Review: Day of Infamy is a humble yet hardcore shooter that is unwelcoming to casual players

Platform: PC

Developer: New World Interactive

Publisher: New World Interactive

MSRP: $19.99

Introduction:

The historical shooter is gradually making a comeback, with series like Call of Duty and Battlefield attempting to glorify the events of each World War into visual and auditory spectacles. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just that Day of Infamy is a prime example of not needing spectacle to effectively convey the immersion of what it was like to fight in those times.

Day of Infamy is a pure multiplayer shooter built into a full game off of a WWII mod of the same name for Insurgency, a hardcore modern warfare-style multiplayer FPS that came out back in 2014. The hook about Day of Infamy is that it strips off the extra layers and miscellaneous details, to bring a shooter that focuses on only the bare essentials, and the result is a game that will constantly keep you on your toes over even the most minute details while doing said bare essentials very well.

There is barely a HUD, which only serves to point the way to the objective you need to capture or defend. There are also markers telling you which players are your allies, and which are your enemies, which is important because Day of Infamy does not skimp on ally damage. Other than that, Day of Infamy won’t even tell you how many bullets you’ve got on you or in the chamber, and there’s no auto reload. Yes, you’ve got to count your rounds as you fire them to be fully efficient.

Here’s what you need to know about Day of Infamy:

Day of Infamy goes for complete and total immersion.

Put aside the fact that it’s visuals come off a tad dated, and what you have is a game that draws you into its world better than any of the sexiest HUD-laden first-person shooters in the AAA space. As mentioned above, there’s no ammunition counter, forcing you to count your shots or risk getting caught with your pants down. I can’t tell you how many sniper kills I’ve lost as a result of not having a bullet in the chamber, allowing the player in my scopes to get away. On top of that, no target reticle or indicator is telling you if you’ve killed an someone, so you have to rely on your weapon’s actual sights that are built into its geometry and check for a body to confirm your kill.

I can’t tell you how nice it is to not take my eyes off of the action around me just to catch a glimpse of a mini-map sitting in the top right corner of the screen with a few sporadic yellow dots. My eyes are constantly fixed on the horizon for enemy movement, and it is here that Day of Infamy excels at immersing the player. Getting kills this way isn’t exactly precise, but neither is it so on a real battlefield.

Not for the faint of heart.

It seems that with complete and total immersion comes the sacrifice of the razor-sharp movement and shooting that comes with most modern shooters. This's not a criticism; it’s just a heads up that Day of Infamy will take some getting used to. You will miss your shots, and you will get one hit killed, but in every single one of these instances, it will be because you weren’t good enough.

Day of Infamy is designed for patient and tactical players, and bum rushing is the best way to meet a quick and laughable end. Your inventory is limited, as well as the customization factor, and changing up your loadout needs to be carefully considered when looking around at the roles your teammates play. Each player falls into a class ranging from the traditional Sniper to Rifleman, but there is one pretty cool dynamic that Day of Infamy introduces with the dependence and interaction of two classes, the Officer and the Radioman.

Officers have the ability to call in airstrikes, but to do so, they need a Radioman to receive and carry out the order. It’s a layer of complexity that you don’t usually see from a multiplayer shooter, and it requires the pair of players to be in constant communication with one another, and a death of either can quickly render their abilities helpless in a crisis.

Even taking on the role of a standard Rifleman is no walk in the park. Experienced players regularly perch themselves on the best vantage points that can overlook vast areas around an objective, and it can be quite the game of tug of war to be able to push them back effectively.

Verdict:

Day of Infamy is a fantastic niche game that will manage to keep a stranglehold on a select group of fans for years to come. There’s both good and bad with that as it can sometimes be tough to find full matches during down time, though to be fair they gradually fill up with more people if you stick with them long enough. Day of Infamy rewards patience, cunning, skill and a solid knowledge of its maps and systems.

That’s not to mention that at an MSRP of $19.99, what you get with this package is easily a bargain. There isn’t an actual single player experience, but the game does come with modes to let you practice against bots as well as a specific lobby to for new players to learn the ropes against each other. Overall, Day of Infamy keeps everything well organized, and its systems are tough but fair to get the hang of.

If you’re in between shooters at the moment or are simply tired of playing the same old stuff, Day of Infamy will give you something worthwhile to cleanse the old palate.