A mediocre experience that leaves no lasting impression...

User Rating: 5.8 | Beyond Normandy - Assignment Berlin PC
By JOE714 | Review Date:
As a dedicated daddy, a henpecked husband, and an overworked office drone, I don’t have much more than an hour each night to play my beloved shooters. I can push for two or more hours if a game is enthralling enough to offset the assurance of zombie-fied misery the next day. The upside of hiding my FPS addiction until well after sundown is that I never have to explain to my five-year-old why “that man’s head is exploded,” as was the case when he caught me applying some of the old ultraviolence to some low-grade terrorists when I replayed Soldier of Fortune a few weeks ago (“Because he ALSO snuck out of his bed,” is what I wanted to say. “Because he’s getting ready for Halloween,” is what I actually told him.) The downside to playing so late at night is that sheer fatigue sometimes causes me to completely forget what I was doing the evening before. Memory loss is only a problem with free-form games that have several overlapping missions or objectives (Morrowind is a good example). Otherwise, I can usually pick up where I left off each night, falling back into that run-and-gun groove after a modicum of re-acclimation.

Then there are the titles that leave no impression at all on my tired mind. Beyond Normandy is one of those. I remember the on-rails level that sends the player through a few hostile townships on the back of a Russian tank or armored car (I don’t recall which), watching for Nazis in every window and alley. I enjoyed the level just prior to the cross-country trip that required me to alternately flush out the surrounding enemy forces and then engage them in a point defense sequence with a fully-stocked Degtyarev machine gun. I recollect the street-to-street battles under a beautiful blood-red sky within the ruins of Berlin. Beyond that, my experiences with this title are all a muddle; just a few favorable impressions of its environmental design coupled with a lot of hair-pulling, monitor-punching frustration goaded by the game’s absurdly high damage model on its Medium and Hard difficulty settings.

Aside from the poor voice work (particularly in the Russian “actors”) and unfinished NPC animation and AI, Beyond Normandy is not a particularly bad game. It simply doesn’t do much to distinguish itself among all of the WWII-style shooters available just in the $20-or-less bargain bin alone. ValueSoft did not advertise the title at all; I happened upon my copy on Gamestop’s website and decided to buy it only after I caught up on all of my other new releases. Beyond Normandy garnered very few reviews – whether positive or negative – at this site or elsewhere; the title simply came and went, an insignificant release that quickly withdrew from store shelves, the gaming community, and my own memory.

Other Helpful Reviews for Beyond Normandy - Assignment Berlin

  • Rating:4.7

    By GrizzlyJim | Review Date: Jan 15, 2004 | PC

    Well, I bought the game thinking it might be half decent... that's about right. Half decent... You can't duck or squat and the controls are somewhat sloppy. I can't go any further than this one spot because, I get on a r... Read Full Review

    3 of 5 users found the following review helpful
  • Rating:2

    After shooting the 1st Nazi I uninstalled the game and threw the disc to the trash.

    By Guilly | Review Date: Sep 06, 2009 | PC

    I endured 5 minutes of load screen I was assigned the first mission of the game: jump off an airplane, play around with the arrow keys to attempt to simulate sky diving, then land, and endure another load screen. It is h... Read Full Review

    1 of 1 users found the following review helpful
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