I could have saved a lot of anguish by just noticing that it was made by ValuSoft, because ValuSoft = terrible games.

User Rating: 2.4 | WWII Normandy PC
Let's face it, ValuSoft doesn't make good games. And that's an understatement.

Still, despite the company's "track record", the idea of playing as a soldier on D-Day at Normandy was interesting and ambitious. But I was wrong, as the game sucks. It pretty much involves shooting anyone mean enough to shoot back. And then repeat it about 20,000 times. So it's like most shooters, only with ValuSoft's "quality".

When I saw that this game used the Lithtech engine, my suspicions about the quality deepened. And it didn't get any better while fighting through the horribly broken menu system and saw my first mission assignment--Generic "shoot the German guys in the face" mission #1. The cutscene beforehand involves adrenaline-rushing, tense cutscenes and action such as watching your soldier parachute down from the sky at slow speeds occasionally exceeding 5 mph. It fades to black before you hit the ground (probably since showing the landing would require effort in the animation).

But hey, it's ValuSoft.

You know what's sad? Playing a war simulator on the hardest setting and coming out on top extremely easily by acting like you're playing Quake. After landing I was assaulted by a squad of German soldiers who shot at me. I reacted by holding Spacebar and hopping all over the place. Then I started circle-strafing around the whole group and fired away. As a result, I killed everybody without taking a single hit. Want something worse? I did it again, this time with the knife. The AI is worse than it sounds.

But hey, it's ValuSoft.

When enemies spot you, instead of trying to kill you, they have to run to a predetermined hotspot, where they can fire when only there. If you're firing at somebody and the nearest hotspot is half a football field away, then instead of returning fire, they'll run to the nearest hotspot and only return fire if they aren't slaughtered by then. I can't believe someone could've come up with an AI system that's even worse than what Wolfenstein 3D had, and so far I can't think of anything worse than what's here (besides not shooting at all, but that's probably reserved for ValuSoft's next "hit").

But hey, it's ValuSoft.

The visuals are terrible, even for a budget game. It looks like someone vomited on the floor and got the wonderful idea to use it for all the textures. Meanwhile all the character models look the same, and resemble zombies more than German soldiers. Shooting something results in a laughable spray of untextured triangles that I guess was supposed to be bullet holes or debris or something.

But hey, it's ValuSoft.

You never even have to reload the guns or anything, when you run out of ammo you just have to switch weapons and then switch back to have a full clip again. Also the weapons look terrible, and definitely don't look anywhere near their real-life counterparts.

But hey, it's ValuSoft.

Really, I've had enough of this game. Honestly, I didn't finish, but considering ValuSoft's track record I'm extremely skeptical about the rest of this game. If there's a final boss or anything, I bet he'd be identical to the rest of the soldiers, with the possible addition of a black pixel for a mustache. Meanwhile I have a strong feeling the Quake trick would work perfectly.

Because hey, it's ValuSoft.