There are not a lot of multiplayer shooters that can genuinely make you feel like you’re playing a completely different game from another person in the same match. WARDOGS pulls this off to create an experience that feels both varied and simultaneously purposeful. Despite encouraging you to approach the same goal in vastly different ways, it never feels scattershot or unfocused.
WARDOGS is developed by BULKHEAD, and sits somewhere between the mainstream appeal of Call of Duty: Warzone and the realistic military simulation of games like Hell Let Loose. It is a chaotic, ambitious shooter built around three teams fighting for control of a constantly shifting battlefield.
"There are not a lot of multiplayer shooters that can genuinely make you feel like you’re playing a completely different game from another person in the same match."
Flexibility is WARDOGS‘ greatest strength. While one player spends an entire match charging into firefights like they are playing a standard FPS, another might spend the match transporting teammates across the map, building fortifications, supplying a forward operating base or providing tactical support from a distance.
Everyone is effectively playing their own version of WARDOGS, yet all of those different approaches feed into the same overall objective. This amalgamation of subsystems makes for a compelling multiplayer experience that rarely feels boring or stale.
The three-team structure is a major part of what makes WARDOGS feel different from a traditional multiplayer shooter. Rather than having just two sides pushing against one another, in WARDOGS, there is a third faction fighting for supremacy and this often changes the flow of battle. Taking control of an objective doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve overcome the opposing threat, because another team can arrive from a completely different direction and turn an otherwise straightforward fight into a much harder battle.
This makes the battlefield considerably less predictable. A team that appears to have control of an area can suddenly find itself fighting on two fronts. In turn, the players attacking an objective have to consider not only the team currently defending it, but also where the other attacking team might be positioned. It creates a sense of uncertainty that isn’t possible to achieve in a conventional FPS.
WARDOGS throws you into a variety of enormous maps to take part in the fight. The scale of these environments allows you to constantly vary how you approach combat scenarios. There is plenty of room to move around the battlefield, flank opposing teams and find alternative routes into contested areas, meaning you aren’t simply running into a firefight in the same way over and over again.
Matches can become incredibly chaotic, particularly when multiple teams converge on the same objective. At first glance, this chaos may put certain players off, particularly if they’re accustomed to more straightforward arcade shooters. Thankfully, WARDOGS does a good job of rewarding both aggression and patience.
"The three-team structure is a major part of what makes WARDOGS feel different from a traditional multiplayer shooter."
Players can throw themselves directly into the middle of a firefight and attempt to overwhelm the opposition, or take a more measured approach and look for opportunities to support their team from a safer position.
WARDOGS doesn’t force every member of your team into playing the same game. One player might be focused entirely on combat while another is more interested in logistics, transportation or construction. These other tasks don’t feel like meaningless side activities either, they feel integral towards achieving victory.
The game’s economy gives these different roles a tangible purpose. Cash isn’t only earned by getting kills; reviving teammates, transporting players, supporting objectives and carrying out other useful tasks can all contribute towards your income. This means the things you do away from the frontline have a tangible impact on the wider battle, allowing players who aren’t particularly interested in traditional FPS combat to still make meaningful contributions and earn cash.
The battlefield itself also helps sell that sense of scale. There is a degree of destruction and environmental interaction that makes the larger engagements feel more dynamic, reinforcing the impression that you’re fighting across an active battlefield rather than simply moving between a series of static multiplayer arenas. It is an idea that sounds relatively simple on paper, but it has a surprisingly profound effect on the way WARDOGS feels to play.
One of the most enjoyable things about WARDOGS is watching the different parts of its sandbox come together. You might find yourself pushing towards an objective alongside a group of players, suddenly you’re ambushed and the rest of your team is wiped out, leaving only you alive. When all hope seems lost, someone arrives in a tank to offer salvation.
Elsewhere, another player might be constructing defensive positions while someone else provides overwatch from a distance. These players may all have completely different priorities, but they are ultimately working towards the same goal. It creates a sense that you’re participating in something much larger than your own individual performance. This is particularly important because WARDOGS doesn’t treat kills as the only meaningful measure of success.
"One of the most enjoyable things about WARDOGS is watching the different parts of its sandbox come together."
WARDOGS does have more in common with military shooters than traditional arcade FPS games, but it never feels intimidating. There is enough freedom to allow experienced players to approach it tactically, while less experienced players can simply get stuck into the action and gradually learn how its systems work while still earning money and experimenting with different playstyles.
There is a lot happening during a typical WARDOGS match, and that can make the battlefield feel completely overwhelming at times. Explosions are going off in the distance, vehicles are moving between objectives and players are constantly repositioning themselves across the map.
Matches in WARDOGS can go on for a while, but I never found myself wishing that a match would end. There is enough variety in each match, and the maps are expansive enough that the experience never feels monotonous, even during long matches.
WARDOGS‘ economy and progression systems add another layer to the way you approach each match. Your equipment has value, and dying can mean losing the kit you’ve taken into battle. Cash carries between matches, while equipment is purchased for individual deployments, meaning the decisions you make with your money can have consequences beyond a single run.
This creates an interesting risk-and-reward loop. Spending heavily on equipment can make you more effective in a particular role, but losing that investment before you’ve had a chance to make use of it gives you a reason to think twice about how aggressively you play. At the same time, the fact that you can earn money through combat, objectives and support means you aren’t completely dependent on getting kills to recover from a bad deployment.
The progression system complements this, gradually giving you access to different equipment and allowing you to develop the roles and playstyles that suit you best. Rather than simply rewarding players for being the most effective shooter on the battlefield, WARDOGS gives you reasons to develop the specific way that you want to play.
As with most large-scale multiplayer shooters, WARDOGS is at its best when you’re playing with friends. Coordinating your movements, deciding how to approach an objective and creating those cinematic moments with your mates can make for some great experiences. The game’s variety of roles becomes even more interesting when you’re able to divide responsibilities between a group of people and play to each person’s strengths.
"WARDOGS‘ economy and progression systems add another layer to the way you approach each match. "
With that said though, WARDOGS is still a lot of fun when playing alone. The game’s systems are designed in such a way that you can still find your own place within a team without necessarily needing a previously established squad.
That distinction matters because multiplayer games built around teamwork can sometimes become frustrating when you’re playing without people you know. WARDOGS largely avoids that problem by giving individual players enough freedom to decide how they want to contribute, in turn the economy offers a decent reward for those contributions.
On a technical level, I had very few issues with WARDOGS, despite the game being in Early Access. I encountered a couple of frame rate drops during the tutorial, but thankfully these never became an issue once I was actually playing active matches. I also didn’t encounter any matchmaking problems that can sometimes plague multiplayer games at launch, allowing me to get into matches without much hassle.
WARDOGS Season 2 is set to launch shortly, so hopefully that will address some of these things that need to be updated. This is still an Early Access build, so it is not perfect. The sheer number of systems interacting with one another means balancing in WARDOGS will be an ongoing challenge, particularly when weapons, vehicles, equipment and different approaches to the battlefield all have to coexist. There are already broader balance concerns being raised around the game’s three-team structure, while the long-term success of WARDOGS will also depend on how effectively BULKHEAD can expand its content and continue refining the experience.
My own experience was pretty smooth overall. However, WARDOGS clearly has room to evolve as development continues, and its current strengths will ultimately need to be bolstered by continued balancing and additional content.
WARDOGS doesn’t necessarily do anything new within the FPS space. There is nothing here that you won’t have seen before if you are well versed in the genre. However, it does include a huge variety of these tried and tested systems and executes each of them pretty well.
This game was reviewed on PC.
