, and developers on the upcoming Verdun, we decided to pose the same question to them- how do the Xbox One Scorpio and PS4 NEO change things from a development perspective?

“Ultimately nothing will change: because of the new power everyone will expect 4K support and then we’ll still be optimizing games just as hard as today,” Hergaarden said.

That does make sense- but if they had the chance to choose how they would utilize the extra power in the Scorpio, would they go for a higher 4K resolution with lower framerate, or a relatively lower resolution, such as 1080p, but with a higher framerate, something like 60fps? “If we need to choose, 1080p/60fps. Smooth gameplay is more important on the long run,” he said.

Hergaarden also sounded off on Microsoft having the more powerful system on the market over the PS4 now, noting that his own games, written in Unity, are CPU bound, and so unless he can be sure that the Scorpio has a better CPU than the base Xbox One, the extra power doesn’t add much from his perspective.

“On the Unity engine we’re mostly CPU bound,” he said. “So for us the CPU seems to be all that matters for performance, it’s unclear if Scorpio has a better CPU. So we’re not sure just yet…but it might not differ so much.”

And do M2H plan to support the NEO and Scorpio with games unique to those systems? “We have no plans for games specific to these platforms. We’ll keep making the games we envision and then check the suited platforms.”

All of that sounds good- and it sounds like, as far as M2H are concerned, there really isn’t much of a change from the status quo, even with the Scorpio and NEO coming up.

No Man’s Sky

After many years of hype, Hello Games’ No Man’s Sky will finally be releasing. Billed as an open space adventure where players have the freedom to explore, fight and trade, No Man’s Sky boasts 18 quintillion planets to explore thanks to its procedural generation capabilities. Whether it lives up to the hype or not, there’s no denying that No Man’s Sky will quench our thirst for adventure on PS4 and PC come August 9th.

F1 2016

With a new career mode packed with ten seasons, F1 2016 promises its most immersive Formula One experience yet. Players will create their own character, earning contracts and joining teams to advance further up the ranks and become more successful. F1 2016 is out on August 19th for Xbox One, PS4 and PC – if highly realistic racing from Codemasters is your thing, this will be worth checking out.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Set a few years after Human Revolution, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided sees the return of Adam Jensen in a world fraught with even more danger. New abilities and on the fly weapon customization combined with even more player freedom for approaching missions should allow for one of the better FPS/RPG experiences since…well, since Human Revolution. Look out for it on August 23rd for Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

Grow Up

It’s amazing how one of the better titles to emerge from Ubisoft last year was also one of its most experimental. Grow Up is the sequel you didn’t know you wanted and will see the return of BUD as he explores a new planet while seeking to repair his ship. The game’s puzzle heavy approach returns as BUD uses new tools – like the Floradex 3000 – to take advantage of 24 different plant species and their abilities. Grow Up is out on August 16th and will be heading to the Xbox One (unlike its predecessor) along with PS4 and PC.

Abzû

From the director of Flower and Journey comes diving simulator Abzû. This isn’t your typical realistic swimmer though – Abzû features highly artistic visuals courtesy of Unreal Engine 4 and offers linear exploration in a mysterious sea. Interacting with fish, exploring underwater ruins and being one with the sea make Abzû one of the more peaceful titles to look out for on August 2nd for PS4 and PC.

The King of Fighters XIV

SNK’s premier fighting franchise returns once more with The King of Fighters XIV. Featuring 48 characters along with two boss characters, KOF XIV makes use of a new Max Mode for special EX moves and even implements the Garou‘s Just Defend feature. Online mode seems pretty simple at this point but that’s KOF for you. It’s out on August 23rd for PS4.

Verdun

Before Battlefield 1, there was Verdun. Having begun in open beta way back in June 2013, Verdun features realistic squad-based World War I gameplay for up to 32 players. Interestingly, Verdun sports some cool game modes like Rifle Deathmatch where players are all armed with rifles and Frontlines, a trench warfare assault mode where teams take turns attacking and defending. Available on PC already, Verdun hits PS4 and Xbox One on August 30th.

World of Warcraft: Legion

The Burning Legion returns and players must team up with the Demon Hunters to push them back in World of Warcraft’s Legion expansion. With a new class in the Demon Hunter, balance changes,  Artifact weapons (with 36 unique weapons for each class), order halls, a new transmogrification system and of course, plenty of new areas to explore and quests to complete, Legion is just the fix for those disappointed with Warlords of Draenor.

Madden NFL 17

Say and think what you will about EA’s Madden franchise – the publisher clearly knows what it’s doing if it keeps raking in success. Madden NFL 17 will introduce some new features – as the sequels are wont to do – such as the new ball carrier UI, Path Assist, a revamped Franchise Mode and new announcers in the form of Brandon Gaudine and Charles Davis. Look out for it on August 23rd for Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3 and PS4.

Bound

Bizarre 3D platformer Bound caught our attention thanks to its vivid art style and expressive motion capture. Touted as one large puzzle that will appeal to those seeking a highly narrative experience, Bound will also include a fair amount of procedural generation. It arrives on August 16th exclusively for PS4.