Guns, grenades, action

Day of Defeat is very fast, extremely so in fact for a World War II shooter. The tempo outpaces any other World War II game with perhaps the exception of Medal of Honor. The quick respawns, small maps and the constant necessity of rushing flags bring teams into frequent contact with one another, while the high-powered weapons make death sudden and messy for the slow and the careless. In many ways, DoD reminds me of the days when CS didn’t impede movement after hits but had just eliminated bunny hopping.

Weapon balance is intriguing in Day of Defeat. The German Kar98 bolt-action rifle is often capable of killing a target in a single hit, though this isn’t guaranteed. This means that even though, as a long-barreled weapon with a slow rate of fire it is supposedly worse at close combat, there are players who excel with it even at short range due to its stopping power. Generally though, the SMGs of the Assault class are best suited for short ranges, with the assault rifle-toting Support class filling a middle-ground between rifles and SMGs. Rifles enjoy the ability to fire rifle grenades, adding a great deal of distance to the nade and being able to kill pesky machine gunners and snipers by bouncing shots off walls. This seems to impede the utility of the bazooka and panzerfaust-toting rocket infantry, who are seemingly without a niche. Machine gunners are deadly in the right location and useless out of it. Their guns need to be deployed on a secure surface, but this doesn’t mean just the ground. Oh, no, anything will do – a window sill, a wall of sandbags or even a bathtub if that is your fancy.

By far the single most impressive achievement in DoD’s gameplay is how the developers handled snipers. Snipers are the bane of good games; they attract the worst kinds of players who would do nothing but camp all day to achieve a high kill/death ratio without doing the hard work of capturing flags. The AWP of old or the original sniper rifle from Call of Duty are perfect examples of how not to do a sniper rifle. Of course, the Battlefield-series sniper isn’t any better, with weak firepower. Day of Defeat makes the sniper very realistic, forcing him to move slow when aiming, adding a fair bit of gun waving and yet retaining the lethality of the gun. Consequently, the unit is never imbalanced and keeps the wankers at bay.


The maps are rather varied, all things considered. dod_avalanche is a camping map with routes across the map are all very close to each other and machine gunners can dominate if they have any support. dod_donner is a popular choice with two main routes that split off into more sections, it’s a more balanced map. dod_flash is somewhat similar to donner though more open. For true chaos, dod_anzio cannot be beaten, with tunnels, multiple exits from spawns, quick routes. Other than avalanche, none of the maps struck us as particularly bad, but the fact remains that there are only four of them.