World War I and video games are often not the best of friends. While WWII has no shortage of blockbuster shooters, The Great War mostly gets indie efforts that look more like experimental labs than fun games. Over The Top: WWI tries to capture exactly that extraordinary nature of trench warfare and mass assaults and, to be honest, sometimes it succeeds, sometimes it looks like soldiers running through mud like in a badly choreographed action movie.
Trenches that don't like you
The concept of the game is simple: occupy a trench, defend your own, survive the artillery and outwit the enemy. On paper it sounds easy, in practice it's complete chaos. Battles often look like a mass improvised performance: hundreds of soldiers run across no man's land while explosions erupt from all sides, and every wrong move means the disappearance of the entire squad. If you ever thought Holdfast was chaotic, here the chaos is even more "natural" and no one laughs as you lose half your unit in seconds. And for fans of serious tactical simulation, Hell Let Loose is a buffet, while Over The Top is simply fast food, not gourmet, but satisfying the hunger for chases and explosions.
Gameplay "flows" smoothly. Trenches, shelters and timed attacks make sense, and the terrain destruction system is a real little wonder. Shell craters become new shelters, and engineers can dig new trenches or build improvised defensive lines. Each game becomes different, so even when you know the map by heart, you can always expect some "novelty" from the chaos.
Brutality that can be fun
The game also tries to maintain a certain level of authenticity through the weapons and roles on the battlefield. There are multiple classes of soldiers, from regular infantry to officers who can call in artillery fire or poison gas. With more than fifty historical weapons and several vehicles such as early tanks, the game manages to evoke the transitional period between the old way of warfare and the modern industrial conflict.
The difficulty of the game is honest. You can't just throw soldiers forward and hope for the best, unless you want to quickly learn what "mud training" means. The balance is mostly fair, although occasionally success depends more on the number of players attacking the same point than on tactics. It is this unpredictability that gives the game its charm - do you remember when you were a kid building towers out of Lego blocks and someone accidentally knocked them over? It's like this, but with hundreds of soldiers and explosions.
The story is practically non-existent, which is fine because this is after all a multiplayer wargame, not a narrative JRPG. However, the atmosphere is created by the visual and audio elements. The graphics are simple, the animations are not spectacular, but the mud, smoke, craters and constant artillery fire still evoke the pressure of trench warfare. The sound of explosions, gunshots and artillery gives the game the necessary weight and chaos, although the soundtrack does not leave a lasting impression.
What is good and what is not
The biggest strength of the game is the concept. There are few titles that attempt to convey the First World War through massive multiplayer battles and the dynamics of trench warfare. Replay value exists thanks to changing maps and unpredictable battles, but repetitiveness and technical limitations sometimes reduce the motivation to return. The controls are mostly functional, but sometimes clumsy when the chaos on the battlefield heats up.
If you are looking for serious, "realistic" military simulations, Hell Let Loose will be closer to your heart. If you want fun, chaotic and sometimes almost comical mass battles, Holdfast has its moments. Over The Top: WWI sits somewhere in between - simple enough for everyone to understand, but challenging enough to make you plan and think tactically… while watching your squad disappear into the mud.
Conclusion
Over The Top: WWI is not a AAA spectacle and it doesn't try to be. Nevertheless, it provides a unique experience of trench warfare, where explosions, grenades and mass assaults are commonplace. It's fun and frustrating at the same time, honest in its difficulty and original enough to stand out among similar games. If you like multiplayer war games and don't mind a few technical imperfections, this is a title worth trying.
Rating: 3.5/5
A copy of the PC version of the game was provided for review purposes by the development studio Flying Squirrel Entertainment and the publisher GG Publishing
